Nineteenth Century Europe
Tiny Bubbles…..
Right now I’m thinking about widows–not for personal reasons but in reference to The Book. I’ve been looking at the concept of the widow’s walk to power: think Corazon Aquino or Sirivamo Bandaraniake, who campaigned as the “weeping widow” to become the world’s first female prime minister in 1960 after the assassination of her husband.…
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Napoleon in Egypt, Part 2
Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign was a military disaster,* but the Army of the Orient wasn’t the only army that Napoleon brought with him to Egypt. A commission of some 160 savants–scientists, artists, engineers, and scholars–accompanied the invading army, bringing with them virtually every book on Egypt available, dozens of crates of scientific instruments and a printing…
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Shin-Kickers From History: Olaudah Equiano
Most accounts of the slave trade were written by slave traders, or by people dedicated to abolishing the slave trade. Few accounts were written by the slaves themselves. One important exception is The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, published in 1789. Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in what is now Nigeria. When he was…
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