Archive for April 2017
A Love Letter to Independent Bookstores
I’ve never seldom, met a bookstore (or book-selling venue) I didn’t like. I will happily browse through a big box store, a used bookstore, or the odd shelf of books in a flea market stall. In a strange town or foreign city, a bookstore visit will always make me happy, even if most of the…
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History on Display: Beautiful Clothes and Ugly Actions
When I put a History on Display post on my calendar for today, I assumed I was going to write about the exhibit on Mainboucher: a boy from a modest background on Chicago’s West Side who became the first American-born couturier to make an international reputation. One of my sisters was coming for a long…
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Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen
A while back I reviewed Sarah Gristwood’s Game of Queens, a wonderful account of the powerful women who ruled (directly or indirectly) in sixteenth century Europe. Giles Tremlett’s masterful biography of Isabella of Castile is in some ways the prequel to Gristwood’s account. Tremlett sums up the theme of his book in its sub-title: Europe’s…
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