The Dunkirk Evacuation (02/15)
In The Afrika Reich, Guy Saville sets his story in a world in which the 'miracle of Dunkirk' is reimagined as the 'massacre of Dunkirk.' In this book, Britain failed in their mass evacuation of troops from the European mainland. Burton Cole, the protagonist, is a survivor and a former prisoner of the Germans.
The stage for the ...
The Hungarian Gold Train (02/15)
Although aligned with the Axis powers, Hungary avoided direct participation in World War II until 1941 and most Jews in the country were protected from deportation, although they were subject to anti-Jewish laws. This changed in 1944 when Hitler discovered that Hungary had been secretly engaged in peace negotiations with the USA and UK ...
Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project (01/15)
During World War II an isolated area in the American Southwest became the primary research and development site for the creation of the most destructive force in human history. As part of the Allied mission to vanquish the threat of the German nuclear development program, scientists and engineers built the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New ...
The Frozen-Water Trade (01/15)
In The Kept, Elspeth works in the ice trade, which began in the early 1800s. Your chilled water, iced tea and sodas (or pop, if you prefer) owe a debt of thanks to this frozen-water trade, which involved the harvesting, transport and sale of natural ice. The industry had broad ramifications affecting the preservation of food, beverages, ...
Lebanon's Civil War (01/15)
Lebanon is a tiny state (about two-thirds the size of Connecticut) bordering the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Its geographical location, nestled between Syria to the north and Israel to the south, combined with the complex and delicate balance between its various ethnic and religious populations (totaling about 5 million), ...
The Post World War II German Black Market (11/14)
To say that by the end of World War II Germany was in tatters is a massive understatement. Infrastructure services were at a standstill, craters gaped where centuries-old buildings had once stood, the economy was based upon currency – the Reichsmark – that was essentially worthless. Worse, the government was forced to ration ...
James Tiptree Jr. (11/14)
In The Blazing World, the protagonist Harriet Burden's notebooks often include references to female artists, writers and intellectuals who struggled for recognition in male-dominated circles. One of the writers she mentions is James Tiptree Jr., an award-winning science fiction author who turned out to be a woman named Alice Bradley ...
A Glimpse at a Few Former Astronauts (10/14)
Before we learn that the professor in Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation has been hired by a rich, failed astronaut to ghostwrite a book about the space program, she observes her baby daughter laughing at ...
The Mystery of Duffy's Cut (10/14)
Before 2004, hikers passing through the woods in Chester County, Pennsylvania in the vicinity of Malvern would have encountered a granite block enclosure with no identifying marker. Perhaps they would have puzzled a moment before walking on. Perhaps they would have heard an odd sound or even caught a glimpse of a specter dancing on the ...
Millerism (10/14)
Belle's aunt and uncle followed the preachings of William Miller, a New York farmer and the founder of Millerism. They believed Miller's prophecy that Jesus would return to earth in 1844.
Miller's idea was not profound — or original. The notion of the Second Coming is a core tenet of Christianity. Though the idea is central,...
McCarthyism (10/14)
In 'The Unknown Soldier,' one of the stories in Molly Antopol's The UnAmericans, a young actor, Alexi Liebman, has to serve jail time because he comes under suspicion that he is a member of the American Communist party. This fictional account is based on very real events that took place in the United States.
Throughout the 1940s and ...
New Zealand's Gold Rush (10/14)
The Luminaries is set in the New Zealand town of Hokitika during the nineteenth century gold rush. Hokitika is located on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island, which is one of three areas in the country where gold was found to be in sufficient quantity to mine.
Rumors of gold in a small part of New Zealand's North Island ...
Rose O'Neale Greenhow (09/14)
Though Rosetta is a fictional character in I Shall Be Near To You, some of the people she encounters as an enlisted soldier are not. When Rosetta guards Rose O'Neale Greenhow in the Old Capital Prison, we are given some insights into a fascinating, historical figure.
Born in Maryland in 1817, Greenhow was an ardent secessionist. ...
The Voyage of the Damned (09/14)
One of the subjects raised often throughout
The Lion Seeker is the difficulty Jews faced leaving Europe as WWII ramped up. The voyage of the
MS St. Louis, sometimes referred to as 'The Voyage of the Damned,' is referenced in passing.
After
Kristallnacht – 'The Night of Broken Glass' – on November 9-10, 1938, many Jews ...
Battle of the Aleutian Islands (09/14)
In The Wind Is Not A River, the protagonist, journalist John Easley, finds himself on the Aleutian island of Attu in April 1943, when the Battle of the Aleutian Islands is taking place.
We've all heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the precipitating event that led the United States to fight in World War II...
Operation Carpetbagger (08/14)
They flew by night, predominantly during the 'moon period,' when there was sufficient moonlight to navigate by. Their airplanes were painted black to avoid detection, and they flew at dangerously low altitudes, often as low as 2,000 ft. The first flights were with modified B-24D Liberators; later, C-47s, A-26s, and British Mosquitos were ...
Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company (07/14)
Many writers of 'The Lost Generation,' including Ernest Hemingway, spent a considerable amount of time in a Paris bookstore run by expat Sylvia Beach. Both Beach and her business offered considerable support to these artists, and in many ways were partly responsible for shaping the American literature of the generation.
Sylvia Beach ...
Pablo Escobar and His Excesses (06/14)
If one of the first things that comes to mind when someone says the word 'Colombia,' is 'drugs,' that fault lies squarely on the shoulders of notorious drug mobster, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. Born in 1949 to a school teacher and a farmer, Pablo Escobar grew up in the suburbs of Medellin (
pronunciation) and turned to a life of crime ...
The Role of Jewish Women in American Communism (06/14)
While communism might be a dirty word today, its principles held a lot of appeal for the working poor in the United States for much of the 1920s through the 50s. The idea of a 'workers' revolution' akin to the Russian October revolution of 1917 didn't seem too far-fetched. The stock market crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression ...
The Special Operations Executive (06/14)
Christine Granville worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), an organization set up to assist European resistance movements and according to Winston Churchill, 'to set Europe ablaze.' The SOE was formed from three different but overlapping units: a propaganda unit known as Department EH run by a Canadian newspaper magnate; ...
The Heatwave of 1976 (05/14)
The heatwave described in the novel is based on an actual one that took place in the summer of 1976 in Britain, which was preceded by a dry period that began the previous year. At the time this had been the
driest 16-month period in over 250 years. Though there was some rain during that summer, it was so little and sporadic that it didn't...
The Chernobyl Disaster (05/14)
In All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, the Chernobyl disaster acts as the primary backdrop against which the story unfolds. Darragh McKeon describes the accident and the horrific aftermath in moving detail.
The disaster took place more than twenty-five years ago, on April 26, 1986, Situated about 88 miles north of Kiev in Ukraine, which...
Douglass and O'Connell: An Unlikely Friendship (05/14)
One of the historical events that frames TransAtlantic is Frederick Douglass's visit to Ireland. Douglass was an escaped slave and later became a champion abolitionist. In late 1845, he visited Ireland as part of a two-year lecture tour through Ireland, Scotland and England. Douglass had escaped seven years earlier and had published his ...
Speakeasies in the Age of Prohibition (04/14)
Prohibition came into effect in January 1920, one year to the day after the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified. It was a victory for the
Anti-Saloon League, which had campaigned since 1893 to outlaw alcohol in order protect women and children from the effects of drunken husbands and to increase productivity among workers.
But it was ...
The Surprising Love Life of a Dictator (04/14)
Political power seems to be an eternally compelling aphrodisiac. Benito Mussolini was a legendary Lothario who is estimated to have experienced casual sexual relations during his years as a dictator with as many as 5,000 women. Italian archives contain the guest registers listing the arrival and departure times of these 'Fascist visitors,...
Sister Acts (04/14)
Photographs of famous historical women – from writers to activists to painters to doctors – cover every inch of wall space at 11 Hope Street, the setting for Menna van Praag's novel, The House at the End of Hope Street. Among them are two sets of famous sisters: Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell; and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and...
Polio in 1940s North Carolina (03/14)
In the fictional North Carolina mountain town at the heart of Gail Godwin's Flora, a 1945 polio scare takes the life of one child and paralyzes another while the community scrambles to contain the disease. These tragedies, which form part of the cultural fabric of Godwin's fictional world, echo real events that took place in rural North ...
Victorian Workhouses (03/14)
In the early nineteenth century in England, parish churches and towns provided relief for the poor, but as the cost of looking after them kept rising and the method became increasingly disorganized, the upper classes and growing middle class who carried the burden of this expense by paying increasingly higher property taxes, sought a ...
Toussaint l'Ouverture (02/14)
François-Dominique Toussaint l'Ouverture was born circa 1743 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (which would later become Haiti) to an educated slave named Gaou-Guinou, who was probably a member of the African Arrada tribe. According to biographer D. Augustus Straker (1908), 'So remarkable were [l'Ouverture's] traits of character...
The Second Chechen War and the Lead-Up to It (02/14)
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is set primarily during the Second Chechen War, which started August 1999.
The second war had its roots in the First Chechen War (aka the War in Chechnya). At the heart of this initial conflict – and indeed the one that followed - was the
relationship of Chechnya to Russia.
Chechnya was ...
La Belle Epoque (02/14)
The more than forty year period from the early 1870s to the beginning of World War I saw peace across much of Europe. Fueled by the continuing advancements of the Industrial Revolution, the era was marked by optimism and prosperity - for some. In France, this period is known as La Belle Époque, 'the beautiful age', a description ...
The Blitz (01/14)
A significant and arresting section in the second half of Life After Life occurs during the period of the German bombings of London during World War II known as 'The Blitz.' This period between September 1940 and May 1941 was a time of fear, destruction and collective British determination. The nickname comes from the German word '...
Sundown Towns (01/14)
Don't let the sun set on YOU.
This is typical wording on a sign at the edge of what was called a 'sundown town', which gained its name because these towns required people of color to leave their perimeters – not surprisingly – by sundown. These towns, found throughout the USA not just in the South, were explicitly all-white ...
The 2004 Tsunami and Its Effects on Sri Lanka (01/14)
Wave is not a linear account of the tsunami, and because the author's stark focus is internal, the disaster and events in the months and years that followed, are often hazy. Because of this, it's worth taking a look at the magnitude and nature of the tsunami the author survived.
A tsunami is a series of giant waves caused either by an ...
The Canadian Expeditionary Force and the Battle of Vimy Ridge (11/13)
In her introduction to The Cartographer of No Man's Land, P.S. Duffy states that the WWI Battle of Vimy Ridge is 'as iconic to Canadians as Bunker Hill is to Americans.'
The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was formed in 1914 to provide support to the British battling overseas. 619,363 Canadians enlisted, of whom 60,661 – ...
The Great Migration (10/13)
The Great Migration describes a large-scale movement of African-Americans out of the South between 1910 and 1970. Hattie, moving from Georgia to Philadelphia, would have no doubt agreed with Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson's
assessment of the Great Migration as 'six million black Southerners moving out of the terror of Jim Crow to...
Henrietta Leavitt, a Pioneer in Astronomy (10/13)
Neil Shubin describes
The Universe Within as a 'timeline' covering great events and processes of the history of the cosmos, the planet and life on earth. But his is also a timeline of scientists and scientific discoveries that enlarged our understanding of the world. One scientist who stood out for me was
Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921).
...
The Current Ice Age (09/13)
Today's climate discussions are often so focused on global warming that it can be easy to forget that dramatic changes in climate, including extensive periods of global cooling, have been a hallmark of earth's history for billions of years. In fact, we're in an ice age right now. Currently, earth is in what's called an interglacial period...
Rationing and Victory Gardens During World War II (07/13)
In the novel I'll Be Seeing You, Glory and Rita bond over their daily experiences trying to live a fulfilling life in the midst of wartime worry and hardship. The two women live far apart - one in Iowa, and the other in New England. In their letters to each other, they share tips for growing a decent Victory Garden as well as recipes that...
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (07/13)
As Ami McKay notes in the afterword of The Virgin Cure: 'In 1870, there were over thirty thousand children living on the streets of New York and many more who wandered in and out of cellars and tenements as their families struggled to scrape together enough income to put food on the table.'
The New York Infirmary for Indigent Women...
A Short History of the Zeppelin (07/13)
In Flight from Berlin, Richard Denham inherits his love for and fascination with zeppelins from his father. The highlight of his press coverage of the 1936 Olympic games is flying into Berlin on the Hindenburg with a film crew. At that time, passenger zeppelins were mostly a uniquely German phenomenon having been developed in the late ...
Thirteenth-century England (07/13)
Something Red is set in 13th century England, in the latter part of what is known as England's High Middle Ages (essentially the time period from the Norman conquest in 1066 to the end of the reign of the last Norman king in 1272).
Although English life was beginning to change with the gradual development of cities, the economy was ...
Pablo Neruda and Politics (06/13)
The country of Chile might be a vibrant democracy now - its shining 'Jewel of the Pacific,' Valparaíso, lined with upscale businesses and boutique hotels - but there have been turbulent upheavals in its recent political history, and the country's preeminent poet, Nobel Laureate, Pablo Neruda (born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto)...
The House of Borgia (06/13)
The Borgia name is synonymous with corruption, crime, and scandal. In Malice of Fortune, several Borgia family members play both prominent and subtle roles against the backdrop of the Renaissance papacy.
Pope Alexander VI
Born in Spain as Roderic Llançol i de Borja (Rodrigo Borgia), he studied law in Bologne before being ...
A Look at the Khmer Rouge (06/13)
Before the Khmer Rouge (pronounced ki-mer roouze, effectively translating as Red Cambodians) wreaked havoc all over Cambodia and killed approximately one quarter of the country's seven million people, they were mostly a fringe communist guerrilla group operating in the jungles in the north of the country. Early in the 70s, then-Prince
...
Cast of Characters (05/13)
Henry VIII
King of England 1509-1547
Painted by Hans Holbein in 1536
German painter Hans Holbein made his reputation in Basel, designing wood blocks for book printers, and painting portraits and commissions for churches. Despite his relative success, the disturbed conditions of the Reformation led him to doubt his ...
Rum-Running in Prohibition Era Florida (05/13)
Prohibition in the United States began on January 1920 when the 18th Amendment, ratified the previous year, took effect. It ended with the passing of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933, which repealed the 18th. Illegal liquor was, of course, produced and sold during this time. It was typically lousy stuff; poor quality drink made, ...
The Bombing of Berlin (05/13)
Berlin, Germany's capital city, was home to more than four million citizens at the start of WWII.
Between 1940 and 1945, the city was the target of 363 air raids, with an estimated 20,000 civilians killed during the period. The most significant and organized series of raids occurred from November 1943 to March 1944.
The ...
The Influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile on Thomas Day (05/13)
Wendy Moore illustrates the various cultural influences that led to Thomas Day's peculiar experiment. Among these are the Pygmalion myth (later popularized in George Bernard Shaw's play by that name, as well as the musical, My Fair Lady, based on Shaw's play) and, perhaps most influentially, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book, Emile, or On ...
