The Long Eighteenth Century
The Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons
If you spend much time hanging out in the eighteenth century, you are forced to consider the question of Freemasonry. * Everywhere you turn, you find a major historical figure up to his Whig in Masonic craft. Today Masonic lodges don’t look that different from the various fraternal orders that appeared in America’s Gilded Age…
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Madeleine Caulier Goes to War
I’ve been fascinated for a long time by real-life stories of women who disguised themselves as men and went to war at times when women didn’t go to war. * About ten years ago, I began to collect examples, thinking I could write a book, or at least an article, about the subject. I quickly…
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How to Create the Perfect Wife.
The myth of one man’s effort to create a perfect woman is a recurring theme in Western literature, from Ovid’s telling of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea in classical Rome to Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady in twentieth-century America.* In each version of the story, the creator falls in love with his creation,…
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