Damn History | Issue 74

Happy new year! I hope most Damn History subscribers will not see a big difference, but I have moved this newsletter to a new platform. The old platform, which I used for six years, is shutting down.

We currently have 902 subscribers. It’s an unusual community of people who like to read and write popular history, a type of history-writing for non-academic audiences.

Do you know people who enjoy that kind of writing? Please direct them to this new link to subscribe to Damn History, or feel free to forward this issue in its entirety.

Here in Damn History you'll find, as usual, recommendations on good and popularly accessible historical reading, with tips on writing and links to my own work.

 — Jack El-Hai

Follow me on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @Jack_ElHai

Contact me at [email protected]

Personal Notes

If you are following the passage of my book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist from print to a screen adaptation, this article from Variety gives the newest details on the cast, crew, and production schedule. Shooting starts in eight weeks! (There’s more info here as well.)

For a bountiful collection of my popular-history book, article, and audiobook recommendations, search X (formerly known as Twitter) for the hashtag #popularhistory.

 Recent Popular History from All Over

You may find some of these articles behind a paywall if you’ve exceeded the publisher’s allowance of free views.

Svetlana Stalin became the West’s most famous political defector, and a journalist befriended her.

An enslaved man may have beaten Magellan in circumnavigating the globe.  

Cultural depictions of the “transpacific Filipina” laid bare anxieties about the roles of women in the Cold War Phillippines.

American librarians helped trounce the Nazis.

Was the design of the Roosevelt dime a red plot?

Too few people know of Virginia Kraft, one of America’s greatest sportswriters.

Texas unconstitutionally kept a man on death row.

Sheet music discovered in the Auschwitz camp archives has been premiered in public.

Old-school hair analysis is junk science, but it still keeps people behind bars.

The Espionage Act has a troubled history.

In her own time, Emily Dickinson was best known for her “butter-stained recipes.”

“Genocide is only obvious in hindsight.”

Resources       

Popularizing the Past, a new book by Nick Whitham, explores the history of popular-history writing by academics. And a cautionary tale awaits academics who dream of writing best-selling books.

Historian and researcher Lauren Lassabe explains what she does all day.

Internal emails show that politics played a big part in the decision of the Texas Historical Commission to remove books on slavery from plantation gift shops.

Author Tom Clavin describes his approach to writing popular history.

Paper napkins are pretty good for writing.

“No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep.” – Anne Bernays

Housekeeping

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More next month, and thanks for taking a look. And you are welcome to forward Damn History in its entirety to anyone.

About me: I'm a journalist whose beat is history. I've contributed hundreds of articles to such publications as Smithsonian, The Atlantic, Wired, Topic, Scientific American Mind, Discover, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Longreads.com, and many others. My books include The Lost Brothers: A Family’s Decades-Long Search, The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness, Non-Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines, and The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Goering, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WW2. I often give presentations to groups of writers, readers, and others.

Please feel free to get in touch.