Tag Archives: history

Redcoats , los presidentes, and medieval making-merry

Posted on July 10, 2023 by smellincoffee

Alllrighty, short rounds time, featuring: British Soldiers, American War; The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women; and The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Secret Fraternity. First up, British Soldiers, American War. This is an interesting volume in which … Continue reading →

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A Brief History of Motion

Posted on July 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

Tom, Tom, Tom. You know drinking and driving is a bad idea, but what did you do? You followed A History of the World through Six Glasses with this A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel to the Automobile. … Continue reading →

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Billy Yank @ Johnny Reb Stadium: PLAY BALL!

Posted on June 15, 2023 by smellincoffee

That title is just a way of me combining two Civil War short rounds into one post. (Billy Yank wins the five-game series, 3 to 2, but in a show of terrible sportmanship, burned the stadium on their departure.) First … Continue reading →

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Angels, barbarians, Trump, and boring Klansmen

Posted on June 12, 2023 by smellincoffee

Short rounds time! Angels, Barbarians, and Nincompoops is a wonderful romp through a few score words in the English language. Esolen has always impressed me as a man deep in word & song, saturated by the beauty of language — … Continue reading →

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Log Cabin Pioneers

Posted on May 18, 2023 by smellincoffee

Log Cabin Pioneers: Stories, Songs, and Sayings© 2001 Wayne Erbson184 pages Few things are more evocative of the American frontier than a log cabin. This isn’t a new thing, either: log cabins entered American iconography as early as the 1840s, … Continue reading →

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Tales from the Deadball Era

Posted on May 17, 2023 by smellincoffee

Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Wildest Times in Baseball History© 2014 Mark S. Halfon, narrated by Michael Butler Murray 240 pages | Audible 8 hrs 4 minutes George Carlin once … Continue reading →

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The War as the South Saw It

Posted on May 10, 2023 by smellincoffee

The Confederate Reader: The War as the South Saw It© 1999 Richard B. Harwell416 pages Mention ‘The War’ in the South without any context, and most anyone will understand which one  you’re referring to – the only War that has … Continue reading →

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Of Cicero and base-ball

Posted on May 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

This week I’ve been finishing up a couple of audiobooks. The first is How to Grow Old, a short one by Cicero written during the early part of his retirement from Rome, before the odious Mark Anthony sent men to … Continue reading →

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Scenes from Prehistoric Britain

Posted on April 28, 2023 by smellincoffee

Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the Coming of the Romans© 2021 Francis Pryor320 pages Scenes from Prehistoric Britain is a curious mix of extreme detail and fanciful speculation, visiting twelve sites in (mostly) prehistoric Britain that … Continue reading →

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Robin Hood and his men most merrie (and Welsh)

Posted on April 24, 2023 by smellincoffee

Enter into the greenwood and consider two tales of Robin the Hood! One, the triumphant finale of Stephen Lawhead’s “Hood” trilogy, setting the Lincoln green-clad figure betwixt the rivers Wye and Severn; the other,  an examination of Robin Hood ballads … Continue reading →

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