Tag Archives: history

The Battle Cry of Freedom

Posted on December 9, 2025 by smellincoffee

Battle Cry of Freedom is widely regarded as the finest single-volume history of the Civil War — and after finally reading it, I understand why. McPherson compresses an era of extraordinary complexity into a narrative that feels both sweeping and … Continue reading →

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A Fine, Quiet Sunday Morning in December….

Posted on December 7, 2025 by smellincoffee

Today’s annual remembrance of the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor has an especially salient echo given that it’s a Sunday. I am reminded of Captain Billy Mitchell’s interwar warning, quoted in The Airman’s War by Albert Marrin. By chance, I … Continue reading →

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Man of Iron

Posted on December 4, 2025 by smellincoffee

Grover Cleveland may have lost his claim to fame in being the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms, but he is nevertheless a striking and memorable figure. Hailed as ‘the last Jeffersonian’  by another biography,  his two … Continue reading →

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The Plain People of the Confederacy

Posted on November 28, 2025 by smellincoffee

The Plain People of the Confederacy takes a look at three often overlooked demographics of the South: poor whites, whom everyone forgets exist; women; and blacks. As it happens, Wiley has written volumes on each of these categories (poor whites … Continue reading →

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Billy has Gone for a Soldier: the Life of Billy Yank

Posted on November 26, 2025 by smellincoffee

Shortly after Bell Irvin Wiley penned The Life of Johnny Reb, a social history of southern soldiery, he wondered: what about the other fellows? What brought them to the colors, pulled them away from lives of comfort to march thousands … Continue reading →

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For Cause and Comrade

Posted on November 20, 2025 by smellincoffee

The moment I saw this book at a university booksale I knew I wanted it, because in the second story of that same library I’d researched my senior seminar paper to earn my BA in history.  For Cause and Comrades … Continue reading →

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Springtime for Northheim

Posted on November 13, 2025 by smellincoffee

“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is one of the more disturbing songs in the musical Cabaret, not because of the song itself, but because of what the viewer knows it portends. It begins simply, with one sweet voice singing at a … Continue reading →

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Ten Strange Ways to Die In Colonial Alabama

Posted on October 31, 2025 by smellincoffee

I’d intended to post this list earlier in the week for the Top Ten Tuesday freebie, but couldn’t remember the name of the book I was using, Alabama Mortality Schedule (1850, Seventh Census of the United States). I stumbled on … Continue reading →

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From Raiders to Kings

Posted on October 19, 2025 by smellincoffee

I can still remember being scandalized in seventh grade when I opened the next chapter in our western civ text to discover we would be studying THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. England, conquered? At that age, for whatever reason, I had … Continue reading →

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In Distant Lands

Posted on October 14, 2025 by smellincoffee

When the Crusades are mentioned today, it is almost always in the context of weary self-flagellation by Westerners searching for some ersatz virtue in denouncing their own history. Forgotten are the Muslim assaults on the Eastern Empire, the conquest of … Continue reading →

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