From the Archives – Shin-kickers from History: Joan of Arc

Several months ago, I asked a group of family and friends to tell me what they knew about Joan of Arc, aka St. Joan, aka the Maid of Orleans–no stopping to look up the details. I needed to know how familiar the average smart, well-read, non-specialist is with her story.* The accuracy and detail of…

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From the Archives: Blood Sisters

I have started and abandoned three blog post topics this morning. Two of them were based on pieces of information that turned out to be not quite correct when I looked at them more closely. And the third was a little known moment within a well-known story: the moment was too small to support a…

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From the Archives: City of Fortune

I am deep in reviewing the index for The Dragon from Chicago, which has turned out to be a much harder and more fiddly task than I anticipated.* Nonetheless, I full intended to give you a new blog post today.  I really tried, but after an hour I was forced to admit that the idea…

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