Stranger in the Shogun’s City

One of the major challenges historians face when writing about the lives of non-elite women of the past is the absence of sources. Sources written by men that describe their lives are rare. Those written by the women themselves are rarer yet. Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, by historian…

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Telling Women’s History: Three Questions and An Answer with Theresa Kaminski

Theresa Kaminski and I are co-administrators (and occasionally, co-conspirators) for a Facebook reading called Non-Fiction Fans, where readers and writers of narrative nonfiction meet up to talk about great non-fiction and how it gets written. She is also a wonderful writer of women’s history and a generous member of the on-line literary and historical community.…

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On War, Part II: Occupied Japan and the End of Empire

For those of you who missed the last blog post: A couple of weeks ago I spent the day attending the fifth annual “On War” military history symposium at the Pritzker Military Library. This was the third time I’ve attended and the third time I’ve come away with a notebook full of ideas, factoids, and…

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