Just seven days after Anthony Henday set out on his summer explorations in the far north, a British American force from Virginia was defeated by a rival Canadian, French, and Indian alliance, at a marshy clearing in what is now western Pennsylvania called Great Meadows. The defeated force was led by the 22-year-old, six-foot-two-inch Lieutenant […]

Mostly, the historian Jill Lepore wrote in a New Yorker article a few months ago, “we’re bankrupt of history.” And in the wake of General Motors’ April 27, 2009 decision to discontinue the manufacture of Pontiac automobiles (and the still more recent GM filing for US bankruptcy protection on June 1), the historian Gordon Mitchell […]