Talkies, or “You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet”

Recently I’ve been dipping into the early days of talking pictures. As usual, a very specific question led me down unexpected rabbit holes. For once, I wasn’t surprised by the depth of my ignorance. Everything I knew about the first “talkies” came from the film Singin’ in the Rain—a movie that I love but that…

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Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Dr. Catherine Musemeche

Catherine “Kate” Musemeche is a graduate of the University of Texas McGovern Medical School in Houston, Texas and the University of Texas School of Law. Musemeche’s first book, Small, was longlisted for the E.O. Wilson/Pen American Literary Science Award and was awarded the Texas Writer’s League Discovery Prize for Nonfiction in 2015. Her second book, Hurt, was…

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The Girls of Atomic City

When My Own True Love and I decided to stop at Oak Ridge, Tennessee on our way to Atlanta, I immediately pulled Denise Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold City of the Women Who Helped Win World War II out of the To-Be-Read pile where it had sat for far too long.* (Or…

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