A treasury of great reporting: "literature under pressure" from the sixteenth century to our own time

An editor defies the crown and lays the corner stone for freedom of the press in America [1735], The trial of John Peter Zenger

Bostonians send out invitations to a tea party [1773], A tea party at which "King" Hancock, Sam Adams, and their Mohawk braves pour

Isaiah Thomas reports the Battle of Lexington [1775], "The shot heard round the world."

Alexander Hamilton's Evening Post and Aaron Burr's Morning Chronicle disagree on the most famous duel in American history [1804]

The London Post exults after Napoleon's downfall at Waterloo, and a French reporter defends the Emperor [1815]

General Scott enters the halls of the Montezuma [1847]

From the heights before Sebastopol a London Times reporter sees six hundred British cavalrymen ride into the Valley of Death [1859]

Brigham Young admits to fifteen wives [1859]

God's angry man grants an interview [1859]

Abe Lincoln in Illinois bids a farewell that proves tragically prophetic [1861]

Two Civil War correspondents shock the north with their firsthand accounts of disaster at Bull Run [1861]

The New York Times exposes Boss Tweed [1871]

Stephen Crane pins the red badge of courage on Surgeon Gibbs [1898], A world correspondent immortalizes an incident on the shores of Guantanamo Bay

Winston Churchill makes his escape from the boers [1899]

Carry nation moves on sodom-Manhattan and tries out her system of "Hatchetation" in the big city [1901]

The world's first airplane flight is reported exclusively by the Norfolk Virginian-pilot [1903]

Jack London reports the San Fransico earthquake [1906]

The Daily Telegraph interviews Kaiser Wilhelm II, who lays bare Germany's plans for a Navy to challenge Britain [1908]

A New York Evening Post reporter exposes monstrous abuses in New Jersey's state prison [1917]

John Reed, American radical, witnesses the storming of the winter palace during the Russian Revolution on a day that shook the world [1917]

The world takes its readers into the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan [1923]

H. L. Mencken reports on the Scopes Trial finds a place on earth where "Darwin is the devil, Scopes is the harlot of Babylon, and Darrow is Beelzebub in person" [1925]

Jack Lait sees the FBI liquidate public enemy no. 1 [1934], Dillinger "gets his."

Five correspondents cover the Battle of Britain [1940]

Three newspaper accounts of "Adate which will live in infamy" [1941], Pearl Harbor

Two eyewitness accounts of D-Day [1944]

Larry Newman sees "Blood and guts" at the Battle of the Bulge [1944]

The Working Press reports the death of F. D. R. [1945]

Two foreign correspondents describe the Nazi death factories [1945]

William L. Laurence of the New York Times sees atom bomb III dropped over Nagasaki [1945]

A reporter for the United Press sees the light of India put out [1948]

Lowell Thomas broadcasts the birth of a nation [1948]

Three reporters find malice toward some in the deep south [1941-1948].