Monthly Archives: April 2014

  Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman Living in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare shows “just how blurred the lines of survival and collaboration were during this time of upheaval, especially for women.” So does Jenna Blum’s “Those Who Save … Continue reading →

    The Button Boat is a Depression-era tale …a sort of Bonnie and Clyde — an exhuberant story set in 1934 involving two poor, smelly kids, their drunken stepfather, bank robbers, a peace officer, a beer-swilling dog, and a clamming … Continue reading →

 “Bungelosen Strasse!” reminds me of Captain Haddock’s favorite epithet, “Blistering Barnacles.” I’m onto something here. A vaguely fishy, watery pull is strong in the blood that flows through my veins–a tenuous connection to the shores of the Baltic Sea, a vague ancestral memory of the lap of … Continue reading →

Of about 100,000 Anti-Semitic children’s books printed during the Third Reich, a few copies remain. Elvira Bauer, an 18-year-old art student, illustrated “Trust No Fox on his Green Heath And No Jew on his Oath” — a sad, shocking example of propaganda from someone … Continue reading →

Here’s a cautionary tale: pay a guy for his services, as promised, or he might come back and get revenge on you. Taking all a town’s children may seem a little harsh, but this was medieval Germany. The Middle Ages, … Continue reading →

Here is one of the best insults in all of novels or movies: In another time and another place, you could have been great. But you never get out of your own way. You have all these ideas brewing in … Continue reading →

Originally posted on science fictional:
“The team at the National Observatory of Athens held a survey in 2007, in which they used 554 paintings by 181 painters, dated between 1500 and 1900, representing sun- sets and studied the coloration of…