Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I

I must admit, Alexander Watson’s Ring of Steel has been sitting on my To-Be-Read shelves since 2014. I received it from a publisher who hoped I would review it. I was in over my head on a writing project that had nothing do with World War I. Read a 500+ page book with no immediate…

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Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Bonus Expeditionary Forces March on Washington

And while we’re talking about failures of compassion and the Great Depression, as I believe we were, consider the example of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces’ march on Washington—a story with uncomfortable modern-day echoes Bonus payments to World War I veterans were a hot political subject in the years after 1919. Congress passed bills approving bonuses…

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The Paradox of Herbert Hoover

If there is one thing I have learned over and over in the years that I’ve been writing History in the Margins it is that the history “everyone” knows is often wrong, or at best sadly incomplete. That’s as true for a professional historian, once she opens the gate and wanders out of her field,…

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