Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1819, as the Missouri Crisis stirred national debate over slavery and westward expansion, a private conversation between John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun became something much larger. Calhoun defended slavery as a necessary institu ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1819, as the Missouri Crisis stirred national debate over slavery and westward expansion, a private conversation between John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun became something much larger. Calhoun defended slavery as a necessary institu ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, when 16-year-old Hector Boiardi arrived at Ellis Island from Italy in 1914, he couldn't have imagined that his face would one day appear on supermarket shelves across America. After becoming a celebrated chef, he turned his restaurant's mo ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, Rudyard Kipling became one of the most famous writers of his age, giving the world The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, “Gunga Din,” and “If.” In 1907, he became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. But behind that ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, America entered World War I late, but its arrival helped change the course of the conflict. By the fall of 1918, more than a million American soldiers were fighting through the Argonne Forest as Allied forces pushed Germany toward collapse ...  Show more