Who We Were

Think the Press Is Partisan? It Was Much Worse for Our Founding Fathers

A Scheming and Salacious Newspaper Reporter Targeted Hamilton and Jefferson—and Nearly Ruined Them

It is a common complaint that the drive for traffic at news sites in the digital age has debased our political dialogue, turning a responsible press into a media scramble for salacious sound bites. But partisanship and scandal-mongering go way back in the American political tradition. And there was no internet to blame in 1793, the year an especially vicious and salacious newsman arrived on American shores and soon after set his sights on the founding fathers.

Despite efforts to unify the early United States around President George Washington, two …

By Christopher B. Daly |

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Hawaii’s Pacific Centuries

For America's Pacific Outpost, Asian Influence Is Nothing New

By Sumner La Croix |

Long before Hawaii was a U.S. state, it was a Pacific nation.

Though the U.S. has only recently embraced a shift from emphasizing its relationships across the Atlantic to those …

Garage Parties in Hawai‘i Aren’t Just Any Party

Plantation Day Roots Are the Origins for Present-Day Gatherings with Plenty of Beer, a Pig on a Spit, and Community

By Keala Francis |

Growing up in Hawaii in the 1970s, my family and our neighbors spent New Year’s Eve roasting a pig in our driveway. We set up the spit and used corrugated …

The Mob, the Mayor, and Pinball

Why 20th-Century Law Enforcement Wielded a “Sledgehammer of Decency” on the Game Machines

By Michael Schiess |

Soon after I founded the Pacific Pinball Museum, an ex-police officer contacted me, offering to sell a rare artifact that was once confiscated by the Oakland Police force.  …

The Man Who Explained the Soviets to America

How George F. Kennan's Passion for Russia Colored Our Cold War Strategy

By David Milne |

The enduring irony of George F. Kennan’s life was just how much the architect of America’s Cold War “containment” strategy—aimed at stopping Soviet expansionism—loved Russia.

Kennan arguably played a …

Russia Has Been Many Things to Americans, Except an Ordinary Country

Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em, My Feeling Was We Should Study Those Elusive Soviets

By Marshall Poe |

The United States and Russia have been at loggerheads for so long now that their rivalry might seem to be a permanent feature of the international firmament. But just as …


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