USA

America has struggled to reform public healthcare for over 100 years and now has a byzantine, costly system controlled by powerful, money-hungry interest groups. Can President Obama deliver reform?

The English journalist Walter Bagehot was one of the few commentators to grapple with the constitutional issues behind the the American Civil War. Frank Prochaska discusses his ideas.

Richard Cavendish remembers the first performance of Porgy and Bess on September 30th, 1935.

Shortly before his death, Hyman Frankel, the last surviving member of the team whose work led to the development of the atom bomb, talked to Maureen Paton about why he decided not to join the Manhattan Project.

Mark Juddery looks at the historical backdrop to the much-loved 1950s Hollywood musical, Singin’ in the Rain in which Hollywood tells its own story of the arrival of sound to the big screen.

Dan Plesch describes how President Roosevelt’s introduction of a global day of solidarity in June 1942 successfully promoted the ideals of the United Nations and his Four Freedoms, boosting morale in the worldwide fight against fascism.

The American Civil War transformed the nature of conflict. Its opening salvos harked back to Waterloo; its end anticipated the industrial warfare of the 20th century, writes David White.

John A. Kirk recalls the dramatic events at Little Rock, Arkansas, when a stand-off over the granting of black students access to integrated education brought the civil rights agenda to international attention.

Opera has flourished in the United States. But how did this supposedly ‘elite’ art form become so deep-rooted in a nation devoted to popular culture and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? Daniel Snowman explains.

A distant monarch, political factionalism, vainglorious commanders and the distraction of European enemies helped George Washington seal victory in the American War of Independence, writes Kenneth Baker, who explores the conflict through caricature and print.