I finished a great book last night: The Chemistry of Alchemy, by Cathy Cobb, Monty Fetterolf, and Harold Goldwhite. It’s a history of alchemy, but Cobb et al. aren’t historians. They’re chemists. The chapters on history alternate with alchemical experiments the reader can do at home. Obviously there’s no formula for Read more
It’s only been in the past 200 years that people in the West married for love. Before that, marriage was for purely practical reasons. “But,” you’re wondering, “didn’t people fall in love?” Sure they did. Just not with their spouses. Adultery used to be normal — at least for men. Read more
As you know, I’ll read a book on any subject as long as the author makes it interesting. So when I picked up The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton, I had hopes. I mean, I once read a book on the history of diagramming sentences, and it was hilarious. Read more
Oliver Sacks was one of my favorite science writers. (He died a couple of years ago, sadly.) He was a neurologist, best known for the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He wrote about things we’d learned about the workings of the mind through people who’d suffered Read more
I’m a textiles nerd. I spin, I knit, I weave. I love the feeling of being connected with thousands of ancestors. I’ve read a few books on the subject of textile history, of course, but I doubt most of my readers care about the technical stuff. So instead I’m going Read more
When you go to a retail shop, especially a chain store, everything you experience is planned from the moment you walk in. Fortune 500 retailers have actually hired people to follow shoppers around and watch what they do. Here’s a few things you don’t think about. — Store temperature. Dressing Read more
I spent this week sick with a cold, so my reading has been limited to absolute fluff with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I’m feeling a little better today, though, so I’m skimming through a couple of books I’ve read already on a subject y’all might find interesting. Stay tuned!
Sleep is weird. We spend about a third of our lives asleep. Gerbils and lions do it 13 hours a day. Elephants average only 3.5 hours. Birds and dolphins only sleep with half their brain at a time, so they can still fly and surface for air. Obviously it’s important, Read more
Subtitle: Why You Should Always Get Your Flu Shot In the year 1918, the entire world caught influenza. It was a particularly virulent strain, and thanks to troop movements in WWI it became the first recorded global pandemic. A lot of people died. And it wasn’t just children or the Read more
The short version: from colonial times until the mid-1800’s, white America was drunk. Really drunk. Like, most of the time, especially the men. But even the women and children made our modern-day party animals look like lightweights in comparison. The longer version: Rum, gin, and brandy were thought medicinal. And Read more