1890s New York City was a teeming mass of immigrants, a bustling manufacturing, financial, and entertainment center of the world. It was also home to hundreds of bars and gambling dens, as well as 40,000 prostitutes — and a corrupt police force that accepted bribes in exchange for keeping reformers off citizens’ backs. In 1895…
Tag: history
Review: Team of Rivals
(I read this book as part of The Mount TBR Challenge. Here’s to a shorter list!) I wrote a little about Team of Rivals last week, but now that I’ve actually finished and had time to digest the book, I wanted a chance to get some more thoughts out of my head. Goodwin’s book is…
Review: The Little Women Letters
Sisters Emma, Lulu, and Sophie Atwater are anything but peas in a pod, and are never sure whether they love or irritate each other more. Lulu in particular feels overshadowed — she’s less successful than her siblings, and has spent much of her adult life working dead-end jobs with no romantic prospects in sight. When…
Review: Little House Books
My favorite Christmas gift from 2012 was this special two-volume collection of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Books series. I read them dozens of times as a kid — especially Little House on the Prairie, which I read so much that the cover fell off. And when I opened this present from my mom at…
Boudoir Photography: or, Yea, That’s Been Done
I recently stumbled across an article entitled “Boudoir photography: The divisive new wedding trend” in which the author discusses the “new” and scandalous practice of brides presenting sexy photos of themselves to their soon-to-be-husbands. May I be the first to say, sigh. Not because I’m incensed at the trend; rather because the fact that this…