Category: Learn History Through Fiction

A character in my novel-in-progress collects old issues of National Geographic. When I was growing up in the 1950s, the iconic yellow-and-oak-leaf-bordered magazine took pride of place alongside the World Book Encyclopedia and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books in the Bronx apartment of our aspirational working class family. The magazine began in 1888 as a scholarly journal sent to 165 members of the National Geographic Society. In 1905, under the direction of Society President Alexander Graham Bell, it shifted to what he called “dynamical pictures.” The Board of Managers censured Bell for making the magazine “unscientific” but its popularity took off. The border was introduced in 1910 as an early attempt at branding. Color photos appeared in the 1930s. Today National Geographic has 40 million subscribers.

Upton Sinclair, author of the 1905 novel The Jungle which exposed the horrors of the meat-packing industry, was inspired by his friendship with Mother Jones, namesake of the magazine founded in 1976. Born in 1837, Mary Harris Jones was jailed for organizing workers and spurred tens of thousands to join labor unions. Her famous war cry was, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” Read about an Italian immigrant women who works in a Chicago meat-packing plant in the early 1900s in the novel Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Until the early 1900s, physicians practiced without degrees or regulations. Before science knew about germs, doctors moved between anatomy labs, medical wards, and operating rooms without washing their hands. As a result, women delivered by doctors were more likely to die of infection than those tended by midwives, who remained by each mother’s bedside. Read more about pregnancy and childbirth a century ago in the novel Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

In the early 1900s, the most popular douche was Lysol. It was made with cresol, a compound that caused inflammation and burning, but marketed to women as safe and gentle for maintaining “dainty feminine allure.” Doctors recorded hundreds of Lysol poisonings and scores of deaths from uterine irrigation. Read about a young, poor, and unwed pregnant Italian immigrant 100 years ago in the novel Tazia and Gemma (see more about the book in NOVELS).

Composer Julia Wolfe sought the right scissors — dozens of pairs — for the New York Philharmonic’s 1919 premiere of her oratorio “Fire in My Mouth,” which commemorates the 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire that killed 146 garment workers, most of them young immigrant women. Wiss manufactured the scissors that made the satisfying “swoosh” sound Wolfe wanted to memorialize their work and death. Read about a survivor of the fire and her daughter in the novel Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

In November 1909, 23-year-old labor activist Clara Lemlich Shavelson led a strike of 20,000 women to protest working conditions in New York’s garment industry. Male union leaders opposed the strike, but three months later, factory owners agreed to a 52-hour work week and recognized the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). One holdout was the Triangle Waist Company, where a 1911 fire killed 146 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Read about a survivor of the fire and her daughter in the novel Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

In the early decades of the twentieth century, touring “midget troupes” performed throughout Europe and Russia. One troupe, the Royal Russian Midgets, composed of poor peasants with few other opportunities, toured the world, often exploited by managers and venue owners. Their last stop was the U.S., where they retired in 1941 after purchasing land in Sweetwater Estates just off Florida’s Tamiami Trail. The community thrived until the last house was torn down in 1970. Read the novel A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. to learn about another group of exploited little people from Eastern Europe, the Leopold von Singer Midgets, who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. Find out more about the book in NOVELS.

On February 9, 1964 at 8 PM EST, 73 million people watched the BEATLES on The Ed Sullivan Show. Later that night, RINGO STARR met the actor who played the MUNCHKIN CORONER in The Wizard of Oz at Grossinger’s Hotel in the Catskills, where the Munchkins were holding their 25th reunion. REALLY? To find out, read A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., a fictional biography of the actor Meinhardt Raabe. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

Peanut butter became an American kitchen staple during World War I when people were encouraged to substitute peanuts for beef and pork so that meat could instead be sent to the troops fighting overseas. When the war ended, people gladly crossed peanut loaf and peanut soup off the menu, but peanut butter has remained a favorite for over a century. Read more about what people ate during WWI, including a teenager who lies about his name and age to escape his immigrant Jewish family and join the navy in On the Shore. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

On January 20, 1942, 15 Nazi officials met in a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western edge of Berlin. They nibbled snacks and drank cognac. According to minutes taken by Adolf Eichmann, the agenda contained one item: “The organizational, logistical and material steps for a final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” Planning the Holocaust took them only 90 minutes. All told, they planned to kill eleven million Jews, not only in Europe, but also the Soviet Union, England, Ireland, and Switzerland. Learn more in my forthcoming novel, One Person’s Loss (Vine Leaves Press, September 2022), about a young Jewish couple who flee from Germany to the U.S. just before the Holocaust, but during the war, the husband returns to Berlin as a spy for the OSS and hides a transmitter inside the handle of a water pitcher used to eavesdrop at Wannsee. Read more about One Person’s Loss and my other historical fiction in NOVELS.