William Jennings Bryan (1860 – 1925) is best remembered today as the rube who advocated for creationism in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In this 1923 essay he picks away at Darwin’s evolution theory using many of the arguments that he would (victoriously) deploy two years later.
William Jennings Byan on Evolution (Reader’s Digest, 1923) Read More »
Eleven months before America’s entry into the war found sailor suits playing a heavy role in the thought processes of the Great American Fashion Designers.
Click here to read about the military influence on W.W. I fashion…
1941 Fashion (PM Tabloid, 1941) Read More »
The Selling of the President is about the role of television in the Republican efforts to elect Richard Nixon president in the 1968 election. Written over forty years ago by Joe McGinnis (1942 – 2014), the book was an instant classic as it addressed the matter of packaging a candidate for a political contest in the same manner products are promoted for the marketplace:
McGinnis concludes that ‘On television, it matters less that [the candidate] does not have ideas. His personality is what the viewers want to share…’
Modern Political Advertising (Pageant Magazine, 1970) Read More »
A former fashion model, Bobbie Woodward, was outraged when she awoke that morning in 1947 to find that the hidden hairy hand that decides which direction the fashion winds will blow had given the nod to some snail-eating Frenchman who stood athwart fashion’s unspoken promise to continue the skirt hem’s march ever-upward. Wasting no time, she quickly marshaled other equally inclined women and formed The Little Below the Knee Clubs, which spread to forty-eight states (as well as Canada) in order to let the fashion establishment know that they would not be forced into wearing this fashion juggernaut known as The New Look.
The attached SEE MAGAZINE article serves as a photo-essay documenting the collective outrage of these women and their doomed crusade against Christian Dior.
One 1947 fashion critic believed that the New Look suffered from a split personality. Click here to read her review.
Jihad Against ‘The New Look’ (See Magazine, 1948) Read More »
This article is illustrated with a photograph of the King Tiger tank and accompanied by some vital statistics and assorted observations that were documented by the U.S. Department of War and printed in one of their manuals in March of 1945:
The king Tiger is a tank designed essentially for defensive warfare or for breaking through strong lines of defense. It is unsuitable for rapid maneuver and highly mobile warfare because of its great weight and and low speed…The King Tiger virtually is invulnerable to frontal attack, but the flanks, which are less well protected, can be penetrated by Allied antitank weapons at most normal combat ranges.
The American answer to the Tiger was the M26 Pershing Tank; read about it here.
If you wish to read about the only German tank of World War I, click here.
The King Tiger Tank (U.S. Dept. of War, 1945) Read More »
Economically, the departure of the [Japanese-Americans] presented no particular problem in the cities… But it was different in the country. [They] had owned or controlled 11,030 farms valued at $70,000,000. They had produced virtually all the artichokes, early cantaloupes, green peppers and late tomatoes, and most of the early asparagus. They owned or controlled the majority of wholesale produce markets and thousand of retail vegetable stands. When they disappeared, the flow of vegetables stopped. Retail prices went up. Many vegetables vanished entirely. There were rumors of a food shortage.
The Outcast Americans (American Magazine, 1942) Read More »
Writer Paul Gerard Smith (1894 – 1968) was a U.S. Marine in World War I and in 1938, when he saw that another war with Germany was simmering on the the front burner he put a Fresh ribbon of ink in the typewriter and wrote this editorial which he titled, An Open Letter to Boys of Military Age. His column is a cautionary tale advising the young men of his day to make their decisions thoughtfully before committing themselves to such a dangerous undertaking as war. Smith advised youth to examine the causes for the war, verify whose commercial interests will be served in victory and only if –
you find that America and the future of America is threatened – then go and kick Hell of the enemy, and God be with you.
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…
A Veteran Against War (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938) Read More »
This well-read writer recalls the great novels leading up to the publication of Gone With The Wind (1936). Along the way, she lists some of the many foibles of The Great American Reading Public – in the end she recognizes that she shouldn’t have been surprised at all that the historic romance was an all-time-best-seller and that Margaret Mitchell was awarded a Pulitzer.
A Bewildering American Phenomenon (Scribner’s Magazine, 1937) Read More »
Four and a half years into Prohibition, journalist Jack O’Donnell reported that there were as many as 25,000 women who had run-afoul of the law in an effort to earn a quick buck working for bootleggers:
They range in age from six to sixty. They are recruited from all ranks and stations of life – from the slums of New York’s lower East Side, exclusive homes of California, the pine clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington… Women in the bootleg game are becoming a great problem to law enforcement officials. Prohibition agents, state troopers and city police – gallant gentlemen all – hesitate to embarrass women by stopping their cars to inquire if they are carrying hooch. The bootleggers and smugglers are aware of this fact and take advantage of it.
Verily, so numerous were these lush lassies – the Federal Government saw fit to construct a prison compound in which to incarcerate them; you can read about that here…
Prohibition Era Prisons Filled with Women (American Legion Weekly, 1924) Read More »
An article about Irving Izzy the Eel Cohen, Joseph Socks Lanza, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, Jake Greasy Thumb Guzik and Albert Tick Tock Tannenbaum (among others) and how they earned such colorful names.
(This article was brought into the digital world by Matt the Mad Scanner Jacobsen)
An Al Capone article can be read here…
Mobsters and Their Nick-Names (Confidential Magazine, 1958) Read More »
