Stopping for a Moment to Count My Blessings

It’s Thanksgiving here in the United States, and I’m trying hard to count my blessings. Several years ago in my Thanksgiving post I wrote: “As is true of all the best traditions, it is always the same and always different.” My first reaction when I read that was “Not this year. This year it is…

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Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I

I must admit, Alexander Watson’s Ring of Steel has been sitting on my To-Be-Read shelves since 2014. I received it from a publisher who hoped I would review it. I was in over my head on a writing project that had nothing do with World War I. Read a 500+ page book with no immediate…

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Shin-Kickers From History:Celebrate People’s History

The Celebrate People’s History project began in 1998. In the dead of the night, activist Josh MacPhee, aided by a half-dozen co-conspirators, pasted images of Malcolm X on boarded-up storefronts in Chicago’s West Side. Ten minutes after they started, they had attracted a small crowd of neighborhood residents. Some of them helped put up posters.…

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