Odd Bits
Talking About Women’s History with Debby Applegate
Debby Applegate is a historian and obsessive reader whose first book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2007 and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, and was named one of…
Read More
What Do You Get When You Cross a Boy Scout with a Hippie?
In the 1890s, a grass-roots movement of young men came into existence in Germany. A cross between Boy Scouts and hippies,* they called themselves the Wandervögel, literally the “wandering birds.”** They rejected the strict class system, materialism, and urban life of Germany under the Kaiser and embraced a romanticized ideal of a simpler time when…
Read More
Jonathan Spence and My Introduction to Chinese History
I just learned that eminent Chinese historian (or more accurately, historian of China) Jonathan Spence died on December 25. My world feels a little smaller. I should make it clear that I never took a class with Dr. Spence and never met him personally. Nonetheless, he played a role in my introduction to Chinese history…
Read More