Joshua Chamberlain: From Stuttering Child to Civil War Hero to Polyglot Governor of Maine
Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he vo...
16 Nov 202327min
White House Wild Child: How Alice Roosevelt Charmed Early 1900s America
During Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency—from 1901 to 1909, when Mark Twain called him the most popular man in America—his daughter Alice Roosevelt mesmerized the world with her antics and beauty. Alice...
14 Nov 202339min
The First Attempted Nazi Takeover of Germany: The Beer Hall Putsch of 1923
In 1923, the Weimar Republic faced a series of crises, including foreign occupation of its industrial heartland, rampant inflation, radical violence, and finally Hitler’s infamous “beer hall putsch.” ...
9 Nov 202338min
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and the Making of Modern European Warfare
Among the conflicts that convulsed Europe during the nineteenth century, none was more startling and consequential than the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Deliberately engineered by Prussian chance...
7 Nov 202339min
How Ancient Religions Affect What We Do and Don’t Eat in 2023
Religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (they contain souls), Kosher and Halal rules forbade the shrimp cocktail (shellfish are scav...
2 Nov 202338min
Life in Rome at the Very Height of Its Power
The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable ...
31 Okt 202337min
How Russians Survive the 900-Day-Long Siege of Leningrad
The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million dead. The capture of the city came tanta...
26 Okt 202347min
The Origins of the KKK and its First Death in the 1870s
The Ku Klux Klan was arguably America’s first organized terrorist movement. It was a paramilitary unit that arose in the South during the early years of Reconstruction. At its peak in the early 1870s,...
24 Okt 202339min
