If you’ve been studying a subject for as long as I have, you may think there isn’t anything left to discover. I’ve been studying World War I and how it changed the lives of ordinary people since I was a teenager. When I embarked on writing A Tale of Two Nations: Canada. U.S. and WW1, […]
The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906
In the early morning of April 18, 1906, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked San Francisco. Within minutes it became one of the most devastating natural disasters of the 20th century, coming just a few years after the Galveston Hurricane. The quake had been preceded for decades by smaller earthquakes, foreshadowing what was to come. At […]
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Canadian-American Relations in the 1910s
Today Canada and the United States are loyal Allies. A century ago, however, there was no love lost between the nations. The reasons are long and complex, but we will touch upon two aspects of Canadian-American relations in the 1910s. Identity Early 20th century Canada was a nation stuck between two powers. It was tied […]
Villisca Ax Murder House
Today, it’s called the Villisca ax murder house, but in the early 1910s, it was known simply as the home of the Moore family. Villisca is a sleepy town in southwestern Iowa that became the scene of a gruesome crime the night of June 9, 1912. That night, an unknown assailant snuck into the home […]
Devil in the White City
I was excited to see that Erik Larson’s book Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America is in development to be made into a motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Larson’s book reads like a novel but is, in reality, a nonfiction piece. Every event that occurs in the […]
How the Other Half Lives
Once upon a time in America, a large number of people lived in abject poverty, out of sight and out of mind. Photojournalist Jacob Riis’s 1890 book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York revealed this hidden community to the affluent and middle class. His book was an expose on tenement living, […]
Americans Who Served in WW1 Prior to April 1917
The United States joined World War I on April 6, 1917, and Americans fought their first major engagement in the Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918. The American Expeditionary Force was forced to learn how to fight in a world where warfare had become more aggressive, mechanized and deadly. The U.S. Army’s last engagement was […]
Bow to the Power of Mother Nature: Galveston Hurricane of 1900
On Sept. 8, 1900, a hurricane ripped through Galveston, then Texas’s largest city, and became one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history. The city was important to the shipping industry and was a vacation spot for the wealthy. It also was technologically forward, introducing telephones and electricity before many other cities. A Brewing […]
WWI: Forgotten in the U.S. But Not Around the World
World War I is the most important event of the 20th century, setting into motion a second world war, the Cold War, and countless political and social revolutions. Most Americans know nothing about it including the fact that Veterans Day, November 11, was Armistice Day. To add insult to injury, there is no national World […]