Empresses of Seventh Avenue

By Pamela | July 28, 2026 |

I will admit that I resisted reading Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City and the Birth of American Fashion by fashion journalist Nancy MacDonnell, despite the fact that several people I admire recommended it. I’m not sure why. Over the years I have happily gone down rabbit holes related to the…

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Word with a Past: Muckrakers

By Pamela | August 5, 2025 |

While I was writing about Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910), I started off thinking of her as a proto-muckraker, working a generation before people like Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946),* Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936), Ida Tarbell (1857-1944) and Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). But the closer I looked, the more I realized that the realism for which she was…

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