Every day we send billions of emails, countless text message, and use the internet to access news and information. It’s difficult to imagine a world in which instant communication does not exist. But it wasn’t really that long ago when getting anything but the most local of news required waiting weeks or months for a…
Tag: history
Review: Dirty Old London
Wherever humans congregate, so too does their refuse. Prior to the 1800s this wasn’t a huge problem — there simply weren’t enough people in a single place to cause problems. Things were different by the time the Victorian era (1837-1901) rolled around. London’s population exploded, and its ancient sewers could no longer process the tons…
Review: The Plantation Mistress
Much has been written about the Civil War era, slavery, and the lives of 19th century plantation owners. But researchers have done history a disservice by ignoring — or even actively propagating — the myth of the “Southern belle.” Catherine Clinton’s The Plantation Mistress is an in-depth look at the lives of the women of…
Review: Long Walk to Freedom
Anytime we’re asked to list them, Nelson Mandela is inevitably numbered as one of history’s greatest political leaders. But like many of my contemporaries who were still children when apartheid fell, most of what I know about Mandela comes from films like 2009’s Invictus, or 2013’s Mandela. I love a good primary source, so this…
The Worst Time to Fail at Editing
A couple months into my tenure as a government employee, it occurred to me that I’d never read America’s Constitution. I know the preamble (Schoolhouse Rock version, anyone?), but it feels like of un-American to not read the whole document at least once. So I picked up The Constitution of the United States of America:…