When America was first made known to Europe, the part assumed by France on the borders of that new world was peculiar, and is little recognized. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land, burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and avarice, and while England, with soberer steps and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France that those barbarous shores first learned to serve the ends of peaceful commercial industry.

The state of international relations in the sixteenth century is hardly conceivable at this day. The Puritans of England and the Huguenots of France regarded S…

Years rolled on. France, long tossed among the surges of civil commotion, plunged at last into a gulf of fratricidal war. Blazing hamlets, sacked cities, field…

Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, and freedom pierced with vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the prostrate Middle Age,…

On jazz: 'Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other coun…

The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient …

It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.