Berfrois

Turmoil in 19th Century Spain

Turmoil in 19th Century Spain

The analysis begins judiciously with the war of 1793-95 and its aftermath...

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‘Florida was not to be outdone by any state, in particular California’

‘Florida was not to be outdone by any state, in particular California’

David J. Nelson challenges the notion that the Great Depression helped rather than hurt tourism in Florida.

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Ed Simon: An Appointment with Father Grandier

Ed Simon: An Appointment with Father Grandier

One spring day in 1629, legions of devils came to call upon Father Urbain Grandier. If we’re to believe his accusers, the priest respond with enthusiasm at the arrival of his demonic charge.

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Green Thumbs

Green Thumbs

Not long after he arrived in Machilipatnam, Thomas Bowrey began to wonder what it was that the people of Machilipatnam were smoking.

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A hurricane across the green fields of life…

A hurricane across the green fields of life…

A little over one hundred years ago, a novel virus emerged from an unknown animal reservoir and seeded itself silently in settlements around the world.

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Freelancing Dorothy Parker

Freelancing Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker lost her job as Vanity Fair theater critic on January 11, 1920, in the tea room of the Plaza Hotel. Parker must have known there was trouble brewing as she sat down across from editor Frank Crowninshield.

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Trauma in Motherwell

Trauma in Motherwell

John and Winifred met, and had their miscegenated, crossborder romance, because of the war. Without the war, I was always told, I wouldn’t have existed.

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Work Is Work

Work Is Work

Why do we work? Many of us might give a simple transactional answer to the question: we work in order to make money. For the American psychologist Abraham Maslow

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The Salvors! In an Adventure With Marine Archaeologists!

The Salvors! In an Adventure With Marine Archaeologists!

In May 2016, a salvor named Bobby Pritchett, president of Global Marine Exploration (GME) in Tampa, Florida, announced that he had discovered scattered remains of a ship buried a kilometer off Cape Canaveral

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Gone Gentrified

Gone Gentrified

In her introduction to London: Aspects of Change (1964), Ruth Glass wrote that the city was “too vast, too complex, too contrary and too moody” to be known entirely.

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Meaningful Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence

Meaningful Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence

In African Freedom, Phyllis Taoua offers a study of “meaningful freedom” in Africa since independence from the perspective of literary studies...

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Scurvy was the chief threat at sea…

Scurvy was the chief threat at sea…

A Still Life Of A Wanli Kraak Porcelain Bowl Of Citrus Fruit And Pomegranates On A Wooden Table, Jacob van Hulsdonck, 1608-1647 by Jonathan Lamb Serious medical interest in scurvy coincided with what Burke named the unrolling of the map of mankind, the so-called discovery of the land and...

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On Valdis Āboliņš

On Valdis Āboliņš

This book tells the unlikely story of a Latvian-born ex-patriot, Valdis Āboliņš (1939-84), exiled to Germany during World War II and remaining there after the war

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“Life found a way!”

“Life found a way!”

In Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, God gathers the archangels and announces that He has made animals. Satan—who else?—asks, “What are they for?”

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A History of Leprosy and Japan

A History of Leprosy and Japan

Though surely unintentional on the part of the author, the timing of the book’s publication, the first English-language monograph on Japan’s history of leprosy, could not have been better.

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Keith Doubt: Peter Handke in Serbia

Keith Doubt: Peter Handke in Serbia

If Handke bears witness on behalf of the people of Serbia, how does he do so? What is the self-consciousness Handke ascribes to the Serbian people?

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Silencing the Bomb

Silencing the Bomb

In Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist’s Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing, Lynn Sykes offers a fascinating look at the time and effort it took for states, during and after the Cold War, to agree...

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A Collar Bomb Wrapped Up In an Enigma

A Collar Bomb Wrapped Up In an Enigma

At 2:28 pm on August 28, 2003, a middle-aged pizza deliveryman named Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania.

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Russia’s Nuclear Priesthood

Russia’s Nuclear Priesthood

This book discusses the Russian Orthodox Church’s (ROC) expansion and deep integration into every facet of Russian nuclear military forces and politics in the years since the Soviet Union’s collapse...

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Voters had tired of her imperial style…

Voters had tired of her imperial style…

In 1991, less than a year after Tory MPs deposed her as party leader and prime minister, Margaret Thatcher appeared on the platform at the Conservatives’ annual conference with her successor...

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Popular Music and Everyday Resistance in WWII

Popular Music and Everyday Resistance in WWII

In the 1940s, the French faced a series of threats to their national integrity and pride—first from the Germans and then from the Americans, who both wielded military dominance and a powerful cultural model.

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