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It used to be said that every American could remember where he or she was when they heard the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Today, it’s official that no one under 50 can, or ever will, remember that moment. But I bet a great many people who are too young to have experienced the cataclysm of JFK’s murder can remember where they were the first time they saw the Zapruder film. Because for anyone too young to remember the assassination, that 26-second, 486-frame little home movie — the film that has been viewed more than any other...

For all the unlikely casting of U.S. presidents in "Lee Daniels' The Butler" (Robin Williams as Ike? James Marsden as JFK? Uh... okay...), the movie's highly subjective recreation of history actually seems to work. Maybe the actors aren't up to the task of playing such formidable real-life titans, but then, as seen by the long-serving White House manservant of the movie's title, these presidents are all just men, overwhelmed by the burdens of politics, world events, and history's eventual judgment. He sees them all at their most vulnerable and proves the old adage that no man is a hero to his valet.

Still, as subjective as the movie is about the many presidents that Forest Whitaker's character serves and the crises they address while he pours their coffee, it holds pretty close to the historical record. In fact, the movie takes its greatest liberties not with the presidents...

When the president meets with House Republicans behind closed doors Wednesday, 16 months will have passed since he took unscripted questions from the Gop on live TV. Daniel Stone on why the movement to make "Question Time" a regular event has quietly died.

It started by complete accident. Early in 2010, as the debate over health care raged on, President Obama met with the Republican congressional conference at a retreat in Baltimore. TV cameras were rolling in the back of the room, and Obama did something no American president in memory had. He took unscripted questions from his opposition on live TV. Republicans accused Obama of over-the-top spending and not returning their phone calls. Obama confronted the conference about being obstructionist.

Related story on The Daily Beast: Should We Hit Gaddafi Next?

It was, both sides later admitted, a fluke. The White House insisted cameras be present, but no one expected such a frank debate-including Obama himself,...

George W. Bush said after bin Laden's killing that he wanted to stay out of the public eye. But Peter H. Stone of the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News says 43's becoming a high-profile figure on the buck-raking circuit.

When George W. Bush declined President Obama's invitation to a ceremony at New York's ground zero after Osama bin Laden was killed, the former president cited his desire to keep a low public profile.

Related story on The Daily Beast: Democrats' Negotiator in Chief

But Bush has been raising his profile in a different, and lucrative, way: He has raked in millions of dollars since leaving office by making scores of speeches that typically earn him six figures a pop.

In the week after Obama's May 5 ground zero event, the 43rd president made time for three separate speeches to hedge-fund executives, a Swiss bank sanctioned for keeping secret bank accounts,...

In preparation for the world debut of The Kennedys on ReelzChannel April 3, EW talked exclusively to Joel Surnow (24), the executive producer of the miniseries that was dropped by The History Channel in January. Before production on the 8-parter even began, a movement spearheaded by a Hollywood documentarian began to stop the miniseries.

When you first began developing the miniseries, did you worry your political bent could affect the project? “I knew that the fact this was going to be about the Kennedys and that there was going to be a known conservative involved in it might be a problem down the line for someone.

With apologies to John Muir.In June, nine presidential historians were invited to dinner at the White House to discuss past presidential deeds, misdeeds, and legacies with the current occupant of the office, Barack Obama. Among the group, which included Doris Kearns Goodwin, H. W. Brands, Robert Dallek, and Michael Beschloss, was Vanity Fair contributing editor Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University whose new book on Theodore Roosevelt, The Wilderness Warrior, broke onto the New York Times Best-Seller List last week at No. 7. Each historian was asked to offer remarks about a particular president in his area of expertise. Brinkley, naturally, discussed the incomparable environmental legacy of the outsize T.R., who used sweeping presidential decrees, Congressional cajoling, and sheer executive muscle to set aside 234 million acres of American wilderness for preservation—a subject the author had explored in the May issue of Vanity Fair. In that article,...

London -- Broadcasters around the world ripped up their schedules Tuesday to carry live coverage of President Barack Obama's inauguration, as U.S. political historians, pundits and even celebrities were called on to provide commentary on the historic proceedings.

Utilizing pooled footage, broadcasters showed simultaneous coverage of a sea of Obama hats stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument as excitement over the inauguration of the 44th president of the U.S. began to build from midmorning Washington time.

In the U.K., the BBC simulcast live coverage across BBC1, BBC News and BBC World News as well as its radio and online outlets. In addition to having a five-strong team of reporters in Washington, the British pubcaster called on veteran broadcaster Bob Woodward, historian Robert Dallek and Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree -- who taught both Barack and Michelle Obama -- for commentary.

Similar coverage was aired across Europe,...

The History Channel has assembled a panel of historians to "examine the credibility" of suggestions made in a recent docu that Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. An episode of The Men Who Killed Kennedy series that ran on the History Channel last year examined the theory that Johnson had a role in the assassination plot. The channel said Monday that Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, University of Wisconsin professor Stanley Kutler and University of Pennsylvania professor Thomas Sugrue will study the claims and appear in a History Channel special this year to discuss their conclusions.