The real Sam Adams

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer For the latest issue of TIME magazine, out Oct. 28, TIME’s Editor at Large, Karl Vick, spent time with Stacy Schiff, author of a new biography, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams . In an interview in Manhattan’s Bryant Park, outside of the New York Public Library, Schiff explained how Adams was never known as Sam, always Samuel, and that despite being on beer bottle labels, he was never a brewer. Part of the reason he didn’t get the big biography treatment until now is because he didn’t save his papers, caring little about legacy. He did perhaps the most to help America break free from Britain, but he did it all in secret, hiding what he was doing, like cutting up incriminating letters. “If you read his contemporaries, everybody else says he was the most active, the earliest, the most persevering man of the Revolution—the Father of the Revolution,” Schiff says. “And he’s … gone. So what did the founders know that we don’t? That’s just pretty much the question I was trying to answer.” Click here to read the full interview.

HISTORY ON TIME.COM Till Arrives at a Moment When Emmett Till's Story Seems to Be Everywhere. There's a Reason Why By Janell Ross It's not that suddenly everyone wants to work on projects about the 1955 lynching that galvanized the civil rights movement Read More » The Ghost of Dred Scott Still Haunts Us By Neal Katyal The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Fitisemanu v. United States, that will put to the test whether the 14th Amendment's promise still holds Read More » Column: The U.S. Is Heading Toward a Second Civil War. Here's How We Avoid It By Peter T. Coleman As the U.S. becomes more ideologically divided than ever, how do we avoid the vortex of political passion and blame? Read More » How JFK’s Death Hurt Bobby Kennedy’s War Against the Mafia By Andrew Meier How the John F. Kennedy assassination left Robert Morgenthau alone to lead Bobby Kennedy's war on the mob Read More » What Paul Newman Really Thought of Fame By Paul Newman In an excerpt from the actor's posthumous memoir, 'The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,' he reflects on his complicated relationship with his own success Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1967: Anti-Vietnam War protesters “The Pentagon is the most formidable redoubt in official Washington. Squat and solid as a feudal fortress, it hunkers in a remote reclaimed Virginia swamp that used to be called Hell's Bottom, across the Potomac River from the spires, colonnades and domes of the federal city…Against that physically and functionally immovable object last week surged a self-proclaimed irresistible force of 35,000 ranting, chanting protesters who are immutably opposed to the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. By the time the demonstration had ended, more than 200 irresistibles had been arrested, 13 more had been injured, and the Pentagon had remained immobile.” (Oct. 27, 1967) Read More » This week in 1971: Jesus Christ Superstar the musical “To begin with, as a sign of the electronic times. Superstar is the only Broadway musical ever to have grown from an LP record album that sold in the millions before the opening. First its theme-song single, then the concert album, and finally two concert production groups swept campuses, parishes and high schools in the U.S., appealing to young and old alike… Superstar's popularity is a symptom and partial result of the current wave of spiritual fervor among the young known as the Jesus Revolution (TIME cover, June 21). Whether it is a sign of Spenglerian decadence or religious renaissance, there is an obvious yearning to consider Christ not merely as a fellow rebel against worldliness and war, but as history's most persistent and accessible symbol of purity and brotherly love.” (Oct. 25, 1971) Read More » This week in 1986: David Byrne "He has been, for ten years now, a cool hand at bringing up all manner of crawly things from just below the surface. Byrne and the Heads made music that examined some of the oddest, spookiest manifestations of modern emotional life, sang songs that turned grim tidings into deadpan jokes and disaffection into disarming social parables...’People talk about how strange I am,’ says the man who dances onstage like a Bunraku puppet leading an aerobics class and ended his last series of Talking Heads concerts wearing a huge white suit cut like a tailored tennis court. ‘Of course, being inside myself, not having the perspective, I don't think I'm odd at all. I can see that what I'm doing is not exactly what everyone else is doing, but I don't think of it as strange.’” (Oct. 27, 1986) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB World politics: Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor explains the ascension of Rishi Sunak, the first U.K. Prime Minister of Indian origin, in the context of British colonial history. Books: For Smithsonianmag.com, Devoney Looser spotlights Jane and Anna Maria Porter, two British pioneers of historical fiction. Trailblazers: The New York Times’ Soumya Karlamangla details everything you need to know about Hollywood actress Anna May Wong, who is set to be the first Asian American to appear on U.S. currency. War: For the New Republic, Joanna Scutts reviews a new book on the U.S. government’s efforts to suppress voices critical of World War I in the early 20th century. Hit it: Historian Steve Waksman talks to Karen Brown of New England Public Media about the origins of live music in America.

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