Twentieth Century
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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1958–A Year in Review
I turn 60 this week. Which doesn’t seem possible. I finished my PhD fifteen years ago. I got married nine years ago. I’m just now reaching my stride in a career I love. By any reasonable accounting of a life that would make me about forty. And yet the year is clearly printed on my…
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