No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be ov

Describes Grant Wood's portrait of Iowa farmers, and documents how the piece has represented midwestern Puritanism, hard-working endurance, and the often-parodi

Dan Rice had many lives. He was a pig presenter, a strongman, a lecturer, and a comic singer, all before joining the dazzling world of the circus. In 1855, he c

Since 1619, when Africans first came ashore in the swampy Chesapeake region of Virginia, there have been many individuals whose achievements or strength of char

This portrait of poverty-stricken Southern tenant farmers during the Great Depression has become one of the most influential books of the past century. In the s