When my younger brother and I were kids, our father would often enlist us in his work crew of one. We cleared brush in the woods around the house, raked leaves, mucked out stables in the barn, and helped him build decorative rock walls, which he constructed on every property he ever owned. Frequently, Dad…

The dry, sand-hued buttes rise from grassy canyons, and sagebrush dots the rugged North Dakota landscape. I am visiting the territory where “the romance” of Theodore Roosevelt’s life began. My renovated 1969 Shasta camper (with wings) navigates the winding roads of the national park named for the 26th U.S. president. It was Roosevelt’s escape to…

In the mid-1990s, Mrs. Irene Harrison (1890–1999) several times stayed in the bed-and-breakfast my wife and I operated in Waynesville, North Carolina. Daughter of famed tire entrepreneur Frank Seiberling, this centenarian was a gracious lady with a distinctly conservative take on politics. Once when she and her son were discussing politics in the living room,…

What makes the United States special? Not everyone agrees. A growing number of people think that it is not special at all. But in at least one respect, they are dead wrong: America is home to unique land formations of unparalleled beauty. These sacred spaces used to embody the essence of what it means to…

Modernity’s best-selling history book author, David McCullough, knew how to tell a factual story that did not leave his readers yawning or pining for a thriller. Before he died in August 2022 at age 89, his thorough biographies, two of which received the Pulitzer Prize, captivated millions of readers due to his stimulating storytelling style….

A plane buzzed over the Black Hills of South Dakota in the summer of 1927. It swooped and dove through the air, entertaining President Calvin Coolidge and his family below. The pilot dropped a wreath of flowers to this little crowd and sped away. The Coolidges had chosen the large Game Lodge in Custer State…

A statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt was removed from outside a major New York City museum on Wednesday after officials decided the way it was structured is racist. The statue, created by James Earle Fraser, was placed in 1940 just outside the American Museum of Natural History in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan….

A statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt was removed from outside a major New York City museum on Wednesday after officials decided the way it was structured is racist. The statue, created by James Earle Fraser, was placed in 1940 just outside the American Museum of Natural History in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan….

A statue of President Theodore Roosevelt was removed from outside of a major New York museum on Jan. 19 after officials decided that the way it was structured is racist. The statue, created by James Earle Fraser, was placed just outside the American Museum of Natural History, located in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan,…