Revolutions
The Boston Massacre: A Family History
Those of you who’ve been hanging out here in the Margins for a while know that I love books that turn what we think about a historical subject upside down, or at the very least expand it. Historian Serena Zabin does both in The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Paul Revere’s iconic engraving of the…
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History on Display: Votes for Women, a Portrait of Persistance
One of my disappointments in 2019 was that I didn’t make it to Washington DC to see “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence” at the National Portrait Gallery, which ran from March 29, 2019 through January 5, 2020 . I made plans, over and over. Over and over, life undid those plans. Now I…
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Eugene V. Debs: Socialist for President, Over and Over Again
Labor organizer Eugene V. Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1855. He left home when he was fourteen to work for the railroad—not unusual for the time. In 1875, he helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman, a fraternal benefit society which gradually took on the role of a…
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