Popular Culture
The Strange Case of Dr. Couney
A number of years ago I read a novel titled The Hatbox Baby, by Carrie Brown. It was the story of a man who brought a premature infant to the Century of Progress (aka as the World’s Fair of 1933*) here in Chicago, where premature babies were displayed in incubators as an exhibit alongside freak…
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History on Display: The Vinland Map
On October 11, 1965, just a few hours before Columbus Day,* Yale University announced that it owned a newly discovered map of the world, dating from approximately 1440 AD, that showed an island named Vinland, the Vinilandia insula of the Icelandic sagas, off the coast of North America. The timing was not accidental: if the…
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From the Archives: In which I consider soccer, or at least books about soccer
I first ran this in 2014. Looks like it’s time to run it again. The World Cup is over and some of you are suffering from soccer* withdrawal. Unlikely though it may seem to those of you who know me in real life,I have some reading suggestions that will let you feed both lingering soccer…
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