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In the 1920s and 30s, Benito Mussolini and his Fascists enjoyed broad popularity in America. Like certain political figures today, he was seen as a "strongman" who brought order to Italy and was a bulwark against the spread of international bolshevism. But one Italian anarchist in New York City was virulently anti-Fascist -- Carlo Tresca. He was a man, it was said, who "held tenaciously to his hatreds." When he died a violent death on a dark New York street, he had made so many enemies that it was anyone's guess who had killed him.

An excerpt from my book "Victory City."

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On the morning of October 12, 1964, a drab green bus pulled up near a launchpad at the Soviet spaceport called the Baikonur Cosmodrome in bleak and dreary Kazakhstan. The door opened and three small men in soft white aviator caps and what looked like wool leisure suits stepped down. They were dressed more for a cruise ship than a spaceship... An excerpt from "The Wrong Stuff."

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On Sunday, December 7, 1941, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began to reach New Yorkers in the middle of the afternoon. In the Brill Building, America's pop songwriters went to war that very day. They reacted to Pearl Harbor with instant fury and patriotic zeal, churning out hundreds of war songs at a ferocious clip. An excerpt from "Victory City."

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The Soviets put the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space 61 years ago, on June 16, 1963. They did it to beat the Americans at it. Having done that, it was another 20 years before the next female cosmonaut flew... An excerpt from my book, "The Wrong Stuff."
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-strausbaugh/the-wrong-stuff/9781541703346/

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An excerpt from my book The Wrong Stuff.

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-strausbaugh/the-wrong-stuff/9781541703346/

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In 1959, in the basement of a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Richard and Dorothea Tyler founded an avant-garde artists’ collective and funeral society called the Uranian Phalanstery and First New York Gnostic Lyceum Temple. The Tylers were influential underground figures in postwar New York City culture. They connected people and created webs of creativity and spirituality that blended music, visual arts, publishing, tattooing, Eastern religion, Gnosticism, Judaism, and communalism. And more. And all at once.

To learn more about the Tylers and other fascinating figures of Lower East Side culture, try "Offbeats," by Clayton Patterson and me:
https://www.amazon.com/Offbeats-Lower-East-Side-Portraits/dp/188727698X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21N2WB9O809HS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Nsz3wlbumXlmb3uYkNDVckgcJRWRTEW-k6SuiTIu_i1I7Yp2dF8H_-KuVLBJLfVAOMGA7nmLrs1CLwyUMkqLiLIJD7XgZYebmMdU-RF1FK-B0iZQYYHemTUnBYkFtXg4dwRqePMd-FTcsnVZGHbkVsP_U3r8y7WbtB39tY9fMr_sUC9yxULpFcfrFPIqVRi582EHHaNQePft0mxdT3a9zfvhzVYLMjvfCteQ4QiSrMA.McI_tCM5JaePJEVbAO1OPwqywsvmJ8gw4xQXrzxZlO8&dib_tag=se&keywords=Offbeats+Patterson&qid=1715717775&s=books&sprefix=offbeats+patterson%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1

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Throughout World War II, Wall Street banks and giant American corporations traded with the Nazis and Japanese and played both sides in the war. They included Chase National Bank, Standard Oil, DuPont, and General Motors, among others. The impulse to prosecute them as traitors for their financial dealings with the Nazis and Japanese was countered by a simple, inescapable reality: the U.S. needed their backing as well.

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Sixty-three years ago, on April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin fell out of the sky. He was the first human to go to outer space. He almost didn't make it back alive. In their "space race" against the well-heeled Americans, the Soviets rushed their scientists, cut corners, and were very careless with their cosmonauts' lives. Gagarin was a lucky survivor. NOTE: I do not own this image.