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Tag Archives: history
Inside the Chaotic Rise of YouTube
Do you remember the first YouTube video you watched? Mine was a fifteen-second clip of a guy doing a skateboarding trick, embedded in a blog post. The men who initially coded YouTube used Flash, which allowed videos to be played … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews
Tagged 2000s, 2010s, digital world, Google, history, Technology and Society
8 Comments
Flags of our Fathers
More Marines were killed in the first four days of the Battle of Iwo Jima than perished in Guadacanal over the course of five months, and the battle accounts for over a third of Marine casualties sustained in the entire … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged 1940s, biography, history, James Bradley, US Marine Corps, WW2
4 Comments
The Lives They Saved
“Look for the helpers”, Mr Rogers advised children who were frightened by disaster. L. Douglas Keeney here offers a spyglass to readers. Instead of fixating on the flaming towers, the clouds of smoke filled with dust, jet engine fumes, and … Continue reading
The Worst Hard Time
I first encountered the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the same history book, and images of houses covered by drifts of dust and those of men standing in line looking for relief or work are forever twinned in … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged 1930s, American West, disaster, environmentalism, history, Texas
6 Comments
Woke Up This Morning
Ho! Waitaminute. This is a review of a book about The Sopranoes called Woke Up This Morning. It would be wrong to begin it without “Woke Up this Morning”. Alright, wiseguy, you watched the theme? Good. This thing of ours, … Continue reading
Posted in history, Reviews
Tagged arts-entertainment, audiobook, history, The Sopranoes
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Of bones and marooned astronauts
Out of Orbit proved, despite the small scope of its subject, to be a most interesting and wide-ranging little history. When Columbia disintegrated in the skies above Texas and Louisiana in February 2003, it not only took with it seven … Continue reading
Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard Mir
When Jerry Linenger first boarded the Space Station Mir for a five-month stint working with Russia’s finest, the master alarm was blaring. It was a sign of things to come. The aging space station had been continually modified and jury-rigged … Continue reading
We Have Capture
Tom Stafford is the last man of Gemini, having outlived all of his previous colleagues. Born in 1930 on the Oklahoma plains, he sought escape from poverty like many through the armed forces. Though too young for World War 2, … Continue reading
Carrying the Fire
Yet a higher call was calling, and we vowed we’d reach it soonSo we gave ourselves a decade to put fire on the moonAnd Apollo told the world, we can do it if we try —There was One Small Step, … Continue reading
Forever Young
If ever the title “Mr. Astronaut” was given out, it would not go to John Glenn, despite his being the posterboy of Mercury; it wouldn’t even go to Neil Armstrong, who fifty-four years ago today became the first human to … Continue reading
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