Archive for June 2021
In which I review (okay, squeal about) Wake by Rebecca Hall
Back in January, I pre-ordered Rebecca Hall’s Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts for reasons that will be clear to anyone who has followed this blog for a while. (Hint: Women warriors!) It came in the mail last week on its publication date.* I started reading it that afternoon. I was caught immediately…
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The Rutabaga Winter
I’m currently working on wartime food shortages in Berlin in the First World War. The short version? Things were rough. Then, in the winter of 1916, things got worse. You’d like a few more details? Okay then. Germany was not self-sufficient in terms of food even before the war. The country relied heavily on imported…
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Forty-Two Keys for Victory
Rationing, shortages, and the clever ways people coped with them are recurring themes in books about the American home front in World War II, fiction and non-fiction alike. (Even the new roles of women in the workplace were the result of a critical shortage of men.) Food and gas rationing, rubber and metal shortages and…
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