Posts by Pamela
Sir Richard Burton: Not the Actor, the Other One
Recently I had cause to pull a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) off my to-be-read shelf, where it has sat since 1990. I originally bought it because I was writing my dissertation on the way the definition of the Orient changed over time with increasing exposure to the non-Western world and Burton was…
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Shin-kickers From History: Margaret Chase Smith
A blog post about Senator Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995) could easily consist of nothing more than a collection of the trenchant remarks with which she skewered political opponents, reporters, and occasionally herself: Speaking against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s scare tactics: “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen…
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The Strange Case of Dr. Couney
A number of years ago I read a novel titled The Hatbox Baby, by Carrie Brown. It was the story of a man who brought a premature infant to the Century of Progress (aka as the World’s Fair of 1933*) here in Chicago, where premature babies were displayed in incubators as an exhibit alongside freak…
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