From the Archives: Copperheads

Sometimes life makes it impossible to write blog posts on a dependable basis.  This is one of the those times.  For the next little while, I’m going to run pieces from September and October five or six years past.  I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. First up,…

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The Hunt for History

I am not a collector of anything in any meaningful sense of the word.* I am certainly not a collector of historical ephemera. Which means that I had my doubts when my stack of books to consider for review for Shelf Awareness for Readers included The Hunt for History: On the Trail of the World’s…

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The Question of the Queen Mother

Speaking of the linguistic booby traps that await the unwary in the pursuit of global history, as I believe we were, I offer you the example of the Queen Mother. In English, the term “Queen Mother” generally refers to the widow of a king* who is the mother of a reigning monarch. The term has…

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