As a lexicographer, dictionary web site editor and co-host of the KBPS radio show "A Way With Words," I receive a large number of questions from the public about word histories. Many of these queries come from students who want help with their studies. As long as I'm not asked...
Historical Newspapers
Dance in Colonial America: A Research Challenge
In 1976 the American Bicentennial created an audience for information about early American dance, but no scholarly resources were available. I took on the challenge and since that time have collected and indexed the raw materials with the help of two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (EASMES...
"Out of the Jaws of Death! Out of the Mouth of Hell!" - Dispatches from the Front during the American Civil War
"We are in the midst of the most terrible battle of the war—perhaps history." 1 So wrote General George McClellan to Chief of Staff Henry Halleck and President Abraham Lincoln before the telegraph wires went dead the morning of September 17, 1862. The wires would remain dead all day, as...
Thanks for the Memories, ... and the Documentary Records: Thanksgiving and the History of American Holidays
"Twas founded be th' Puritans to give thanks f'r bein presarved fr'm th' Indyans, an' . . . we keep it to give thanks we are presarved fr'm th' Puritans." —Finley Peter Dunne, "'Thanksgiving,' Mr. Dooley's Opinions" (1901) Holidays are like peaks in a nation's topography. Without them, the landscape...
Slinging Mud and Talking Trash: The Gutter Age of American Journalism
The Golden Age of America's founding was also the gutter age of American journalism. It seems a remarkable paradox. And the Founding Fathers were both the perpetrators and the victims of this brand of journalism. The Declaration of Independence was literature, but the New England Courant talked trash. The Constitution...
