Women
A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time: An Interview with Paula Tarnapol Whitacre
It was inevitable that Paula Whitacre and I would meet, virtually if not in real life.* We’ve spent the last few years wading in the same pool: historical non-fiction about women anchored in Alexandria, Virginia during the American Civil War. A small place, a narrow time frame, a world in transition, a million stories. Paula’s…
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The Hello Girls of WWI
As I’ve mentioned before here in the Margins, now and then a bit of history begins to track me down. A name, event, or idea piques my interest and suddenly I stumble across it everywhere. Or at least in the footnotes to books on tangentially related subjects. Lately the “Hello Girls” of the first World…
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The Empress Maud (aka Matilda)
I was first introduced to the Empress Maud and her battles to regain the throne of England by mystery writer Ellis Peters.(1) The war between Maud and her cousin Stephen is the immediate background against which her Brother Cadfael mysteries are set. (One step behind that stand the Crusades–a deft way to place her stories…
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