Recent Articles

‘The Women Are Coming”
(The Saturday Review, 1948)

Unknown to the majority of women in this country, a steadily mounting feminist campaign is under way for Equal Rights for women under the Constitution. The average man will regard this statement with bewilderment.

The Czar Abdicates
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

Attached is a news report from a 1917 issue of THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN announcing:

Czar Nicholas decided to abdicate the Russian throne only after he had been held up by soldiers and the necessity for such action impressed upon him, according to a dispatch printed in DIE FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG…


Also included in the report were the text of a speech delivered by the Czar which called for national unity.

‘This I Saw In Korea”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1952)

Those darn misogynists in Washington fell asleep at the switch again when they appointed a woman to fill the number two spot at the Department of Defense. The woman in question was Anna Rosenberg (1902 – 1983), an experienced and well-respected hand in the Nation’s Capital who served in that post between 1950 and 1953. During the middle of the war she paid a visit to the American military installations in Korea and wrote warmly about all that she had seen.

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The First 365 Days of the Korean War
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

When the Korean War began during the summer of 1950 many Americans were wondering aloud Is this the beginning of W.W. III? One year later they were relieved to find that it was not a world war, but the butcher’s bill stood at 70,000 U.S. casualties and still there was no end in sight. This article examines these first 365 days of combat, taking into account all losses and gains.

The First 365 Days of the Korean War
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

When the Korean War began during the summer of 1950 many Americans were wondering aloud Is this the beginning of W.W. III? One year later they were relieved to find that it was not a world war, but the butcher’s bill stood at 70,000 U.S. casualties and still there was no end in sight. This article examines these first 365 days of combat, taking into account all losses and gains.

Helmets Along the Western Front
(Literary Digest, 1915)

The tremendous advances in artillery that took place during the years leading up to the war helped to reintroduce an old, time-tested element to the uniforms of the 20th Century soldier: the helmet.


So numerous were head injuries from high-explosive shells during the first year of the war that it compelled the doctors on both sides to beg their respective generals to issue some measure of cranium protection in order to reduce the casualty figures. As you will read in the attached article, the French began to wear helmets in the fall of 1915; the British and Germans a year later.

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‘Lady Macbeth of Mzensk” by Dmitri Shostakovich
(Literary Digest, 1935)

The Cleveland Orchestra, on February 5 [1935], with Arthur Rodzinski conducting, will introduce to New York ‘Lady Macbeth of Mzensk’, an opera by twenty-eight year-old Soviet composer, Dmitri Shostakovich.

Shostakovich completed the work in December, 1932. It is the first of a projected cycle of four operas in which the composer plans to trace the condition of women in Russia…

Jacob Epstein: Firebrand of Art
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

Jacob Epstein was brought up in the city of New York, being one of a group of young men from the other side of the Bowery, some of whom have since become well known in the arts.

Attached is a photograph of the American expatriot sculptor Jacob Epstein and three of his pieces. This is a short notice heralding the great splash that the artist was making in the London art world of 1915. Although his work can be found in many of the world’s finest museums, Epstein is best remembered today for his creation of the monumental sculpture that marks the grave of Oscar Wilde.

Vera Maxwell and Claire McCardell
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

From the Great Minds Think Alike Department came this small piece about two American sportswear designers, Claire McCardell and Vera Maxwell and their admirable approach in creating a light weather coat that served to both keep women warm in springtime gales, yet accommodate the full, billowing skirts that complemented their feminine forms (as well as the hip padding that accompanied many skirts of the Fifties).

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Eisenhower Goes to Korea
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

After trouncing Adlai Stevenson in the November Election, President-Elect Eisenhower made good on the vow he had made earlier and packed his bag for a fact-finding trip to the stagnant front lines on the Korean Peninsula.

No abrupt change in Korea is likely to follow Ike’s visit. He doesn’t plan to negotiate with the Reds there. He is interested in training, equipping and preparing South Koreans to defend themselves… The South Korean’s morale is good. About 400,000 of them are mobilized.

H.L. Mencken on American English
(The Smart Set, 1921)

Culture critic H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956; author of The American Language reviewed American Englishstyle=border:none by Gilbert M. Tucker.

The fact is, of course, that American English is noticeably superior to British English in several important respects, and that not the least of these superiorities lies in the learned department of spelling. Here even the more intelligent Englishmen are against their own rules, and in favor of the American rules, and every year one notices a greater tendency among them to spell wagon with one g instead of two…The English -our ending, the main hallmark of English spelling, dies harder.

The Young Nancy Reagan
(Modern Screen, 1951)

Published in a Hollywood fan magazine some months prior to her engagement with Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004) was this 1951 profile of the actress Nancy Davis (born Anne Frances Robbins: 1921 – 2016). A gossipy yet informative article that covers her days at Smith College, her relationship with capitol H Hollywood stars Alla Nazimova and Walter Houston, the eight films in which she had acted in up to that time and the various assorted reactions she instilled in such directors as William Wellman and Dore Schary.


A 1942 article by the young Ronald Reagan can be read here…

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Football’s First Half-Century
(Coronet Magazine, 1953)

No one is certain how football came to America. There are those who say it has always been here in the guise of an Indian game like lacrosse; its resemblance to English Rugby is apparent. But the game we know today is uniquely American, its place on the American scene secures. From September until long after the snow falls, Saturday afternoon means the Big Game to millions; and to millions the names of Heffelfinger, Grange, Harmon, Kazmaier and other gridiron greats will never lose their luster. This year [1953], more than 15,000,000 Americans – old grads, subway alumni and just plain football fans – will turn out to see their favorites do battle in a game that bears little resemblance to the scrambling, uncoordinated melees of 50 years ago. This is the story of how football grew up, of its heroes, and of the great games of yesteryear.

The First Five Year Plan
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

A 1933 magazine article that reported on the success of the Soviet Union’s first (of many) Five Year Plans.


The myriad five year economic development plans dreamed-up by the assorted butchers of the dear dead Soviet Union all had one thing in common that was never lost on the Russian people: they always involved the construction of new factories, but never the construction of new housing.


Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.

Charlie Chaplin and His Popularity
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

The Irish playwright St John Ervine (1883 – 1971) wrote this article for VANITY FAIR in an attempt to understand Charlie Chaplin’s broad appeal; rich and poor, highbrow and lowbrow, all enjoyed his movies.

Mr. Chaplin is the small boy realizing his ambitions.

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The Milliner’s Collaboration
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

In 1951 the finest minds in American millinery were asked to put their collective craniums together and design some hats; each brought something unique to the table – the most humorous design element that appeared in each hat included a telephone!

Collaborators in the struggle to produce a taller plume, a more involved bird’s nest, are the hat designer’s – to whom carrots and cornstalks, bean bean pods and bumper-shoots are all perfectly acceptable decorations for the head.

Tango Fashions
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1913)

The urgent word from Belle Époque Paris on the matter of proper Tango gowns was published in this 1913 article and accompanied by seven illustrations.

What shall you wear to the Tango Teas? Let me whisper to you a secret, only to be revealed when it is found out, my dear, there is no Tango in America, or, at least in New York. But it is quite different in Paris and it is for Paris and the Tango that the French dance frocks are made.


Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.

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