Abraham Lincoln had two "life masks"Â created--one in 1860 before the Civil War began and the other in 1865, when the war was ending. The masks were made to preserve what he really looked like in life, but the difference between the two masks was shocking. The 1860...
Who would have thought that a supermarket company's commercial could capture one of the most poignant moments in a bloody war--World War I? The Christmas season is behind us, but I have to mention the commercial that the Sainsbury Company produced this past Christmas,...
Ellen's teeth chattered, and she pulled the thin blanket around her shoulders. She was cold, and she was terrified. In the dim glow of a single candle, she sat on a stool and watched her husband William emerge from the darkness with a pair of scissors in his right...
I did an interview on my Berlin novel, "The Puzzle People," this past week in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Wall came down on November 9, 1989, when an East German bureaucrat accidentally announced the immediate opening of...
This week, as the world observed the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the forgotten stories from the amazing year of 1989 was what took place in Leipzig, East Germany, just one month before the Wall came down on November 9. A Monday prayer...
It seems hard to imagine today, but the Nazis rose to power because they were considered a populist movement at one time, working for the common good. But how could people come to believe such a thing? I recently interviewed University of Illinois professor Peter...
If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd probably be burning up the Internet on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. That's because Twain was quite the self-promoter and a lover of new technology, especially communications technology. I recently...
Sojourner Truth was once told that if she dared to preach, the building where she spoke would be burned. The famous abolitionist responded, "Then I will speak to the ashes." You gotta love it. This past weekend, actress Jennifer Goran and I encountered Sojourner Truth...
In the very early hours of May 13, 1862, a slave named Robert Smalls decided to make his move. Smalls had worked his way up to becoming a wheelman--a pilot--and the Confederates used him to steer the CSS Planter, an armed Rebel military transport during the Civil War....