Cities

American cities whose growth, decline, and reinvention have driven the country's economic, cultural, and political life.

The phoenix city of the New South, rebuilt from Sherman's ashes into a regional capital

The port city that gave America its national anthem and survived a century of industrial decline

Birthplace of the American Revolution and one of the republic's oldest cities

The wealthiest city in colonial America and the harbor where the Civil War began

The city that built itself from nothing, burned down, rebuilt, and became America's most American city

The city where Kennedy was killed and the Sun Belt came of age

The Motor City that built America's middle class and paid the price of its collapse

The city that became America's second metropolis by inventing itself from scratch

The city where France, Spain, Africa, and America collided to produce a culture unlike any other

America's largest city and the commercial, cultural, and immigrant capital of the nation

Oak Ridge, Tennessee

The Secret City That Built the Uranium for the Hiroshima Bomb

The city where American independence and the Constitution were forged

Capital of the Confederacy and center of Virginia's long reckoning with its past

California's gateway city, remade by gold, catastrophe, and perpetual reinvention

Gateway to Alaska, birthplace of Boeing, and capital of the Pacific Northwest

How a stretch of California orchards became the engine of the digital age

Gateway to the West and crossroads of American expansion

Washington, D.C.

The designed capital of the United States, seat of federal power since 1800