USA

Barack Obama’s admiration for the progressive Republicanism of Theodore Roosevelt ignores the true nature of both early 20th-century America and the president who embodied it, argues Tim Stanley.

John Herschel Glenn Jr was the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th 1962.

Roger Hudson explains the story behind a 19th-century photograph of George Washington's mausoleum.

The designer of the Colt revolver, the most celebrated killing machine in the history of the Wild West, died on January 10th 1862, aged 47.

Mark Rathbone assesses the importance of the office of 'Veep' (VP) over the past 220 years.

Bitter feelings between Loyalists and Patriots after the British surrender at Yorktown led to many skirmishes and retaliations.

Greg Carleton explains how disastrous defeats for the Soviet Union and the US in 1941 were transformed into positive national narratives by the two emerging superpowers.

Andrew Boxer demonstrates the ways in which external events affected the struggles of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

King's 'I Have a Dream' speech in Washington DC on August 28th, 1963, was admired all over the world. Richard Cavendish provides a short biography of Martin Luther King.

Viv Saunders reveals how sport and society are intertwined.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck looks at the long history of plant dispersal between the New World and the Old.

The American Civil War was not a simple struggle between slaveholders and abolitionists, argues Tim Stanley.

Six years after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in New Orleans Thomas Ruys Smith looks at its impact in the light of the city’s historic troubles.