Louise Mirrer

New York, when I was growing up, was a serious beer town, with commercial breweries like Rheingold, Ruppert, Schaefer and others dotting the cityscape. Jingles like "My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer," or "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one" (we used to...

"Slavery," historian James Oliver Horton wrote in 2006, "was not a sideshow in American history. It was the main event." So why has a work by the African-American artist Fred Wilson -- an installation piece that riffs on the topic by assembling authentic slave shackles, slave chains and Revolutionary-era icons...

Can you identify a photograph of Abraham Lincoln and give two reasons why he was important? If so, you are doing better than 91 percent of American fourth graders. According to the Nation's Report Card -- the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), issued...

Mother's Day is a time when many of us bring out our keepsakes -- cherished family photos, carefully preserved letters, perhaps a ring or a necklace that's been handed down over the years. These are the tokens we use to construct our personal histories.

But Mother's Day is also a...

People have marveled at the role played by Facebook and Twitter in the popular uprisings that have erupted across North Africa and the Middle East, from Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. Not a few observers have concluded that the rapid spread of revolution must be a phenomenon made possible...

Think for a moment about a young boy in 1870s New York, born into an impoverished immigrant family, who is swept up in the movement to take destitute children away from their urban homes on "orphan trains" and send them to work in the West, on the farms...

This is the story of a Spanish-speaking immigrant--one of nine children in his family, who grew up plowing fields in Spain and eventually made his way to this country from Cuba in search of a better living. Manuel Rionda was just 16 years old when his family sent him to...

The Grateful Dead began their long, strange trip in San Francisco, but the road has now taken them to an unexpected new East Coast destination: the New-York Historical Society, which just opened its new exhibition The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society.

On view...

It's recently been reported that an atheists' group has planned an advertising campaign for this Christmas, featuring a photograph of smiling people wearing Santa Claus hats. The caption: "No God? . . . No problem! Be good for goodness sake." Whatever you might think of this message, the ad does...

I was lucky enough to see the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs in the company of Harold Newman, Co-Chair of the New-York Historical Society Chairman's Council, before the play's early and unfortunate closing. As we left the theater, Harold and I were still caught...

Work hard and play by the rules: that's how you're supposed to achieve the American Dream. But with unemployment climbing toward the double digits, and income levels sinking for many of those who do have jobs, the "hard work" part of the formula seems to be questionable. And with the...

As the Independence Day celebration rolls out across our land -- from the redwood forests, to the Gulf Stream waters, to the bytes and pixels on Huffington Post -- one marvel of our early history that we might recall is that the American Revolution had its own bloggers.

They were...

Although it is one of America's most beautiful and historic waterways, the Hudson River has had some ups and downs over the past 400 years. Visitors to the New York Historical Society recently had occasion to recall how the fortunes of the river have changed since 1609 -- the year...

Broadway shows have their own fascinating stories -- and the opening of the current hit revival of West Side Story so close to Easter and Passover is a good reminder of the twists and turns of both theatrical and world history.

Although it's often forgotten now, the initial idea for...

No one has yet suggested that First Lady Michelle Obama might someday run for president, but neither would anyone dismiss her out of hand if she ever decided to campaign. She is a highly recognized public figure, known for having previously built a career of her own in a...

I've been thinking about an old letter we just put into a display case at the New-York Historical Society--a fragile bit of ink on paper, too delicate to see the light very often, but so full of meaning and emotion that we knew we had to get it out of...

It is a coincidence of history, though a powerful one, that our nation's first African American President is being inaugurated in 2009, the same year as we celebrate the bicentennial of the President who ended the enslavement of African Americans. The theme chosen for the inauguration of Barack Obama...

"We need action -- and action now."

These words have recently rung out in the broad Midwestern baritone of Barack Obama. But the thought behind them has been forcefully stated before, at a strikingly similar moment in our nation's history -- not coming from the President Elect's beloved Chicago...