Category Archives: Historical

Woodrow Wilson

Some historians rate Woodrow Wilson as a near-great president, which always made me curious because he is most remembered for his idealistic League of Nations proposal, which his own country shunned.  So my curiosity led me to Wilson, a highly rated biography by A. Scott Berg. The truth is Woodrow Wilson lived a life of

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Voices From the Past

I can rarely resist a book, especially a book about history.  Recently I found an interesting little volume — The Civil War: Voices of Hope, Sacrifice, and Courage, edited by Gordon Leidner.  It lists over 220 quotes from soldiers and civilians on both sides, as well as texts and excerpts from some of the war’s

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Why Anne Frank?

I think every schoolchild learns about Anne Frank — the little Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust, then became famous when her writing, The Diary of a Young Girl, was first published in 1947. But why her?  Of all the millions of Holocaust victims, how did she become so famous?  Other victims wrote, notably

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Who Was Nike?

I was teaching yesterday, helping another teacher in a high school English class discussing mythological literature.  Then one of the girls asked a question that made me curious — who was Nike? The brand name we all know as the shoe and apparel company really did exist, at least in mythology.  Nike was the Greek

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