History

By burning and pillaging the property of their fellow citizens, rioters spit on the progress their forbears achieved under far worse circumstances.

At the height of the Nazi reign of terror, a group of idealistic young Germans rose to challenge Hitler’s regime. In reference to the moral purity of their cause, they dubbed themselves the “White Rose.”

Although the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling is a partial victory for freedom, it falls short of making a principled stand for individual rights.

The first in a two-part series on the country’s fundamental ideas, America’s Revolutionary Mind is not a narrative of events but a systematic re-creation of the philosophy that led colonists to, in the words of Thomas Paine, “begin the world over again.”

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a firecracker of a woman with a studied yet eclectic taste in art and the means to acquire lots of it. As one friend put it, she lived “at a rate and intensity, with a reality that makes other lives seem pale, thin and shadowy.”

In Heroes, Legends, Champions, Andrew Bernstein has created a fascinating hybrid of useful philosophy and inspirational vignettes about outstanding men and women. The result is a book that can help people rise to heroic heights in their own lives.

Miami Beach boasts the world’s greatest concentration of art deco buildings, which reflect a distinct era in American history—along with the can-do attitude that has defined the nation.

Often scorned and rejected in her own day, Zora Neale Hurston was a pioneering writer who looked beyond the controversies of her time and sought to articulate a lasting vision of life—one free of bitterness or pettiness and full of grace and beauty.

Robert Smalls had much in common with many other heroes of history, such as Joan of Arc and Rosa Parks. Like them, Smalls refused to live as a victim.

Exemplars of Enlightenment thinking, Deborah Feldman, Yeonmi Park, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali escaped oppression in pursuit of freedom, rational inquiry, and the life these values make possible. They are models for us all.