Posts by Pamela
In Which Paper Sleuth Interviews Me About Writing, History, and Writing Heroines of Mercy Street
This post is an object lesson in being careful what you ask for. Long-time reader Bart Ingraldi, who blogs about history at Paper Sleuth using paper ephemera as a lens for writing about issues that are anything but ephemeral* recently suggested I interview myself here on the Margins. Instead I turned the suggestion around and…
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You Could Look It Up
I am a reference book junkie. I collect reference books the way some people collect Fiesta Ware, Oriental rugs, salt shakers, or black pumps.* I argue that they are useful to me in my career. And sometimes it’s true. (The construction dictionary that I bought more than 25 years ago is proving useful in my…
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From the Archives: Lincoln’s Greatest Case–Sort Of
Brian McGinty (The Oatman Massacre) uses his skills as both attorney and historian in Lincoln’s Greatest Case: The River, The Bridge and The Making of America. In May, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton hit a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge–the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi. Both steamboat and bridge caught fire. The Effie…
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