In my continual search for quantitative research on Godey’s Lady’s Book, I came across “Mr. Godey’s Ladies: Being a Mosaic of Fashions and Fancies” by Robert Kunciov, which after the disappointment of the “Sarah Josepha Hale” book, I was leery. I was pleasantly surprised however, by the wonderful reproductions and a few color plates of the original etchings, as well as the author’s selections of excerpts from the original text. He begins with a chronology of the types of fashions, detailing the trends, colors, and […]
Murder and Mayhem in the Silent Film Era
My dad is a dork. He loves old movies; my sister & I were raise on Jimmy Stewart and Audrey Hepburn, 50s musicals and Some Like it Hot. I could pay my student loans off with how many times I’ve heard “Clara Bow- what a babe!” I read Mann’s How to Be a Movie Star and knew he was well versed in writing about Hollywood- So a true crime story about a murder during the heyday of the silent film era seemed like a fun […]
Let’s Cut to the Chase, Coco Chanel was a Nazi
I think most people know who Coco Chanel is, even if all you know is she was a fashion designer. Jackie Kennedy was wearing Chanel when John was shot and Marilyn Monroe slept in nothing but Chanel No. 5… but did you know Coco Chanel was an antisemite who actually aided in the Nazi efforts during WWII? I remember, vaguely, a TV movie on the subject but it escaped my memory until stumbling upon this biography. Sleeping with the Enemy is a pretty straightforward biography- […]
This John Snow knows a thing or two
So I rented this ebook from our library last night, and read the whole thing in one sitting. I didn’t exactly realize that it was aimed at young adult readers — I just saw that it referenced the cholera outbreak on Broad Street in 1854, which I had just read a great book about called The Ghost Map, which focused on Dr. John Snow and his investigation of the Broad Street water pump (the author of The Great Trouble actually mentions at the end of her book […]
Stranded in Paradise (with gangrene.)
It’s 1945. The War is winding down, but there are still bases, well, everywhere, including in New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean. Because New Guinea is not the most exciting place to be, they host occasional morale-boosting airplane tours to “Shangri-la”–an untouched, pristine, and gorgeous valley in the middle of rugged, inhospitable mountains (on a rugged, inhospitable island), just recently discovered. In May, a plane carrying 24 soldiers and members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), crashed en route to Shangri-la. Only three survived. They have to […]
Met you on a midway at a fair last century.
I, somehow, didn’t know anything about the Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. I don’t know how that happened, because the World’s Fair was a turning point in American culture–and it sounds like it was awesome. The 1893 World’s Fair introduced us to Ferris Wheels, AC current, the Pledge of Allegiance, Shredded Wheat, Pabst Blue Ribbon, zippers, Juicy Fruit, the word “Midway,” Columbus Day, and that snake charmer song that is still a national earworm. It hosted Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and, […]
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