Asta Nielsen, International Film Sensation

Here’s the deal about “women’s history”: once you’re sensitive to the subject you stumble across references to notable women all the time.* Take the case of Asta Nielsen: I first met her in this sentence: “Asta Nielsen, newly arrived in Berlin from Denmark, described her horror when a skeletal horse collapsed in the street.”** For…

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Lee Miller: A Woman’s War

One thing I’ve missed over the last year has been “browsing with serendipity” in the library stacks.* My mother brought the phrase home from one of her library science classes a million years ago and it perfectly describes the feeling of finding a book that you didn’t know existed—and consequently didn’t know you needed—snuggled up…

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