Recent Articles

The Increased Suicide Rate (Literary Digest, 1933)

With the arrival of the Great Depression came an increase in American suicides. When this article appeared on the newsstands the Depression was just three and a half years old – with many more years yet to come. As the Americans saw 1932 come to a close, the records showed that 3,088 more acts of self-immolation had taken place than had been recorded the year before.


Read about the the mood of the Great Depression and how it was reflected in the election of 1932 – click here…

The Korean War’s Effect on Wall Street (Quick Magazine, 1950)

The outbreak of the war in Korea sent stocks tumbling in all important world markets. In N.Y., three months of profits were wiped out. At week’s end some stocks rose, but jittery brokers kept an eye on the war news and – an ear turned toward Washington, where announcements of increased U.S. participation in the fighting touched off further waves of selling>

Cold War Politics and People of Color (Pageant Magazine, 1959)

This well-illustrated article appeared in a middle class American magazine in 1959 and it reported on the rising international sentiments that signaled to the dominate Western powers that the old diplomacy of the wealthier white nations had to change. It will help to explain why the United States re-fashioned their immigration laws in 1965.


The Department of State hated it when Radio Moscow would depict Americans as simply a bunch of lynch-happy bigots…

Mario Moreno: The Mexican Charlie Chaplin (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

A 1942 article about Mexican film comedian Mario Moreno (1911 – 1993) who was widely known and loved throughout Latin America and parts of the West as Cantinflas, the bumbling cargador character of his own creation. Born in the poorest circumstances Mexico could dish-out, Mario Moreno achieved glorious heights in the entertainment industry; by the time he assumed room temperature in the early Nineties he had appeared in well over fifty films.

Dr. Freud (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

This is a profile of Dr. Sigmund Freud that appeared during the last months of his life. In the Spring of 1938 Freud and his family had fled to London in order escape the Nazis.

Al Capone: Tax Evader (Chicagoan, 1931)

Preferring not to be found face-down in the Chicago River, this journalist wrote a very middle-of-the-road sort of article about Al Capone following the thug’s 1931 conviction on tax evasion.

Siegfried Sassoon on the Soldier Poets (Vanity Fair, 1920)

The following five page article was written by the World War I poet, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), in an

attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty….


Sassoon gave a thorough going-over of every war poet that he admired, naming at least twenty. It is a wonderful and revealing read for all those who have come to admire the poets of the First World War and Sigfried Sassoon in particular.


Click here to read additional articles about W.W. I poetry.

Prosperity Returns to Freeport, Texas (Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In 1940, when a defense plant moved into the Gulfport town of Freeport, Texas, the Great Depression came to a screeching halt. Within three months their population shot up from 3,100 to a whopping 7,500, and the economic blessing was not simply confined to that one region:

In Corpus Christi they have a nice little plum in the form of a $25,000,000 naval air base. Houston is getting a $2,000,000 refurbishing of Ellington Field. Randolph Field at San Antonio is getting a costly going over.


Life in Freeport was good. When a local shoeshine lad had found that his pockets were flush with cash after three day’s labor, he exclaimed –

We’re in high cotton now!

The Dying Soldier (Pageant Magazine, 1950)

In this article, Reverend Daniel A. Poling (1884 – 1968), editor of the Christian Herald (Protestant) recalled his visit to the bedside of a dying American soldier in the war-ravaged France of 1944. The young man, a believer in Christ, expressed his undigested views of what lay before him in the afterlife. The author shared his understanding on the topic and found that they weren’t at all dissimilar.

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