The Cowboy Way – Prime Historical Nonsense

(Disclaimer: if you like cowboys, you might want to skip this discussion of the cowboy way. It won’t be pretty. Or, alternately, stick around and learn some history.) It was, perhaps, the most worthless hour of my life. I was a college professor, and the motivational speaker at our inservice gathering was about to educate […]

Smallpox and the Columbian Exchange

In my last post about the Columbian Exchange, I mentioned in passing what happened to the Incas and Aztecs when they met with Europeans after 1492. Today, it is time to flesh out that story and how it relates to the Columbian Exchange by describing the importance of smallpox. You might have heard a version […]

Review of Dying of Whiteness, by Jonathan Metzl

The book Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, published in 2019, is not my usual book review, so forgive me if I post about a nonfiction book for once. To read my reviews of recent historical fiction novels, please see: Opium and Absinthe, by Lydia Kang The Pillars […]