There is more of Charlie Brown in most of us than there is Abraham Lincoln or Michael Jordan. We identify with his failures and suffer with him. But it isn’t just his failures. Charlie Brown is resilient. He never quits. Despite setbacks and moments of despair, he is at heart an optimist — and one of America’s greatest success stories.

As a Captain of Volunteers in the Black Hawk War, the 23-year old Abraham Lincoln managed in a desperate moment to keep some hard-bitten men—who had elected him—from committing murder. They had chosen him as captain because he was the best man among them, the one most worthy of their esteem. Lincoln earned it in no small part by outrunning, outboxing, and outwrestling them, but they knew, when they listened to the better angels of their natures, that there were much more important reasons to esteem him.

Beginning in a rented circus tent, a team of unconventional aeronautical engineers design generations of American military aircraft

The young Ehrich Weiss needed money, but he lived for fame. By the time he was 17, he had decided how to get it—he would become Houdini.

A boy from a village in India makes his way to America and finds a bit of heaven on earth

What is it that makes a Marine’s Marine?

About the standard by which Americans judge the success and failure of their experiment in self-government

“He looked as if he would know exactly what to do, if awakened suddenly in the night, ready for anything”

This story is the seventh in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. Let’s begin by daring to question the prevailing dogmas of our time, to open our minds to all times

This story is the sixth in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. They learned from this Hungarian immigrant that they are the fortunate of the earth and that their great good fortune lies in the country into which they were born

This story is the fifth in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. I never knew so much hog in a man

This story is the fourth in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. He always regarded the human mind as free to be determined by the truth about the greatest questions

This story is the third in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. For the rest of his life, oranges would always smell like freedom

This story is the second in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. It was spring, 1946, and Albert Camus was in New York City on the only visit he would ever make to America

This story is the first in a series of seven about an immigrant boy who became my good friend and holds a special place in the history of the Claremont Institute. “Why are we going to America?” . . . “We were born American, but in the wrong place”

President Kennedy told a special joint session of Congress that it was “time for a great new American Enterprise”

The Oregon Trail was the superhighway of the early American West

The Congress of the United States named him “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”

If there was ever a real-life John Wayne — or the character Wayne played so well — it was Ted Williams

John Quincy Adams and a pioneer reflect on the Northwest Territory and American freedom