Start with the obvious – all politicians pander to one degree or another. It is an occupational hazard of the political art that...

Lincoln’s Social and Economic Policy In one year of his presidency, 1862, Lincoln signed four nation changing acts. One was the Homestead...

Put a man on the moon in the decade of the 1960’s and return him safely to Earth – no problem. Create a Peace Corps and send idealistic...

Ol’ Silent Cal came to the Black Hills of South Dakota to vacation in the summer of 1927 and the magnanimous native people who considered...

Daniel Day-Lewis once again establishes himself as film’s finest living actor. Before Day-Lewis’ Lincoln, every film version of the life...

The (Almost) Case for Unilateral Action In September 1940, just in front of the election that would make Franklin Roosevelt the first and...

April 6, 1862 – 150 years ago today – Americans came to understand that their Civil War would be not be over easily or soon. Edward...

John Nance Garner is mostly forgotten now days. If he’s remembered for anything it was for his alleged pity comment that the “vice...

Thomas E. Dewey, the one-time mob busting New York City prosecutor and later governor of New York, made three different runs at the White...

At pivotal moments in American history it has often been the case that the right leader somehow emerged from the chaos of the moment and...

I used to think it old fashioned that my dad always wore a hat. He had a gray one, a brown one, I think, and I vaguely remember a dapper...

Secretary of State William Seward drafted Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 establishing the last Thursday of November as a national...

Mark this post down as “shameless self promotion.” On October 15th at 7 pm, I’ll be at the marvelous new Boise neighborhood library at...

The bicentennial of the birth of the 16th President of the United States has found Holzer lecturing, often several times a week, from...

Yours truly will have the pleasure of speaking twice in Boise in the next few weeks on two aspects of Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable...