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The Truth Behind Helen of Troy and the Trojan War (11/21)
The story of the Trojan War, fought between the Greeks and the people of Troy, has been told and retold for thousands of years. This is in large part thanks to the efforts of Homer, the ancient Greek poet who penned the Iliad and Odyssey, recordings of epic stories set during and after the war. Legendary figure Helen of Troy plays a ...
Transphobia in Gender-Critical Feminist Ideology (11/21)
In Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters draws attention to the views of feminists who discriminate against transgender women through the thoughts of Reese. 'In old books she had read,' Peters writes, 'Reese remembered women saying that if your husband doesn't beat you, he doesn't love you, a notion that horrified the feminist in Reese but ...
Jim Thorpe (11/21)
In The Removed, Edgar visits a mysterious town called the Darkening Land, where his high school friend Jackson tells him about a video game he's designing featuring the Native athlete Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was a multi-sport talent, notable for his careers in baseball and football, along with competing in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm in ...
Olympic Equestrian Eventing (11/21)
Eventing, sometimes described as an equestrian triathlon, became an Olympic summer sport at the Stockholm Games in 1912, but before that, it had its roots in the military as a series of exercises developed to test and prepare cavalry horses. Equestrian sports date back much further, in some cases all the way back to the ancient Olympics, ...
Gamification and AI: Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go (11/21)
As American political scientist Joseph Nye postulated in the 1980s, there are two ways to control people in geopolitics: hard power (i.e., coercion via violence) or soft power (i.e., enticement via incentive). Successful geopolitical strategy is often about knowing when to use soft power instead of force.
In We Have Been Harmonized, ...
Survivor Trees (11/21)
Destructive and unsustainable human habits are wiping out ecosystems around the world at alarming rates, not only threatening millions of wildlife species with extinction but also endangering human health and well-being. '[H]umans depend on the natural world for food, air, water, clothing—everything,' as acclaimed primatologist and ...
Myles Standish and the Defense of the Plymouth Colony (11/21)
Beheld takes place in 1630 at the Plymouth settlement in what would later become Massachusetts and features several characters taken from the real-life history of the colony. One of these is Myles Standish, a decorated soldier who arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower with the first group of English pilgrims and served as Plymouth's head of ...
Books That Address Infertility (10/21)
In Flesh & Blood, author N. West Moss writes of her struggles with infertility, detailing her emotional reactions to miscarriages and an illness resulting in a hysterectomy. The feelings, experiences and circumstances surrounding an inability to conceive are multifaceted and varied, and so are the works of literature that have addressed ...
The Muisca (10/21)
In Patricia Engel's novel Infinite Country, several of the main characters draw inspiration from their Muisca ancestors and legends. The Muisca, also known as the Chibcha, are an indigenous civilization that thrived in present-day Colombia before Europeans colonized the area. Bogotá, Colombia's capital city, is situated on an ancient...
The UK Independence Party (UKIP) (10/21)
Jasper Fforde's novel
The Constant Rabbit is a not-so-thinly-veiled allegory of racism and xenophobia that takes place in an alternate version of the United Kingdom. The governing party in the book is the UK Anti-Rabbit Party (UKARP), led by Nigel Smethwick, who seems to be based on Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK ...
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (10/21)
The plot of Jess Walter's novel, The Cold Millions, revolves around the actions of the newly-formed Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Spokane, Washington in 1909.
The groundwork for the IWW was laid by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), a union formed in Columbus, Ohio in 1886. That organization's purpose was to ensure ...
Simone Weil (1909-1943) (10/21)
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez takes its title from the writing of Simone Weil, an influential French philosopher and intellectual whose work was unusual for incorporating both left-leaning politics and religious traditions.
Weil was born in Paris on February 3, 1909 to agnostic Jewish parents. Her family was well-off and ...
Overcoming Arkoudaphobia: The Rarity of Bear Attacks in North America (10/21)
Bears terrify a lot of people. So much so that 'arkoudaphobia' — the fear of bears — is a common phenomenon.
However, the danger bears pose to people in North America is massively embellished in the public's collective psyche. Fantastical representations of bears in literature, television and film have exacerbated ...
The Parchman Ordeal (10/21)
Richard Grant's
The Deepest South of All examines the aftermath of slavery in the Deep South through the lens of Natchez, Mississippi. One clear inference that can be made from his Natchezian narratives is that the past must be confronted before it can lay dormant in its grave. Unfortunately, history is often written with its authors ...
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) (10/21)
In Susannah Clarke's novel
Piranesi, the titular character lives in a fantastical, labyrinthine home filled with endless hallways, rooms, statues and even an ocean. It's a remarkably inventive setting, and, as our savvy First Impressions reader Lorraine D. noticed, the protagonist's name is a reference to a likely source of inspiration ...
The 1918 Flu Pandemic (10/21)
Often referred to as the Spanish Flu, the 1918 flu pandemic is one of the deadliest viral outbreaks the world has ever seen. Hitting its peak at the tail-end of World War I, record-keeping was poor by modern standards, but it is estimated that some 500 million people (about a quarter of the world's population at the time) became infected ...
The Gardner Museum Heist (10/21)
The Last Mona Lisa is a fictionalized account of the real 1911 theft of the famous da Vinci painting of the title. Despite extensive investigation, it took more than two years for the painting to be recovered and returned to the Louvre. Other art heists don't have such happy outcomes: Sometimes stolen paintings are damaged or destroyed, ...
The Electrification of Rural Ireland (10/21)
The personal events of Niall Williams's This Is Happiness are sparked by the impending arrival of electricity to Faha, a tiny hamlet in rural Ireland. The gradual electrification of this largely rural country was a decades-long process that extended over much of the middle part of the 20th century and that has been called the Quiet ...
Viruses and Evolution (09/21)
One of the most interesting concepts discussed in Some Assembly Required is that almost all life is primarily comprised of borrowed components. We share 95 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. Only two percent of the human genome is unique to our species. The rest of us is adopted, adapted, tweaked and outright stolen.
Viruses make up ...
POW Camps in the U.S. During World War II (09/21)
In Leah Weiss's All the Little Hopes, the Brown family's North Carolina farm receives an influx of laborers in the form of captured German soldiers sent from the nearby prisoner-of-war (POW) camp. Some readers may be surprised to learn that there were many such camps in the United States during World War II, and that it was not uncommon ...
Royal Succession in the Ottoman Empire (09/21)
When we think about royal succession, we typically think of princes, and European history is rife with dramatic steps that monarchs took to ensure they had a male heir. But this devotion to primogeniture, or the succession of the oldest son, was not universal in the early modern world. So, while Henry VIII was upending his entire kingdom ...
Archaebacteria (09/21)
Carole Stivers' novel The Mother Code imagines the rapid spread of a deadly genetically engineered disease called IC-NAN. The widespread proliferation of the disease is due in large part to its receptive archaebacteria, which serve as both host and incubator for the IC-NAN's DNA; as one character puts it, 'these archaebacteria are capable...
Nature vs. Nurture (09/21)
The 'nature vs. nurture' debate is what sparks the narrative tension in M.O. Walsh's novel
The Big Door Prize. The character Cherilyn refers to the concept of nature vs. nurture when she explains how the unusual DNAMIX machine 'tells you your potential, [...] what you could have been if everything would have worked out just right.'
...
The Oldest Known Burial in North America: Anzick-1 (09/21)
The evocative prehistorical scene with which Heather Young opens
The Distant Dead might be fictional but, as the narrator suggests near the end of the novel, it parallels some real-life archaeological discoveries. One of these is Anzick Boy, or Anzick-1, a Paleoindian child of one or two years old, found buried in Montana in 1968. ...
The Tradition of Las Vegas Magicians (09/21)
Even though I lived in Las Vegas for five years (2012-2017), I never gave it much thought. Magicians were always there, on and off the Las Vegas Strip. David Copperfield's face was on that massive advertisement across the top of the MGM Grand. Mac King, the afternoon comedy magician at Harrah's, was always in any number of small Vegas ...
Racism and Ronald Reagan's 1980 States' Rights Speech (09/21)
In
Some Go Home, author Odie Lindsey references then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan's 'states' rights'
speech as the vehicle that 'had re-radicalized Hare's power, breathing life into his limp narrative.' Lindsey implies that the candidate's speech allowed the fictional character Hare Hobbs to create an illusion of power for himself...
A Brief History of Trade Unions in the U.K. (09/21)
In Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club, the residents of the Coopers Chase retirement community are, in some ways, very much like any other group of retirees. They fawn over their grandchildren, they gather to discuss various aches and pains, and they frequently misunderstand technology. And like many other retirees, they also have ...
The Sidekick Character in Detective Fiction (09/21)
In
Fortune Favors the Dead, being in the wrong place at the right time earns Will Parker the job of assistant to Lillian Pentecost, New York City's classiest and most unorthodox private investigator. Although Lillian's worsening multiple sclerosis is her initial motivation for hiring the younger woman, Will possesses a keen eye and a ...
Dadaism (09/21)
In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, Charlie English connects the psychological effects of World War I to the evolving art scene in the early decades of the 20th century. The war not only killed upwards of 20 million people, but it also had an enormous impact on European culture in the decades after the guns fell silent in 1918. One of...
Matilda by Roald Dahl (09/21)
In The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson, main character June is attached to certain favorite childhood books, including the young adult novel Matilda by acclaimed and bestselling author Roald Dahl, also known for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG. Matilda won the Children's Book Award shortly after its publication in 1988 ...
Graphic Works of Nonfiction (09/21)
Although the term 'graphic novel' implies works of fiction, lists of popular graphic novels are often dominated by memoirs and other nonfiction. You can find one such list
here, and a short history of the genre
here.
Since there is no widely used or non-cumbersome term for these books ('graphic works of nonfiction' probably coming the ...
Fairuz: The Voice of Lebanon (09/21)
Fairuz is a Lebanese singer and actress, often hailed as the voice of Lebanon and the voice of hope. Having recorded over 1,500 songs and sold over 100 million records, her body of work is vast and globally admired.
Born in the Chouf region in the 1930s with the name Nuhad al-Haddad, her family moved to Beirut when she was young. It ...
The Benefit of Sports for Young People Living With ADHD (09/21)
In Sarah Tomp's The Easy Part of Impossible, diving proves to be a vital lifeline for teenager Ria Williams, who lives with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The intense structure, discipline and exertion called for by the sport allows Ria to channel her excess energy into something positive and helps her to master the ...
The History of Church Pews (08/21)
In Catherine Lacey's novel
Pew, the title character is given their name because they are found sleeping on a church pew. The word 'pew' is thought to come from the Dutch 'puye,' meaning the enclosed front area of a building such as a town hall, where important proclamations were made. 'Puye,' in turn, may come from the Latin word '...
Subterranean London (08/21)
Louise Candlish's narrator in The Other Passenger, Jamie Buckby, suffers from tunnel phobia. It is this affliction that causes him to quit his professional occupation and work at a coffee shop. Jamie experiences London's subway system, known as the Tube, as a 'place with no escape routes' where 'bodies were crammed into every last column ...
Ronaldinho: The Savior of FC Barcelona (08/21)
Readers of Barcelona Dreaming will notice that soccer player Ronaldinho is mentioned frequently throughout the novel. Although not one of the chief protagonists, his presence in Barcelona — and by extension in the lives of the book's characters — is a constant.
Who is Ronaldinho and why does he feature so significantly in ...
Hakka Cuisine (08/21)
The Hakka are an ethnic minority of Han Chinese people who migrated out of the northern regions of China in waves taking place in the fourth and ninth centuries. Today, the largest populations of Hakka live in China's Guangdong Province (located in the southeast of China, near Hong Kong), and they have their own distinct language and ...
Microdot Technology (08/21)
In Agent Sonya, Ben Macintyre's account of real-life spy Ursula Kuczynski, several operatives are said to have used microdots, or tiny pieces of film on which miniaturized text is recorded, to smuggle information to the Soviet Union. Still in use today, these diminutive data caches are produced through a specialized photography process ...
Sara Seager and the Search for Exoplanets (08/21)
Sara Seager, the author of
The Smallest Lights in the Universe, is an astrophysicist who served as a chairperson on NASA's
Starshade Project, a mission to locate intelligent life on planets outside of our Solar System, a.k.a 'exoplanets' ('exo' is a Greek prefix meaning 'outside'). Exoplanets are challenging to discover, in part because...
Contemporary Ghanaian Women Writers (08/21)
In her novel His Only Wife, Peace Adzo Medie captures the clash of tradition and modernity in present day Ghana. Medie belongs to a long line of talented women writers who show the country's rich culture and history to be bountiful sources of inspiration. Here are just a few of the most exciting Ghanaian women on the current literary ...
Norway's Halden Prison (08/21)
Since its opening in 2010, Halden Prison, located in Norway's Østfold region, has been held by many who believe in the necessity of prison reform to be a model institution due to its humane treatment of inmates and emphasis on rehabilitation. In
Waiting for an Echo, Dr. Christine Montross visits Halden for a tour and contrasts ...
Six Flags Amusement Parks (08/21)
In Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, Justine dreams of riding the Big Bend roller coaster at Six Flags. Today, Six Flags is a large theme park company with locations throughout North America and also in China, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Justine, who is living in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1974, is anticipating a...
Griots and a New Direction for Fantasy (08/21)
In Jordan Ifueko's fantasy debut Raybearer, Mbali, one of the Emperor's Council of Eleven, is identified as a griot – 'a singer of histories and stories, the most sacred of Arit priests.' Griots are not a literary invention, but an incorporation of Ifueko's Nigerian heritage into her fantasyscape, along with tutsu sprites and ...
Janeites: Austen Fans Past and Present (08/21)
According to literary scholar Claudia L. Johnson, 'Janeism' is a 'self-consciously idolatrous enthusiasm for 'Jane' Austen and every primary, secondary, tertiary (and so forth) detail relative to her.' The devotees who share this enthusiasm, also known as 'Janeites,' are in the simplest sense fans of Jane Austen and her writings. Today, ...
Art Restoration and Conservation (08/21)
In Dirk Wittenborn's The Stone Girl, the main character, Evie, is an art restorer who specializes in repairing statues. Art restoration is the professional process of repairing works of art that have been subjected to the effects of damage or age, including paintings, sculptures and architecture. The restoration of art is somewhat ...
Discriminatory "Coffin Problems" in the USSR (08/21)
In
The Nesting Dolls, Natasha dreams of entering the mathematics program at Odessa University. However, after correctly solving all of the initial equations on her entrance exam, she is presented with an additional equation, one that seems impossible to answer. When she cannot answer it, Natasha is failed and refused admission. ...
Reparations for Black Americans (08/21)
In White Too Long, Robert P. Jones makes clear that his view of racial justice includes a 'tangible economic accounting' of the ways in which churches have benefited from slavery and white supremacy, as well as restitution to the Black community. In doing so, Jones joins a large chorus of activists, politicians and others calling for ...
Gerard Manley Hopkins (08/21)
In Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom, Gifty, a PhD student of neuroscience, recalls a college course she took to fulfill a humanities requirement that focused on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. While Gifty didn't care for Hopkins' poetry, she felt a 'strange sense of kinship' with the man himself when she reflected on the struggles he...
A History of the Appalachian Region (08/21)
The Appalachian region of the United States (not to be confused with the entirety of the Appalachian Mountains, which extend into Canada) stretches over 1,000 miles from southern New York to northeastern Mississippi. A mountainous crossroads, the area is defined by disparities and variety in its history, economics and culture. Today, ...
Ting Hua: Obedience and Filial Piety in Chinese American Parental Relationships (08/21)
Of all the demands made of Susie Yang's character Ivy in her debut novel White Ivy, few are more pernicious than the constant demand that she be ting hua, or a 'good' girl. For Ivy, to be ting hua means, more than anything else, obscuring her individuality and right to self-determination so that her family can see the version of her they ...
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