The American Story

Every generation of Americans has been faced with the same question: how should we live? Our endlessly interesting answers have created The American Story. The weekly episodes published here stretch from battlefields and patriot graves to back roads, school yards, bar stools, city halls, blues joints, summer afternoons, old neighborhoods, ball parks, and deserted beaches—everywhere you find Americans being and becoming American. They are true stories about what it is that makes America beautiful, what it is that makes America good and therefore worthy of love. Each episode aims in some small way to awaken the better angels of our nature, to welcome us into and encourage us to enrich the great American story.

Resolution 12/27/2022

Resolution Often our New Year’s resolutions are lighthearted, and usually, the flesh being weak, they are fleeting. Before Valentine’s Day or maybe even before Epiphany, we have slipped back into our old ways. But these lighthearted resolutions reflect a deeper, more serious impulse. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/25410222

Tidings of Great Joy 12/20/2022

Tidings of Great Joy At the time of the American founding, celebrations of Christmas in America varied widely, from Puritans and Quakers who shunned or ignored it, to other Protestants and Catholics who honored it in their own Christian ways, to those who spent the day in “riot and dissipation,” like an ancient Roman Saturnalia. But E Pluribus Unum—out of many one—was the American motto on the Great Seal, and over the generations, out of many ways of celebrating or ignoring Christmas, came a recognizably American way. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/25375806

All of You on the Good Earth 12/13/2022

All of You on the Good Earth President Kennedy told a special joint session of Congress that it was “time for a great new American Enterprise.” /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/25294458

Pearl Harbor and the Art of Politics 12/06/2022

Pearl Harbor and the Art of Politics December 7, 2021 is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into World War II. It is one of many days in the American year that inspire reflection on the most violent and determinative human event: war—and the art of war that aims to control and direct that most uncontrollable human undertaking. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/25220679

Andy Ngo 11/29/2022

Andy Ngo After the American defeat in Vietnam in 1975, the communists confiscated the homes, businesses, property, and savings of those south Vietnamese supposed to be “counterrevolutionaries.” Hundreds of thousands of these men, women, and children were forced into what were called “reeducation” camps. Many risked their lives and fled, including Binh and Mai Ngo, who made it to America. Their son became an American hero. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/25141815

Sarah Josepha Hale 11/22/2022

Sarah Josepha Hale Sarah Josepha Hale was born in New Hampshire in 1788. In an era when the average American life expectancy was forty years, she lived until 1879—91 years—and has been remembered by posterity primarily for two things: the poem popularly known as “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and the American tradition of Thanksgiving. Hale made herself “one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century.” /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/25084485

Gettysburg 11/15/2022

Gettysburg What makes Gettysburg America’s most hallowed ground? A delegation of Russian historians at the height of the Cold War seemed to know, when American historians had forgotten. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24994419

One More for Chesty 11/08/2022

One More for Chesty “Chesty” Puller was a Marine’s Marine. To this day, in Marine Corps boot camp, recruits are exhorted, “Do one more for Chesty! Chesty Puller never quit!” His combat service record is astonishing: he is the most decorated Marine in history. Chesty insisted that he did not love fighting. But if there was a fight, he wanted in on it, and he generally was. But the fighting spirit is not the only reason Chesty is revered by Marines. Bravery in combat is expected. He embodied something more. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24921813

Bullets for Ballots: 1860 (3 of 3) 11/01/2022

Bullets for Ballots: 1860 (3 of 3) Until the election of 1860, the truths proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence had been the ground of American civic friendship, above all the central truth that all men are created equal. Fidelity to this most American idea held the country together through many divisions since 1776. The Confederate States rejected that idea. America had lost the foundation for civic peace. Ballots gave way to bullets. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24846015

Ballots for Bullets: 1800 (2 of 3) 10/25/2022

Ballots for Bullets: 1800 (2 of 3) The election of 1800 in America came after a decade of bitter and extreme party strife. Each side accused the other of aiming to overthrow the Constitution and preparing the way for tyranny. There was no precedent, including the experience of 1776, for resolving such differences without appealing to bullets. But ballots prevailed and power was transferred peacefully between uncompromisingly hostile political rivals for the first time in human history. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24773901

Bullets and Ballots: 1776 10/18/2022

Bullets and Ballots: 1776 Americans are being reminded how fragile and precious an achievement it is to establish the legitimate authority of government through peaceful and free elections. But there would be no ballots without the bullets of 1776. We hold elections in America because, as the Declaration of Independence says, we think “the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.” But what divided the American people from the British Crown and Parliament in 1776 could not be decided by a vote alone. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24702147

Thank God for being an American 10/11/2022

Thank God for being an American P.G. Wodehouse was one of the best writers in the English language in the 20th century and the funniest. He wrote nearly 100 delightful books, each one of which in perfectly orchestrated sentences, can make you fall laughing out of your beach chair. He became an American citizen in 1955, wrote an autobiography titled “America, I like you.” Read anything Wodehouse. You won’t regret it. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24633873

Charlie Brown 10/04/2022

Charlie Brown There is more of Charlie Brown in most of us than there is Abraham Lincoln or Michael Jordan. We identify with his failures and suffer with him. But it isn’t just his failures. Charlie Brown is resilient. He never quits. Despite setbacks and moments of despair, he is at heart an optimist — and one of America’s greatest success stories. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24546189

“Make Cakes!” 09/27/2022

“Make Cakes!” During peak hours, in the 300 block of Brand Boulevard in the city of Glendale, in what is called “Metropolitan Los Angeles,” you might see a line of eager people making their way into Porto’s Bakery & Café. You might see a similar scene in Buena Park, Burbank, Downey, or West Covina. Porto’s is a many-splendored gift to the Southland. And it’s not just the empanadas; it’s the spirit of freedom and enterprise. Rosa and Raul Porto and their children brought this gift to America from Cuba a lifetime ago. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24478620

Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver 09/20/2022

Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver The Declaration’s great American proclamation that “all men are created equal” and the first three words of the Constitution—“We the People”—are profoundly connected. The relation between these two ideas—equality and consent—is the vital center of American political freedom. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24412014

We the People 09/13/2022

We the People September 17 is Constitution Day in America because on that day in 1787, after 4 months of deliberations, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Independence Hall in Philadelphia proposed the Constitution they had drafted to become the Supreme Law of the land. This was the end of one historic deliberation, but it was the beginning of another. The Constitution would be “of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written,” until it was ratified by the people of the United States. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24341418

9/11 09/06/2022

9/11 Twenty-one years have come and gone since September 11, 2001 became “9/11.” It is a day not just for mourning victims but for honoring heroes, those on Flight 93 and the many civilians and first responders who risked and gave their lives trying to save others. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24271629

This Was a Man 08/30/2022

This Was a Man Frederick Bailey was born into slavery in 1818. With determination, courage, some help from others, and good luck, he managed to escape to freedom when he was 20 years old. He made his way to Massachusetts, gave himself a new name, Frederick Douglass, started working as a free man and very soon gave a triumphant first speech to an abolitionist group, which launched him on a career as an anti-slavery speaker and writer. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24187179

Our Finest Hour 08/23/2022

Our Finest Hour America’s greatest enemy is not the Chinese or the Russians, or some other foreign tyranny—though they might indeed kill us if we continue so fecklessly to defend ourselves. But what will they kill? The body of a country that has lost its soul, unless we do something about it. Our greatest enemy is the bad ideas that have miseducated Americans so thoroughly for so long that many of us have forgotten what it means to be a free people. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24124113

Soul of Freedom 08/16/2022

Soul of Freedom Every year in August, the oldest synagogue in America—Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island—holds a public reading of a letter written by George Washington to the congregation early in his first term as the first President of the United States. The letter ranks high among the documents affirming and defining the unprecedented American experiment in religious freedom. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/24050499

Hank’s Roadside Bar & Grill 08/09/2022

Hank’s Roadside Bar & Grill The American story isn’t just history. We write the American story ourselves every day with the choices we make as individuals and as a country. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23985612

Yvonne, I Love You 08/02/2022

Yvonne, I Love You The beautiful 17-year-old actress Madeleine LeBeau fled Paris in June, 1940, just hours before the Germans marched in. Like thousands of other refugees, she and her husband made their way with forged visas and all the complications, uncertainties, and delays imaginable in wartime. Just two years later, still only nineteen, Madeleine LeBeau would play a memorable role in a pivotal scene in what would become one of the most well-loved movies ever made: Casablanca. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23913741

As Time Goes By 07/26/2022

As Time Goes By One of the most popular films in Hollywood history, “Casablanca” seems to be composed of one famous line after another. For over 75 years, it has inspired us to stand up and sing in defiance of tyranny and on behalf of the cause of freedom. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23839880

The Anti-slavery Constitution [3 of 3] 07/19/2022

The Anti-slavery Constitution [3 of 3] Among the many challenges to the statesmanship of the framers of the Constitution, none was more fundamental or intractable than the problem of slavery. On August 21 the Constitutional Convention, meeting in Independence Hall in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, officially took up a provision that forbade the Congress they were designing forever to tax or prohibit the importation of slaves anywhere in the United States. Heated discussion erupted immediately. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23768492

Anti-slavery Declaration [2 of 3] 07/12/2022

Anti-slavery Declaration [2 of 3] Jefferson drafted the Declaration, a committee reviewed it, corrections were made, and on July 2-4, Congress—in the midst of much other pressing business of fighting a war—edited it into the final form. They made important changes, including deletion of a passage denouncing the king of Great Britain for imposing the slave trade on America. This deleted passage sheds light on the meaning of America’s central idea, that “all men are created equal.” /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23699993

Anti-slavery Revolution [1 of 3] 07/05/2022

Anti-slavery Revolution [1 of 3] Slavery has been around since the beginning of human history. It was practiced among the native peoples of north America before and after Europeans arrived, and it was legal in every American colony in the years prior to the American Revolution. Then a great historic change began, a revolution in the hearts and minds of the British colonists that would eventually make them Americans. This revolution was at its heart an anti-slavery movement. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23616401

Independence Forever! 06/28/2022

Independence Forever! Thomas Jefferson and John Adams celebrate their last Fourth of July. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23476253

God’s in His Heaven 06/21/2022

God’s in His Heaven Twenty-Twenty seems to have spread like a virus into 2021. A third of the way through the year and still across the country citizens bludgeoned into isolation, locked in their homes by the latest mandate, huddled around computer screens and cell phones hour by hour awaiting announcement of the next tribulation. It was too much to take in; disorienting to the soul. We fled in desperation to the free state of Florida. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23476229

How Sleep the Brave 06/14/2022

How Sleep the Brave Back in that spring and summer of 1775, when he was just seven years old and the War for Independence swirled around him and his family, John Quincy Adams remembered, “[my mother] taught me to repeat daily after the Lord’s prayer [the Ode of Collins] before rising from bed." /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23402834

Days to Remember 06/07/2022

Days to Remember Among many days worthy of remembrance, one that is often forgotten is June 8, 1789, when James Madison, in the first Congress under the newly ratified Constitution, addressed the House in a historic speech. The government had been operating for only a few months. Several states had submitted proposed amendments to the Constitution which Madison encouraged Congress to consider and worked to consolidate and draft himself. The result would be what the world now knows as the Bill of Rights. /episode/index/show/theamericanstory/id/23351606

The American Story

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