Angels of the Underground

Now and then I realize that a book slipped through the cracks, that I read it and never reviewed here on the Margins. My friend Theresa Kaminski’s  Angels of the Underground: The American Women Who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II is one of those books[1], something I realized only after…

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Pure Invention

Those of you who also read my newsletter may remember that for the last few months I have been exploring the question of Japanese pop culture and the United States. It has been fascinating and frustrating. I know a lot more than I did when I began my quest in early February, but I still…

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1925: A Year in Review

In historical hindsight, the big event in 1925 was Adolf Hitler’s publication of Mein Kampf and re-organization of the National Socialist party[1] to emphasize the the extreme nationalism that is a common element of fascist political philosophy rather than its original socialist leanings. In fact, in 1925, the Nazis were not yet a significant political…

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