There is a peculiar religious sect in Paris and they worship absinthe. Their shrines are the boulevard cafes; their prayer books the muddy green liquid that cages mental rats within their brains and...
As seen in Part 2 of this series, U.S. newspaper coverage of the Spanish Influenza ended 1918 on a relatively positive note. On New Year’ Eve the San Jose Mercury News reported: The conditions for San...
Support learning and research across STEM and humanities disciplines with this unique family of digital collections. Each is comprised of primary source documents from around the world, collected and...
During the Second Industrial Revolution, Americans were introduced to an array of life-changing products—from the automobile to the lightbulb to the telephone. But 19th-century inventors also designed...
In this issue: Turn-of-the-century black intellectuals challenge a dark pseudo-science; the contentious politics of antislavery in early 20th-century newspapers; and the flash press reveals ordinary...
While the Boston area reeled under the burden of the epidemic, the influenza outbreak was spreading rapidly. On the same date, October 21, 1918, the Belleville News Democrat called the Illinois city...
In the late 19th century women began participating in the bicycle craze which men had enjoyed for two decades. This craze did not last long, but for women it was exciting and liberating. It was mostly...
The Spanish Flu, which swept the globe for more than two years and killed as many as 100,000,000, was misnamed. The origins of the 1918 pandemic have been debated, but it is generally accepted that...
At the southern edge of the picturesque village of Bellows Falls, Vermont, stands a modern TD Bank building. Erected on the site of the former home of Hetty Green, it’s a fitting tribute to the...
Amy Murrell Taylor is an award-winning professor in the Department of History at the University of Kentucky, and author of the highly praised Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s...
August 18, 1920, was a momentous day for the women of America. When Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the act granting equal suffrage for women, which had been passed by...
The spirit of Black Hawk is alive and well and living in New Orleans. How does the influence of this Sauk war leader inform Creole identity over 250 years after his birth? The answer involves a rich...
[ Go directly to Prof. Taylor’s highly praised presentation.] In the days following the start of the American Civil War, enslaved people immediately began fleeing plantations to seek refuge. In a...
The acrobat whose name would become synonymous with tightrope walking was born Jean-François Gravelet in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais, France. Generally known as Charles Blondin (1824-1897), the...
The political question of internal improvements challenged lawmakers in the earlier days of the United States with the majority supporting the federal government taking an active role in the...
The January 2020 issue of The Charleston Advisor offers a full look at a long-awaited digital collection of bawdy U.S. newspapers. This new review includes detailed sections on content, user interface...
Part of the power of Readex’s new Morality and Science : Global Origins of Modern Bioethics is the access it affords to primary material that is otherwise difficult to obtain in English-language...
The derivation of the phrase “fish or cut bait” is relatively clear, but its meaning has been murky since it became popularized in the mid-nineteenth century. One interpretation is similar to a...
The experiences of women in wartime have been less well documented than those of men. Their contributions, their sufferings and heroism merit closer attention. The wealth of digitized primary sources...
More than a thousand years ago, Egyptians noticed a shining red object that seemed to wander through the night sky. Fascinated, they painted the celestial body onto star charts and the ceiling of...
On Sunday, January 26, Readex will host a special breakfast presentation titled “Freedom Found: Untold Stories of the Civil War’s Refugees from Slavery” at the 2020 American Library Association...
In 2018, a Chinese scientist named He Jiankui secretly altered the DNA of a pair of human embryos to make them resistant to the HIV virus. When the twin babies were born and Dr. He announced what he’d...
More than half of America’s states began as territories. “Territorial Papers of the United States” records this official history, collecting Native American negotiations and treaties, correspondence...
The word robot comes from the Czechoslovakian word robotnik, meaning “forced labor,” or “slave.” And indeed, since it was coined by Czech writer Karl Čapek in 1920, people have both feared and...
