Taking up a long steel spindle—what had looked before like a knitting needle—Will scooped up a pea-sized dab of opium paste on its tip. He reclined on his side, his head on the chum tow, and rotated the tarry little mass just above the oil lamp’s flame… The little nugget… Read More »The Century of the Poppy: Opium in Nineteenth-Century America by P. B. Ryan
It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat’s blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred… Read More »Colonial Peru, the Caste System, and the “Purity” of Blood by David Gaughran
“Truth isn’t in accounts but in account books.” Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time You’d think that a history geek who’s passionately interested in a particular historical period, and who has made something of a career writing about it, would be delighted when she discovers more fiction set in… Read More »Propaganda, Clichés, and History by Susanne Alleyn
How did medieval people keep warm? The short answer might be they didn’t, but that’s only half an answer. Certainly, in medieval Wales like in modern Wales, people didn’t have to deal with extreme temperatures of say–Minnesota–but they did have to deal with snow and cold in the winter, and occasional… Read More »How did medieval people keep warm? by Sarah Woodbury
An honest 21st century review of The Concubine Saga (combined edition of My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart, Elegy for a Concubine at ColReads.com brought up a good subject for a post—the history of the changing attitudes of when a girl becomes a woman (You may want to click on the link to ColReads… Read More »A Brief History of the Age of Consent by Lloyd Lofthouse