After several hours of surfing the web, I realized that it is impossible to improve on this picture from last year. Thus are traditions born.

Happy birthday to us!

Six years ago, I started writing History in the Margins with a blog post that asked the question “Why another history blog?” *  It was a question I had struggled with for a good year before I decided to jump into the blogosphere.   I didn’t have a time or place that I wanted to focus on.  What I did have was a vague sense of the kind of stories I wanted to tell and the voice I wanted to tell them in.  I felt strongly that as a society we need to hear the stories that don’t get told in high school history classes: the history of other parts of the world as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar.

Over the last six years, my basic idea about what History in the Margins should be hasn’t changed much.  The only thing that has changed is the number of people who hang out here in the Margins.  I am honored that you take the time to read my posts and thrilled that some of you write emails or leave comments in response.

It’s become a tradition that I give away books to celebrate the blog’s birthday. If you’re interested in throwing your hat into the medium-sized mixing bowl, comment here on blog or on Facebook or send me an email before midnight on May 28.  Tell me which book you’re most interested in, what kind of stories you’d like to see more of here on the Margins, or what type of history you enjoy.

Here’s what I’m giving away:

Louis S. Warren.  God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America
Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen.  The Constitution: An Introduction
Nicola A. Phillips. The Profligate Son: A True Story of Family conflict, Fashionable Vice and Financial Ruin in Regency Britain
Hugh Kennedy. Caliphate: The History of an Idea
Keith Jeffrey.  1916: A History
David Lough.  No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money
(*ahem*) Pamela Toler.    Heroines of Mercy Street**

Let the party begin!  Unlike Mr.  Churchill, surely we have champagne somewhere around here.  Or at least a couple of funny hats.

*My second post was titled “Sylvester II: Scientist, Pope, Wizard–Vampire?”  That’s the kind of risk you can take when you are sure that only six people are reading and all of them love you dearly.
**I would be a bad bad author if I didn’t include my own book here, right?