Natural Alchemy: On the Long History of Community Gardens in Indianapolis
“Urban planners and agricultural experts predict that there will be no farmland remaining in [Marion County] by the year 2050.” –William D. Dalton, The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis * The 2020...
View ArticleOn the Dancing Craze That Swept Post-WWI Paris
Most books tell us that it was only after the war ordeal, in a France now devastated and in mourning, that what is called the “Belle Époque” was born, out of nostalgia for what had come before. The...
View ArticlePaul Auster on One of the Most Astonishing War Stories in American Literature
On the last day of October 1895, a letter was sent to Stephen Crane by the corresponding editor of The Youth’s Companion inviting him to submit work to the magazine: “In common with the rest of mankind...
View ArticleHow Much Was WWI About… Bread?
Stories about the Great War of 1914 to 1918 often begin with an account of German aggression. But the war’s cause also had roots in the cheap grain cast upon the waters every spring and summer to feed...
View ArticleOf War and Capitalism: The Debate About All Quiet on the Western Front Goes...
“One of the most important books ever written in the German language,” All Quiet on the Western Front (originally titled Nothing New in the West), is now an Oscar-nominated film causing some...
View ArticleHow World War I Inspired Black Americans to Fight for Dignity at Home
The Tulsa Race Massacre decimated the neighborhood of Greenwood over the course of two days—May 31 and June 1, 1921—but such explosive carnage never stems from a single fuse. Racial turmoil in Tulsa...
View ArticleRevisiting the Mental Health Fallout from the Unprecedented Horror of the...
All the armies in the Great War had a word for it: the Germans called it “Kriegsneurose”; the French “la confusion mentale de la guerre”; the British “neurasthenia” and, when Dr. Charles Samuel Myers...
View ArticleHow the Start of World War I Changed an American Heiress’s Life Forever
On the one hand, Mrs. Stan Harding Krayl, as she was known in Germany, and Mrs. Marguerite Harrison had much in common. Well bred, well educated, and well traveled, both were reddish-haired beauties...
View ArticleHow Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon Forged a Literary and Romantic Bond
Wilfred Owen first mentioned the presence of a new star on his horizon on August 15, 1917. He had been busy acting, editing the hospital magazine, arguing with his mother by letter about whether...
View ArticleWhat World War I Trench Art Tells Us About Its Creators
I cannot remember how I came to become so fascinated by World War I. Growing up in the 1960s, I was surrounded by World War II veterans—the neighbor who lost his arm at Iwo Jima, an uncle who stormed...
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