1814: The Year in Review

I wish I could tell you that 1814 was a year of peace compared to 1914–but it wouldn’t be true. In fact, the two years look an awful lot alike–emphasis on the awful. The allied powers of Europe fighting an aggressive empire. A generation of young men damaged by war. Belgian fields trampled into mud…

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The Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons

If you spend much time hanging out in the eighteenth century, you are forced to consider the question of Freemasonry. * Everywhere you turn, you find a major historical figure up to his Whig in Masonic craft. Today Masonic lodges don’t look that different from the various fraternal orders that appeared in America’s Gilded Age…

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How to Create the Perfect Wife.

The myth of one man’s effort to create a perfect woman is a recurring theme in Western literature, from Ovid’s telling of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea in classical Rome to Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady in twentieth-century America.* In each version of the story, the creator falls in love with his creation,…

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