From Reason, the contested legacy of the most controversial founding father: A review of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J. Kaye. A review of Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution. What does Lincoln stand for? Nearly anything we wish: A review of Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson. Juneteenth: Was the announcement of Emancipation really a surprise? From The Atlantic Monthly, an interview with Jack Beatty, author of Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900. 

From The New Yorker, a revisionist history of the Depression: John Updike reviews The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes (and more and more). Bombings, shootings, and other violence were common during the labor strife of the 1930s, when two unions battled for supremacy in the central Illinois coalfields. A review of Impounded: Dorothea Lange and Censored Images of Japanese Internment. A review of FDR by Jean Edward Smith. A review of 15 stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall Three Generals Who Saved the American Century by Stanley Weintraub and Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace by Mark Perry. From The American Scholar, The Mystery of Ales: The argument that Alger Hiss was a WWII-era Soviet asset is flawed. New evidence points to someone else.

From Bad Subjects, a special issue on Dead Heads of State/Dead Presidents: Symbolic Death, Social Death & Bone-Rotting Death. From Time, a series of articles on The Lessons of JFK. An interview with James Piereson, author of Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism.

A review of Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan. More on Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek. Those Weren't the Days: Nixon has been looking better lately compared to George W. Bush. But in fact he's as bad as we remember. An interview with James Reston, Jr., author of The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews (and a review).

Long on detail but short on revelations: A review of The Reagan Diaries (and more). The canonization of Ronald Reagan rests crucially on one thing Reagan himself did well: forgetting the facts. It seems timely to exhume a few. A look at why less brilliant presidents do better. The Heroic and the Crass: A review on Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 by Michael Beschloss.