From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"The Cold War was more than the product of post-World War II tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, argues John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. Rather, it was the product of events extending all the way back to the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that Russia and the United States would become the world's foremost powers. In this lecture, delivered at the Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminar 'The Cold War,' Gaddis examines U.S.-Soviet relations from the nineteenth century through the end of World War II, tracing the myriad causes of the Cold War."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"Bureaucrats, University of Colorado professor of history Patricia Limerick argues, are often the most overlooked (at best) or reviled (at worst) of government officials, but they wield tremendous powers that shape Americans' daily lives. Nowhere is this more true than in the bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of the Interior. A wide-ranging agency charged with both protecting land and promoting its use, the Department of the Interior implements federal law over millions of acres of land and mediates the claims of environmental, mining, foresting, farming, and ranching interests, among others. Bureaucracies like the Department of the Interior may be boring, Limerick argues, but historians cannot ignore their impact on the development of the American West."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute website:

"On October 16, 1854, from the steps of the courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, an obscure former congressman named Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech arguing that slavery was incompatible with the Founders' vision of America as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Lewis Lehrman, co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and author of Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point, explores the origins and the consequences of this important speech."

Professor Eric Foner argues that the idea of sending African American slaves to colonize Africa (an idea which Abraham Lincoln at times embraced) was part of the larger idea of emancipation for American slaves, but it did not allow its supporters to consider how freed slaves might become part of American society. It was Lincoln's consideration of this very issue, Foner says, that distinguishes him from other advocates of emancipation.

Columbia University Professor Andrew Delbanco discusses the changing and competing images of Abraham Lincoln throughout American history. Lincoln, Delbanco argues, is a cipher of self-perception for Americans of every era, partly a consequence of his pragmatism and ideological flexibility.

Catherine Clinton, professor of U.S. history at Queens University Belfast, sifts through the myths and realities of Abraham Lincoln's early life. Lincoln's youth was beset by poverty and loss—his mother died when he was only 10, and his father suffered from bouts of melancholy. Clinton argues that these ordeals helped Lincoln to deal with later obstacles and tragedies.