I’m currently researching an article for White House History Quarterly about the day Harry Truman went sightseeing with Pablo Picasso on the French Riviera in 1958. It was an improbable rendezvous. After all, Harry hated modern art, which he called “ham and eggs art” because he thought most of it looked like it belonged on a breakfast plate instead of a museum wall. He also hated communists—and Picasso was one of the most famous communists in the world at the time.

The back story behind the meeting is fascinating. I’ll save that for the article, but my research got me…

by Matthew Algeo

When he leaves office kicking and screaming at noon on January 20, President Trump will join one of the most exclusive clubs in the world: the ex-presidents of the United States of America. Membership has fluctuated over the past fifty years, from zero (1973–1974) to five (most recently 2017–2018 with Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama). But one thing has remained constant: the perks are good.

Exes are entitled to a generous government pension package: about $210,000 a year plus allowances for staff, travel, expenses, and office space — for life. It can easily add…

My best friend John P. was visiting his family back in Montana a few years ago when he happened upon his grandfather’s diary. The grandfather was a farmer during the Great Depression, so John blew the dust off the cover and cracked open the old book, eager to learn more about his long-dead ancestor’s thoughts on the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration, and the ominous storm clouds in Europe.

But all he found was a dry recitation of daily weather reports and crop prices.

After reading Steve Howe’s deeply uninteresting new autobiography All My Yesterdays, I now know exactly how…

On Friday, February 17, 1967, Senator Robert F. Kennedy visited Syosset High School on Long Island, where he addressed an assembly of some 2,200 students and teachers in the school gymnasium. The New York Times reported that he was greeted with “the kind of girlish squeals usually associated with the Beatles.” After brief opening remarks, the senator opened the floor to questions.

Following queries about The Death of a President, William Manchester’s book about his brother’s assassination (he said he hadn’t read it), and the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam (he said he opposed it), Kennedy called on…

Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones despised hunting, and he was unusually outspoken about it, especially for an old cowboy. “Man was made to rule over animals,” he liked to say, “not exterminate them.”

He didn’t always think that way. As a young man in the 1860s, he made his living hunting buffalo. But when he realized the animals were in danger of disappearing from the Plains altogether, he had a change of heart and began working to save them (hence his nickname). Jones rounded up as many buffalo as he could find, herded them to his farm in Kansas, and bred…

Yes pulled into Baltimore Saturday night for the eighth date on their U.S. summer tour, accompanied this year by Carl Palmer’s band (including, on vocals, Arthur Brown, the excessively eccentric Brit of “Fire” fame), Moody Blues bassist John Lodge, and the latest iteration of the ’80s prog supergroup Asia (now fronted by an engaging and talented singer-guitarist named Bumblefoot).

I’ve been a Yes fan since the Christmas of 1981, when I was fifteen and my older sister bought me a copy of the “Classic Yes” LP. It was not a propitious time to be indoctrinated into the cult of progressive…

In the first half of 1963, thousands of Americans of all ages and abilities attempted to walk 50 miles in 20 hours — and many of them succeeded. Of the eras many fads — the hula hoop, the twist, phone booth stuffing — long-distance walking was the most unlikely, the most demanding, and, in the end, the most poignant.

It all began when President John F. Kennedy came across an old executive order issued in 1908 by one of his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt. The order required all U.S. Marines to be fit enough to march 50 miles in less than…