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Archive for the ‘Microhistories’ Category

 
What is it about a ragtag group of nomads that has both inspired and outraged civilizations for four millenia?  In the second book of his Hinges of History series,  Thomas Cahill digs into the larger themes that separate the Jewish peoples from the people around them, and shows how the evolution of a culture, a [...]

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“Reports had surfaced of some customers discovering live eels in their drinking water, which suggested that the filters were not perhaps working optimally.”

CSI: 1850. A deadly epidemic of cholera sweeps through a London neighborhood, claiming its victims in a pattern with a deadly epicenter: the Broad Street water pump. OK, it’s tough writing a medical [...]

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If you need something to fill up the empty space where Project Runway used to be… if you pause the DVD of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette on the close-ups of Marie’s satiny, beribboned heels… do I have a book for you!
Weber looks at the reign and downfall of Marie Antoinette, eighteenth-century fashionista, with a focus [...]

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What if we misused and overextended our natural resources so badly that we ruined the environment? What if years of mistreatment led to a day when the land, depleted, suddenly went into a dangerous and rapid decline that we couldn’t fix? These are questions that many of us worry about today as pollution worsens, carbon [...]

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What is it about coastal redwoods that would inspire people to risk their lives to be near them? For starters, this type of redwood is located in only a few areas, but those are nearly inaccessible to all but the most dedicated bushwhackers. It is impossible to see the trees in their entirety, [...]

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If you’ve ever closely read, or even scanned, the pages of a typical personals ad, you’d recognized the usual format – gender preference, age, something about the advertiser’s looks and interests.  Specialty and ‘elite’ publications might have more information tailored toward the expected demographic – second home location, brand of Scotch, favorite theorist – that [...]

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In the months and years after the attacks on September 11, 2001, contrarian women were silenced, according to Faludi’s focused cultural critique.  She especially targets the mainstream media, for which she blames the creation and perpetuation of a ‘storyline’ – that it was time for men to be men and women to be helpless.  Major [...]

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Although Nick Hornby may be best known for his clever and witty fiction (try High Fidelity, Hornby’s look at a record store owner, his quirky staff, and his dysfunctional social life), he writes equally well about music in the nonfiction realm.
In Songbook, Hornby writes with insight and passion about 31 of his favorite songs from [...]

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One of the most interesting of the subgenres of narrative nonfiction is the microhistory. You can often tell these books their one-word titles — Cod, Absinthe, etc. These books take a specific item and use that as a jumping off point to explore the broader world, including history, technology, science, language, and sometimes memoir. [...]

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