Here’s what I remember about that day. There was snow on the ground when I walked to catch the bus to school that morning. All I kept thinking about, however, was the Algebra exam that afternoon, and that if I were lucky, I’d score a solid 65 percent. (Finding an image of JFK’s high school report card, I was shocked to discover that...

“Students,” Mr. Morales said in his unmistakable Chilean Spanish accent, “…take out a neat, clean, leaf of paper.” As a freshman high school student in New York, those words clearly meant that we were about to receive a snap Spanish quiz. But I know what you’re thinking. Why does he say “leaf” instead of “sheet” of paper? I asked that question once....

Fifty years ago no one had a clue how the week would end and how it would change us forever. Fifty years later, the mythology surrounding President John F. Kennedy has only grown. In a recent Gallup Poll (Nov. 15), Americans gave Kennedy their highest approval rating, 74 percent, over any of the last 11 presidents since Eisenhower. “That includes,” Gallup writes,...

“We are probably going to have to bomb them,” the President said after looking at the U-2 photographs. He then turned to his special assistant, Ken O’Donnell. “You still think the fuss about Cuba is unimportant?” “Absolutely,” O’Donnell snapped. “The voters won’t give a damn about Cuba.” During my August break, I spent time reading Richard ReevesProfile of Power, a...

On April 4, 1968, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. Scheduled to speak before a crowd in Indianapolis, Indiana, Kennedy had learned that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed, but, despite concerns about riots, Kennedy chose to address the crowd. After being informed that the...

The final moments of the men’s final at the All England Club last Sunday were simply spellbinding. Every time Andy Murray made one incredible shot, each time he made the impossible look possible, cheers exploded from Wimbledon to Dunblane, Scotland, Murray’s home town. Murray took three straight sets from Novak Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 player in a Grand Slam...

David Krieger is a friend and president of The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation His most recent book is “ZERO: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.” I recently visited Hiroshima to give a speech.  It is a city that I have visited many times in the past, and I am always amazed by its resilience. The city represents for me the...

Scandal, political unrest, uncertainty. Henry Brooks Adams, an American journalist, was the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams. His specialty was exposing political corruption in the late 19th century, and according to historian David McCullough, Henry believed the country was indeed, going to hell in a hand basket. “They went at each other on the floor...

It was forty-five years ago, last week that we lost Robert F. Kennedy – June 6, 1968. It’s difficult to describe to a younger generation the impact the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy had on so many of us. I was in my first year of college and what captured my interest in this man was something that...

I wasn’t born when Jackie Robinson first stepped onto a major league baseball field on this day sixty-six years ago, breaking the color barrier. Growing up, for the most part, in Southern California, I was already accustomed to integration. It was a given. From the first moment I saw Chavez Ravine in 1962, I discovered a world where sunshine and...