History on Display: The Great War As It Unfolds

WARNING: THIS BLOG POST INCLUDES A DANGEROUS TIME SUCK. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK Recently my friend and writing buddy Evelyn Herwitz introduced me to a fascinating You Tube channel. The Great War follows World War I in real time in weekly summaries that combine the style of a news reel with personal commentary by…

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Before Rosie the Riveter…

A generation before Rosie the Riveter, munitionettes “manned”* Britain’s factories and mines, replacing the men who volunteered for General Kitchener’s New Army in 1914 and 1915. Women were initially greeted in the work force with hostility. Male trade unionists argued that the employment of women, who earned roughly half the salary of the men they…

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Whose Remembrance?

A few statistics from the Imperial War Museum in London make it clear that the First World War was a global war in more than one sense: Roughly 1.5 million soldiers from British India served in the war; 80,000 lost their lives. Many of them fought in the trenches on the Western Front–if you don’t…

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