Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
This week I finished One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson. I first discovered Bill Bryson with his Notes from a Big Country column he wrote when he returned home to the US after living in the UK for 20 years. I had only lived in the UK for two years, but I also found myself…
I’ve been watching the Trial of Richard III on youtube – there is no end to the geekiness. What, you might ask, is the Trial of Richard III? Let’s start at the very beginning… 1480’s. Wars of the Roses. Medieval England is in shambles as one family has been tearing itself apart for several decades….
I’ve been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism about, well, Roosevelt, Taft, and journalists (as the name would so cleverly imply). Doris Kearns Goodwin was actually my university’s commencement speaker the year I graduated, though I don’t really remember much about it except for…
I recently watched a few episodes of my Favorite TV Show Ever, Great British Railway Journeys; a trip from Brighton to Crystal Palace. I first heard the words Crystal Palace used together in a sentence when my voice teacher lived at the Crystal Palace train stop in south London. Yes, I spent a year singing…
I’ve been reading The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester, a history of the US told through the elements of wood, metal, water, fire, and air, which is an interesting lens through which to view history. The wood chapter, for example, was all about when wood was the primary material; the homes the early…