Aaron Burr

Just before the Civil War, thousands of mule-drawn boats carried coal, lumber and produce along the Delaware Canal in eastern Pennsylvania. Today, mules still pull vessels through the manmade waterway, but the numbers are far fewer, and instead of food...

For years now, the promise of a new Gore Vidal book has been something to get the blood running or boiling. No other American writer has maintained quite such a radical, iconoclastic vision of his nation's past, and nowhere has Vidal been more provocative...

When I planned my first trip to New York City — so long ago that one of the biggest-selling guidebooks was titled "New York on $5 a Day" — I read that this was the only city besides Washington where the president could visit and most residents...

RHINEBECK, N.Y. — There are few places in this country where you can sip beer in a Colonial inn while chatting about the new Frank Gehry building up the road. The Hudson Valley is just such a spot, a region that bridges centuries as well as it...

Gore Vidal and History are on breezy first-name terms, but there is a trickle of irritation underneath. As mentor, Vidal has reservations about his protege. In his fictional re-creations of our nation's political life--"Burr," "Lincoln," "1876,"...