by Candice Lyons In 2001, many of Lizzie Scott Neblett’s diaries and letters were published in a volume entitled A Rebel Wife In Texas. The text provides a harrowing glimpse into the desperation, brutality, and minutiae of everyday life in antebellum Texas from the perspective of a landed, slaveholding, Southern wife. Letters written to […]
Queering Postwar Marriage in the U.S.
By Lauren Gutterman At first look, Barbara Kalish fit the stereotype of the 1950s wife and mother. In 1947, at age eighteen, Barbara met and married a sailor who had recently returned home from the war. The couple bought a house in suburban Norwalk, California and had two daughters. While her husband financially supported the […]
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS, by David France (2016)
By John Carranza In the 1980s, the United States experienced a new disease that seemed to target young, gay men living in New York City and San Francisco. From the beginning, those doctors and scientists willing to treat members of the gay community remained perplexed as to why these men, their ages ranging from their […]
Finding Hitler (in All the Wrong Places?)
By Christopher Babits Good historians keep an open mind when doing archival research. Our reading of the relevant literature, not to mention the preliminary research we conduct, provides a general understanding of our topic, but we have to prepare ourselves for surprises. This is the most exciting part of research — examining documents no one […]