For almost five decades, the band known as Riders in the Sky ("America's Favorite Cowboys") has entertained and delighted audiences in Nashville and throughout the United States with their mixture of quirky sendups of the silver-screen Western and their "faultless, evocative instrumentation, perfect harmony, fantasy, and humor." Remarkably, the ......
King Charles II was the father of fourteen illegitimate children (if not more) by seven mistresses. Ironically, his marriage to Queen Catherine, a Portuguese princess, proved childless. The eldest and most notable of his children, James, duke of Monmouth, was effectively excluded from the line of succession. After his father's death the duke ......
A devout Catholic, a visionary-and some say prophetic-writer, Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) has gained a growing presence in contemporary popular culture. While O'Connor professed that she did not have an ear for music, allusions to her writing appear in the lyrics and narrative form of some of the most celebrated musicians on the contemporary ......
Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights
In 1854, traveling was full of danger. Omnibus accidents were commonplace. Pedestrians were regularly attacked by the Five Points' gangs. Rival police forces watched and argued over who should help. Pickpockets, drunks and kidnappers were all part of the daily street scene in old New York. Yet somehow, they endured and transformed a trading post ......
Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship
An Englishwoman born in 1831, Isabella Bird was frequently ill as a child and young woman, and her doctors recommended a life of travel and fresh air as the cure. Ultimately, she took the advice and traveled the world. And traveled. And traveled. Bird connected with the beauty of the Colorado Plains and the valleys and mountain parks that she ......
On the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, the most important moment in LGBTQ history-depicted by the people who influenced, recorded, and reacted to it. June 28, 1969, Greenwich Village: The New York City Police Department, fueled by bigoted liquor licensing practices and an omnipresent backdrop of homophobia and transphobia, raided the ......
Scholars devoted to analysis of Richard Wagner's operas and music-dramas have long noted his numerous comparisons between their characters and plots in his letters, essays, and recorded remarks. Yet no one has previously attempted to assess their implications for our systematic understanding of his art. Following Heise's allegorical interpretation ......
On October 16, 1943, the Jews of Rome were targeted for arrest and deportation. The Nazis, the Vatican, and the Jews of Rome examines why-and more importantly how-it could have been avoided, featuring new evidence and insight into the Vatican's involvement. At the time, Rome was within reach of the Allies, but the overwhelming force of the ......
In 1869, more than twenty years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony made their declaration of the rights of woman at Seneca Falls, New York, the men of the Wyoming Territorial Legislature granted women over the age of 21 the right to vote in general elections. And on September 6, 1870, a grandmother named Louisa Ann Swain stepped up ......
