The American Menu

1943-1945  The U.S. military presence in India expanded rapidly during World War II, growing from virtually zero in early 1942 to over 160,0...

Kunming, China Christmas 1943  The eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains was called “The Hump” by pilots who flew transport aircraft b...

Budapest,  1914  The departure of the steamship on September 12, 1914 was a memorable sight, as 126 American Red Cross nurses stood in...

 1919-1929  “The Jazz Age is over,” declared novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1931, nine years after he coined the phrase. The prosperous era...

Thanksgiving,  1943  Norman Rockwell painted this iconic scene in 1943. Depicting a family dinner on Thanksgiving, the painting “Freed...

Akron, Ohio 1885  T his menu from a veteran’s reunion in Akron, Ohio in 1885 features an unusual dinner based solely on the basic rati...

Neuilly-sur-Seine , 1915-1917  A hundred years ago this week, Serbian nationalists assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hung...

U.S.S. Helena,  1906  The chronology of holiday menus from the U.S.S. Wilmington begs the question as to what the sailors in the Asia...

U.S.S. Wilmington ,  1906-1918 Caught in a storm off the coast of Luzon on the night of December 20, 1915, the U.S.S. Wilmington rol...

Philadelphia  On Christmas Day in 1864, a special dinner was served to the 4,500 Union soldiers housed at Satterlee General Hospital, t...

Gettysburg,  1888  This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Often described as the turning point of the Civil ...

West Point, 1884-1887 When the Class of 1888 graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in June of that year, there were so few cadets t...

St. Petersburg, Archangel & Vladivostok 1912-1918 One of the most intriguing aspects of ephemera is that it reminds us of  long-...

Cincinnati, 1853 & 1884 When the Burnet House opened in Cincinnati in 1850, the London Illustrated News called it “the finest ho...

Richmond, Virginia 1883 O ne hundred and eighty-nine Union veterans from Newark, New Jersey boarded a train in October 1883 heading fo...

Occupied Japan,  1949-1955     This cover illustration, showing Santa Claus flying through a Japanese gate toward Mount Fuji, represe...

Hanford, Washington 1944 Hanford Engineer Works (1944) Soon after a woman sold me an old Christmas menu online, she wrote to let me k...

Lackawanna County, 1886-1890 It was startling to discover a dish called “Andersonville beans” on the menu from a Union Ex-Prisoners ...