In the fall of 1920, Andrew Mellon was 65 years old and one of the richest men in the world. Instead of basking in the wealth he had amassed as a banker and financier, Mellon accepted a summons from President-elect Warren G. Harding and got on a train to Marion, Ohio. Unaccompanied by staff, Mellon trudged alone for a mile to Harding's house. A reporter saw him arrive. "Great Scott," he exclaimed. "Isn't that Andrew Mellon of Pittsburgh?"

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The President and the Oligarch: Roosevelt, Mellon, and the Triumph of Big Government

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Russell L. Riley writes at the beginning of "Inside the George W. Bush White House," an oral history of the Bush 43 years, that Peter Baker, a reporter for the New York Times, "speculated that the press corps gets only about 20 percent of the full story within any given White House 'in real time.'" That sounds about right to this former Bush White House staffer—I rated most stories about events in which I participated to be about 80% wrong.

That's no knock on Mr. Baker. It's nearly impossible to get the full story on what's happening inside any White House, particularly one as leak-averse as Mr. Bush's.

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Many people know that Jews blow the shofar, or ram's horn, on the holy days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Less well-known is the custom of blowing the shofar at the end of the daily morning prayer service for the month preceding the High Holy Days to provide a warning that the days of judgment are coming. These days New York Jews sense a different kind of warning.

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Fifty years ago today, Ronald Reagan gave one of the most important speeches of his life. While speaking to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, Reagan asked a powerful question: What would people of the future think if they opened a time capsule in 100 years? Would they believe Americans had met the challenges of the moment?

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It gets hot in Washington. Real hot. On Aug. 6, 1918, the temperature hit 106 degrees.

Washingtonians, including top government officials, have been coping with this heat since the earliest days of our Republic. In the days before air conditioning, there wasn't much to do about it other than get out of town. The congressional summer recess dates to 1791. As of 1970, it's a statutory requirement.

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