The Smithsonian has been farsighted in acquiring artifacts from America's modern myth machine: Hollywood. View some prime specimens, from the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz to the costumes for the robotic sidekicks in Star Wars.

Examine four key artifacts that tell the story of America on the move: the Conestoga wagon; the John Bull steam locomotive; the Ford Model T; and Charles Lindbergh's airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Each represents a technology that profoundly altered the nation.

Explores America's hidden history in the first half of the nineteenth century, one of the most tumultuous but overlooked periods in the nation's early history. In the dramatic period from 1800 through 1850, the United States emerged from its inauspicious beginning as a newborn nation, to a near-empire that spanned the continent. It was a time in which the "dream of our founders" spread in ways that few men of that Revolutionary Generation could possibly...

Daniel Ellsberg was an unlikely rebel. As a brilliant tactician, Harvard graduate, and committed Cold Warrior, he played a crucial role in mapping out the American strategy in Vietnam, even living in Vietnam to see firsthand how the war was going. The more Ellsberg learned about American involvement in Southeast Asia, the more violently disillusioned he became, because he was charged with trying to win what he came to see as an unwinnable war. ...

NOW WITH A NEW PREFACE
In this riveting account of the explosive relationship between Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover, renowned journalist and author Burton Hersh sets their highly publicized clashes in the context of Joe Kennedy’s ongoing manipulation of Congress and his children’s careers, and his lifelong connections to organized crime. Theirs was a unique triumvirate, marked by conflict and betrayal, and culminating...

Jack Kevorkian helped hundreds end their pain and suffering. Legally tried, having escaped conviction time after time, a final trial proved his undoing. Explore Dr. Kevorkian’s work on behalf of an individual’s right to euthanasia, why he believed he was taking a stand for liberty, and why he was eventually convicted of second-degree homicide.

Richard Loving wanted to marry the woman of his dreams. But Richard was white, and Mildred, according to the commonwealth of Virginia, was "colored," which made it illegal for them to marry. Learn how the case of this modest, unassuming couple went all the way to the Supreme Court, and how the Court’s ruling eventually led to marriage equality for same-sex couples, as well.