John F. Kennedy (JFK)

With Vladimir Putin’s planned two-day war to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government now in its third month and Russian casualties piling into the tens of thousands, concerns abound that Putin might take increasingly drastic steps to alter the disastrous situation he faces on the battlefield. To prevent those grim prospects—or at least contain their effects—President Joe Biden should turn to the playbook his predecessors drafted.

John F. Kennedy never flinched, but he showed his mettle during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was his finest hour. Will this one be ours?

Lodge was governed by a WASP devotion to American interests and to democratic fair play that drove his role toward displacing the autocratic Diem.

Paul Matzko’s The Radio Right reveals how pioneering radio fundamentalists set in motion events that would transform both American political and religious life.

What may come as a surprise to those of us who have learned about the great victory of America winning the space race is that the race was won amid critical bombardment about the money being spent and the rationale behind space exploration.

Formal religious adherence is declining, but America’s longtime religious self-identity as a lodestar of democratic responsibility in the world continues unabashed.

In the midst of the Vietnam War and the struggle for civil rights and a decade scarred by assassinations, Apollo 11 reminded the world—and the American people—that America, while imperfect, is a great and good nation that can do great and good things.

Two Christian schools of thought might support covert operations and espionage: the just war tradition and a kind of “dirty hands” moralism. The dirty hands view says all those in political power must unavoidably resort to evil for the common good. The just war tradition has a different approach.

Defined as sparkling, giving off shafts of light, “coruscatingly brilliant” applies in every sense to the writing and the personal demeanor of Charles Krauthammer.