In 1898, at the start of the Spanish-American War, three regiments of volunteer American soldiers were formed to go to war. The most celebrated of them, the 1st United States Volunteer Calvary, also known as "The Rough Riders," was led by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. A motley crew of cowboys and Ivy League scholars, the Rough Riders were hastily trained and thrown into battle in less-than-ideal circumstances. This is Roosevelt's eyewitness...

Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...