Timbuktu was long a symbol of all things distant and exotic; in recent years the ancient city was the site for an annual international musical event, the Festival in the Desert, and the focal point for an indigenous genre that

  If you haven’t seen Fever Marlene for a while—and, given the group’s relative silence over the last few years, that’s a strong possibility—then you might not recognize them anymore. It’s been five years since the

Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini is an expansive historical novel that follows one freedwoman’s journey from simple seamstress to the First Lady’s confidante. The book opens in 1860 with the

 American schools always taught that the U.S. Navy carried the day in early wars against Barbary pirates and the British, but in truth, Jonathan Dull tells us, the record is mixed. Despite redundant and occasionally unclear writing, Dull offers a thumbnail sketch

 The protagonist (Jordan Gelber) is a doughy, middle-aged man-child living with his parents and his action figures in this darkly perceptive suburban comedy from the director of Welcome to the Dollhouse. Todd Solondz is masterful

 The Civil War marked one of the sharpest turning points in America’s story, and none of its leading figures looms higher in memory than Abraham Lincoln

The bitter irony running through Guy Gugliotta's Freedom's Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War (Hill & Wang) is that the politician most responsible for constructing the country's physical seat of government in Washington...

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War and has been the occasion for many books on a conflict that continues to fascinate Americans. One of the war's great puzzles was why the Confederacy failed to seize Washington, D.C., defended in the early weeks by...

July 3 in Milwaukee draws legions of patriots to the bluffs and shorefront of Lake Michigan for the city’s yearly fireworks show. As people drive, stroll, bike and rollerblade their way through the East Side to the lakefront, they’re crossing land that was once occupied by one of Milwaukee’s three civil...

When it comes to the Gatling gun, perhaps Confederate soldiers put it best: "The Yankees have a gun you load on Monday and shoot all the rest of the week." And that statement stemmed from limited observation, as the gun, despite its deadly effectiveness, was little used in the Civil War. The , patented in November 1862 by Richard Jordan Gatling, was "the world's first machine gun that actually worked," Julia Keller writes in Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It (Viking). Though the man behind it has become obscure, "Gatling gun" is still heard as a metaphor for swift, unchecked activity; "gat," the slightly outdated slang for a handgun, derives from it . . .