Twentieth Century
The Women of the 6888th Move the Mail
In 1945, the U.S. Military was seriously behind in delivering the mail to Americans stationed in the European theater. There was a two-year backlog of letters and packages addressed to some seven million soldiers and aid workers. The thankless job of sorting through a warehouse full of undelivered mail was assigned to the 855 African-American…
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Telling Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Joanna Scutts
Joanna Scutts is a literary critic, cultural historian, and the author of The Extra Woman, the story of the 1930s lifestyle guru Marjorie Hillis and the lives of single women in mid-century America. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, New Yorker, and Slate, among many other venues. She was…
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Telling Women’s History: Three Questions and An Answer with Stacy Cordery
Stacy Cordery has a sentence on her website that has become a touchstone for me as I poke at a couple of possible topics for my next book: “When one interesting individual intersects with larger social forces then historical biography is born.” She practices what she preaches in her own work. Cordery is the author…
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