Chris Dickon: 5 books

Since English settlers first touched the shore of the new country in 1607, the Chesapeake Bay has been a multifaceted engine of American history and commerce. The body of inland tidal water between the largest bay cities, Norfolk and Baltimore, was large enough to be the setting of adventure and close...

In the 1880s, New York railroad magnate Alexander Cassatt looked at a map of America�s East Coast and decided that he could overcome a challenge of geography if he thought of a new railroad in a non-traditional way. North and South were now trading with each other postwar, and the two mostprominent...

By the time of the American Revolution, the College of William and Mary was already into its eighth decade as the academic source of what the new nation would become and how it would relate to the larger world. Its land had been surveyed by George Washington, and its first honorary degree had been given...

The role of Americans in the two world wars is well known, but with a glaring exception—one that reveals a little-known aspect of the common history of the United States and Canada. By the time of the American entrance into World War I in April 1917 and World War II in December 1941, tens of thousands...

"Fight "til she sinks, boys. Don't give up the ship! Burn her."James Lawrence's command, spoken as his final fighting words in the historic 1813 battle between the USS Chesapeake and the HMS Shannon, would endure as the motto of the U.S. Navy. He lost the battle, however, and a large portion of the Chesapeake...