Mutilated children from the Congo Free State A Congolese man looking at the hand and foot of his daughter Cartoon criticizing Leopold’s rule I’ll give the last word to one of Leopold’s contemporaries. It’s no wonder that Mark Twain wrote, In fourteen years Leopold has deliberately destroyed more lives than have suffered death on all […]
Month: March 2021
The Brownsville Affair & the 25th Infantry
If you’ve read my book The Buffalo Soldier, (click here to check it out!) you may remember it includes the 25th Infantry Regiment of the US Army. They were stationed at Fort Missoula in Montana in 1896. The 25th was also among the first of the short-lived bicycle regiments in the US Army. The same […]
Why the Dust Bowl Happened in the 1930s
The question of why the Dust Bowl happened is not merely an academic one. Far from it. Personally, I regard the Dust Bowl of 1930s America as one of the six worst ecological disasters of all time. Even if one doesn’t go quite as far as I do, no one denies it was a human […]
Review of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah’s book The Four Winds is a very recent publication. It appeared about a month ago, in February of 2021. The book has sold brilliantly and has piled up numerous good reviews, so I decided to give it a read. To read my other recent reviews, check out: Deacon King Kong, by James McBride […]
Malaria and Sugar in the Caribbean
My last blog entry began the story of how sugar, malaria, and the Columbian Exchange resulted in the living hell of slavery flourishing in the Caribbean. I described the economic reasons why this took place. Today we’ll examine some more implications of this development. It involves the combination of malaria and sugar. To read previous […]