Trending Topics
Family Photos 
Almost every secondhand shop has a box of old photos for sale. Ladies and gentlemen in their Sunday best; laborers pausing at their work; children, stiff and unnatural in a studio portrait, or candid and full of life on...
Halloween History 
For many years, the Malibu Feed Bin heralded the arrival of Halloween with a display of pumpkins for sale. This year, the corner of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway hosts only a utilitarian assortment of trailers used...
Spanish Style: Hidden History in Plain Sight 
It’s everywhere: historic hilltop mansions from the 1920s and 30s with red-tile roofs and wrought iron fixtures and entire housing tracts from the eighties and nineties that echo those elements in mass production. Real Estate offers are replete with...
Migrating Insects 
Fly, white butterflies, out to sea, Frail pale wings for the winds to try, Small white wings that we scarce can see Fly. Some fly light as a laugh of glee, Some fly soft as a low long sigh:...
Books & Such

Some Friends of Mine 

As an introverted and not-yet-so-famous historian, it amazes me that I have been able to develop surprisingly intimate friendships with Absaroka County, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire; Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett; Iberia Parish, Louisiana Detective Dave Robicheaux; LAPD Homicide...
Books & Such

1942 

“In a 2018 poll, over 60 percent of respondents in a citizenship survey could not identify the nations that the US fought in World War II.” —Tracy Campbell In The Year of Peril: America in 1942 (2020), social historian...
Books & Such

Caravan 

In Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence. And the Roots of Migration (2021), Latin America historian Aviva Chomsky makes the clear case that immigration problems on the United States’ southern border are a direct consequence of an aggressive foreign...
Books & Such

Bob Lee 

In Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, historian Ty Seidule knocks Confederate General Robert E. Lee off his high horse. Seidule is a retired US Army Brigadier General and current...
Books & Such

A Science Lesson 

In Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (2017), best-selling historian Philipp Blom documents the effects of climate change on the development of Western civilization.  As recently...
Books & Such

Half of Us 

The story of America’s founding has been informed largely by the record of the white men of means at its center. During the past half-century or so, however, a concerted effort has been made to account for the experiences...