Like many people, I’ve been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack non-stop and learning more about the American Revolutionary War than I ever did in school. Lafayette is easily one of the coolest characters in the musical, but also in real life. I’d been meaning to get to one of Sarah Vowell’s books, so when she published Lafayette in the Somewhat United States in October, it was kismet. Vowell tells the story of the teenaged Marquis de Lafayette leaving his family in France to join the […]
I really love talking about the 1840s, everything was a mess – including medicine.
I want to thank my fellow ‘ballers for bringing this book to my attention. I work in museums, and I have two conferences this month in Philadelphia. This meant that if I timed some things correctly, and gave myself a day, I could actually go to a couple museums in Philly. Let it be said that after living less than three hours away from the city for over 6 years I finally managed to go sightseeing in Philadelphia this week. Go me! As part of […]
Lincoln was late to his own assassination.
There’s something about the way Sarah Vowell writes about history that brings it to life for me. Probably because there’s something about the way that Sarah Vowell writes about people, and history is made of people. It often doesn’t feel that way. (Ironically, there’s a section in here where she tells a story about a time where she ended up yelling at some guy in a supermarket about how the only time it would be interesting to live through history would be if you were […]
No one will ever know
I have, for whatever reason, a deep fascination with disasters and mysteries at sea. To the point that I’ve even watched several Really Bad™ ocean salvage movies (Ghost Ship [No relation] and Lost Voyage, I’m looking at you). And yes, I also saw Titanic. But that’s not my point. I do not spend a lot of time on the ocean, haven’t been on a boat in years (and haven’t been out of the breakwater on a boat or ship even longer ago than that), and […]
“It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.”
Disclaimer: I received this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I am not intimmately familiar with either Jeanette Winterson or The Winter’s Tale, but I was intrigued behind the idea of the Hogarth Shakespeare collection and was able to read this through NetGalley. Obviously, The Gap of Time modernizes Shakespeare’s work, changing the setting, some character names, and other superficial details, but retaining the driving themes of the original (the summary of which is included in the beginning of Winterson’s story, for […]
History is Closer Than We Think
I love reading historical books about strong women. When I do that, though, I often forget just how recent the life I’m learning about was lived. It’s hard to remember that, in the larger picture of these things, that women like Maude Clayborn didn’t really live that long ago. To see how much has changed, or not changed, since Maude was born in 1892 is something that I’ve been sitting with since I finished this book last week. It’s been interesting for me to process […]
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