Historical Figures Archives - The History Reader : The History Reader https://www.thehistoryreader.com/category/historical-figures/ A History Blog from St. Martin’s Press Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:45:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/favicon.png Historical Figures Archives - The History Reader : The History Reader https://www.thehistoryreader.com/category/historical-figures/ 32 32 The Landmarks of Mary Ann Patten’s Maine https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/the-landmarks-of-mary-ann-pattens-maine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-landmarks-of-mary-ann-pattens-maine Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:43:24 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=11075 by Tilar J. Mazzeo New York Times bestselling author Tilar J. Mazzeo gives a behind-the-scenes look at Rockland, Maine, the home of Mary Ann Patten and Joshua Patten. Her book, The Sea Captain’s Wife, tells the true story of Mary Ann, the first female captain of a merchant ship, and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica’s […]

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by Tilar J. Mazzeo

New York Times bestselling author Tilar J. Mazzeo gives a behind-the-scenes look at Rockland, Maine, the home of Mary Ann Patten and Joshua Patten. Her book, The Sea Captain’s Wife, tells the true story of Mary Ann, the first female captain of a merchant ship, and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica’s deadly waters.

When I was writing The Sea Captain’s Wife, I was interested to see in person some of the places in Maine that were important in her life and to her story, because, as a writer, following in the footsteps of the people about whom I’m writing is part of the process of seeing the world through their eyes and bringing them to life for readers. For me, following in Mary Ann and Joshua’s footsteps was a particularly interesting because, as I mention in the epilogue to the book, I also happened to grow up and have deep roots in the same small fishing village where Joshua Patten came from in midcoast Maine. I spent the first five years of my life, in fact, in Owls Head, near the Muscle Ridge Islands and the Weskeag River, where Joshua and Mary Ann dreamed of building a farm someday.

The Weskeag River is one of my favorite places, because it’s the kind of tiny village where you feel that you’ve stepped back in time. So much of Maine is touristed that, as a local, you tend to cherish those places where no one really has any reason to visit. Where exactly Joshua’s lot of land was is hard to figure out from the road, because much of that land has still never been developed and is deep woods, but in this photo you can get a glimpse of the river. This is where Joshua and Mary Ann dreamed of building a farm one day. 

The Weskeag River
The Weskeag River where Mary Ann and Joshua dreamed of building a farm. Photo courtesy of Tilar J. Mazzeo, 2025.

This view is taken with your back to the sea, and if you turn and look the other direction you see the little village, with its reversing tidal falls, and then the river stretches out to sea for a bit as it bends and turns. Beyond the mouth of the river are the Muscle Ridge Islands, where Joshua’s family land was and where his brother, Uriah, owned property in the 1850s. 

Maine coastline by air
Overview of Maine’s coast by air. Courtesy of Tilar J. Mazzeo, 2025.

The best way to get a sense of the geography is from the air, and this is a photograph recently taken on a flight from Owls Head down to Boston, which, if you’re a first time visitor to Maine, is one of the most lovely ways to see the coast and sure beats sitting in summer traffic on Route 1.

How about where Mary Ann and Joshua lived in Rockland, while they were saving up a “competence” to build their farm? They owned a small house on South Main Street in Rockland, and I was also able from the old deed records to find the plot of land on the title register. In this photo, you can see the lot: it’s where the Maritime Energy gas station is on the left in this photo.

The plot of land on South Main Street in Rockland, ME, that the Pattens owned. Photo courtesy of Tilar J. Mazzeo, 2025.
The plot of land on South Main Street in Rockland, ME, that the Pattens owned. Photo courtesy of Tilar J. Mazzeo, 2025.

However, over the centuries that plot of land has been chopped up and divided, and while the deed today is connected to the gas station property, I actually think it’s very likely that the Patten house did survive and is that little gray house you can see behind the gas station in this picture. That house, today 10 Crescent Street in Rockland, was built in 1851, making the timing right. I think it’s probably pretty unlikely that back in the 1850s they would have built another house so close by, though I guess that’s not impossible. But more likely, the gas station lot was once the front garden of the Patten family home and the little gray house was their first residence. Straight ahead of you in this photo, not too much further down that little street that runs in front of the gray house, is Rockland Harbor and the sea.

One of the other places that it took some detective work to find was the location of the Poor Farm in Rockland, where their son Joshua Jr. was an inmate. When I was five, we moved from Owls Head to an old 1790s farmhouse just beyond the north end of Chickawaukie Lake. The Mill Stream drains out of the southern end of Chickawaukie, so we knew that area well as children because it wasn’t far from the public beach. 

Chickawaukie was also the site in the nineteenth-century of ice houses and an ice harvest, so, when Mary Ann Patten was offered ice from Rockland in her drinks on their voyage home from Panama, it’s pretty likely that the ice came from this same location. The Rockland Historical Society has an old photograph of that ice harvesting on Chickawaukie, in fact, from the 1890s, the period when Joshua Jr. was living nearby. 

Chickawaukie Lake ice harvesting in the 19th century
Ice harvesting on Chickawaukie Lake. Credit: Rockland Historical Society archives.

From Chickawaukie, if you follow the stream back into the Highlands (which are to the left and behind you in this photo), it’s easy to lose your orientation pretty quickly because even the course of stream has changed over the centuries. 

The Poor Farm today is just a wooded lot, kind of down in a gulley when the stream runs through the woods and through some culverts. My mother says that when she was growing up in Rockland, most working people lived in fear of the Poor Farm, and if you were naughty someone might threaten to send you there. There used to be a dam and a mill pond just down the way from the Poor Farm, but that’s gone now too, and what used to be farmland now is forest so it can be quite disorienting. 

Luckily, there is a postcard from the nineteenth century that shows the old Mill and the bridge, as Joshua Jr. would have known it though. This is the site of where he drowned that day and where the Patten family story ended.

Postcard of Old Mill and the bridge where Joshua Jr. drowned.
Old Mill and Bridge. Courtesy of University of Maine.
Author Tilar J. Mazzeo
Photo credit: Janis Jean

DR. TILAR J. MAZZEO is the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of numerous award-winning works of narrative nonfiction, including history and biography titles. Formerly the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College and Professeur Associée in the Department of World Literatures at the University of Montreal, Dr. Mazzeo left the academy in 2019 to focus full-time on writing. A fifth-generation sailor and tenth-generation Mainer (where the Patten story begins), she lives today on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where, with her husband, she captains a Vancouver 42 offshore sailboat.

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]]> Featured Excerpt: Tom Paine’s War https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/featured-excerpt-tom-paines-war/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=featured-excerpt-tom-paines-war Tue, 06 Jan 2026 08:00:56 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=11046 by Jack Kelly In 1776, Tom Paine’s words—and the determination of American patriots—allowed our nation to survive its first crisis. A tribute to the Revolution’s 250th anniversary, Tom Paine’s War is a riveting exploration of our nation’s birth. It reveals how the power of words—and the power of belief—both speak as well to America’s current crisis. Read […]

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by Jack Kelly

In 1776, Tom Paine’s words—and the determination of American patriots—allowed our nation to survive its first crisis. A tribute to the Revolution’s 250th anniversary, Tom Paine’s War is a riveting exploration of our nation’s birth. It reveals how the power of words—and the power of belief—both speak as well to America’s current crisis. Read on for a featured excerpt!

Prologue

Although summer’s days were numbered, on September 15, 1776, a dirty, unwelcome heat still blanketed the region around New York City. Men sweated in their wool uniform coats; women, in their stays and gowns.

Americans were in their second year of war. The conflict that had begun accidentally at Lexington, Massachusetts, in April 1775 had initially seemed to many a continuation of the disturbances that had roiled the colonies for a decade. Americans had endured the Stamp Act riots, the slaying of five Boston patriots by regular troops, the dumping of the tea, the boycotts and the debates.

With the bloody battle at Bunker Hill, the patriots’ ultimately futile invasion of Canada, and George Washington’s successful effort to drive the British army out of Boston in March 1776, the war had taken on a more serious aspect. But most citizens still felt that it would ultimately be settled by reconciliation with the mother country.

Then came Common Sense. In January 1776, the pamphlet became the fastest-selling publication ever distributed in the colonies. It did not mince words or argue for compromise. It stated flat out that monarchy, the dominant form of European government for centuries, was an artifice by which a small group of dishonest men gained ascendency over the majority. The king was a fraud. The tradition of hereditary aristocracy was a device that robbed common people of the fruits of their labor and of their rightful inheritance. The goal of Americans should not be to find accommodation with Britain, the author insisted, but to permanently break all bonds and declare themselves free and independent states. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’Tis time to part.

Painting of Thomas Paine by Laurent Dabos. National Portrait Gallery (London). Public domain.
Painting of Thomas Paine by Laurent Dabos. National Portrait Gallery (London). Public domain.

Thomas Paine, the author of this remarkable document, had spent most of his life in England. Yet since having crossed the Atlantic two years earlier, he had embraced the American cause wholeheartedly and had shaped in prose the thoughts and aspirations of many ordinary citizens. His words electrified the colonies. George Washington, who was struggling to shape diverse militia units into a new Continental Army, praised “the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained in the pamphlet Common Sense.” He hoped the argument would push the timid delegates in Congress to declare the colonies independent.

It did. The essay was circulated as a pamphlet and copied in the newspapers of every city. It was discussed over farm fences, debated in taprooms, and argued about in colonial legislatures. Barely five months later, Congress took the momentous step of declaring the colonies independent. A government of our own is our natural right, Paine had written. On July 4, 1776, the delegates asserted that American colonies were now “Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.”

The reaction of the British government was to attempt to bring the colonies back into the empire by force. The king ordered two armies to descend on America. Ten thousand professional fighters would occupy Canada and invade the rebellious territory from the north. Forty thousand more would sail directly to New York. The troops would include thousands of hired soldiers from Britain’s allies among the German principalities.

Now the war had taken on a new meaning. Now it was no longer a dispute over taxation or representation or the duty owed to a monarch. If Americans won their freedom, it would mark a new epoch in the world. And now New York was at the war’s epicenter.

Part One

September 15–September 16, 1776

Chapter 1

By September 1776, Thomas Paine had done more than any other individual to convince Americans to break their ties with England and to declare themselves independent. He well understood that dispensing with the centuries-long tradition of monarchical rule was a dangerous and daunting endeavor. But even he did not fully grasp the sacrifice that would be required or the depth of the crisis that now loomed over his adopted homeland.

One who had heeded his words was a young Connecticut lad named Joseph Martin. He may have read Paine’s delicious phrases in a pamphlet, or he may have heard them repeated in the town square. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. Yes! It was the shining hope of the young. Remake the world. The words had stirred Martin, sounding a chord in his heart like an organ in church.

So, on a hot July 6 in the year 1776, four months shy of turning sixteen, Joseph had said to a young friend, “If you enlist I will.” To himself he whispered, “I may as well go through with the business now as not.” Independence in the air, he went through with it. He signed up for six months to “try out sogerin’.” He had become a musketman with Peck’s Third Company of Douglas’s Fifth Battalion of Wadsworth’s brigade of Connecticut new levy militia. He had joined a revolution.

When he had first put on the uniform, Martin had felt his soul expanding. He sensed his frail body growing larger, tougher. As he marched in step with his fellow soldiers, he gloried in a greater sense of life. He and the men of his regiment were a muscular creature, more powerful, more forceful, far grander than any individual man. He was part of an army.

New York City and surrounding area map from Tom Paine's War.
A map of New York City and its surrounding area from Tom Paine’s War.

His regiment had ridden a sloop down Long Island Sound through Hell Gate and along the dirty river to the wharf at New York City. At the time, the entire city extended barely more than a mile north of its southern tip at the Battery. Martin and his fellows had paraded proudly on Broad Street. They had joined the mass of armed men commanded by George Washington, men who would fend off the onslaught of the king’s forces.

***

That was then. Now, in mid-September, the sluggish Sunday morning found Martin and his regiment stretched out along Kip’s Bay, a cove two and a half miles north of New York City.

Now he lay in a ditch behind heaped dirt along the bank of the East River. He had been on duty all night, his eyes peering into blackness till they ached. He had watched the starlight flash on the black water. Now the heavy air and an empty fatigue pressed against him. The smell made him think of a freshly dug grave. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, swatted at the age-old insects pestering his face.

He allowed a deep pity for himself to suffuse his breast. He was hungry and morning had brought no food. The predictable rhythms of his childhood had gone awry. He had to go where he was ordered, but he sensed that the officers did not know what they were doing. They were pulling strings to make him jerk this way and that.

The unseasonable heat made it hard to concentrate. At dawn, four British warships had heaved into sight. They stopped directly opposite the American troops. Their clanking anchors dropped with mighty splashes. The chains rattled out. The rising sun became tangled in their rigging.

Martin and his fellows stared at these looming vessels. They were close enough to let the recruits exchange banter with the tars, who were busy attaching spring lines to the cables so that they could revolve the ships with capstans and point their gaping cannon at the shore. Close enough for the Americans to read Phoenix on the stern of the largest. Blessed Jesus, forty-four guns on two decks run out for action.

Tom Paine’s War copyright © 2026 by Jack Kelly. All rights reserved.

Author Jack Kelly
Photo credit: Jeff Brouws

JACK KELLY is an award-winning author and historian. His books include Band of Giants, which received the DAR History Medal, and God Save Benedict Arnold, a Finalist for the New England Book Awards. He has published five novels, and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Nonfiction Literature. Kelly has appeared on The History Channel, National Public Radio, and C-Span. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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]]> Featured Excerpt: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/featured-excerpt-the-womens-orchestra-of-auschwitz/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=featured-excerpt-the-womens-orchestra-of-auschwitz Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:16:12 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=11053 by Anne Sebba An instant USA Today bestseller, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba is a vivid portrait of the disparate women who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz. Read on for a featured excerpt! The success of the men’s orchestra, smaller than the big […]

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by Anne Sebba

An instant USA Today bestseller, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba is a vivid portrait of the disparate women who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz. Read on for a featured excerpt!

Auschwitz gate
Auschwitz’s main gate, bearing the motto “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes one free). Public domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The success of the men’s orchestra, smaller than the big symphony orchestra in Auschwitz I and known as the Lagerkapelle (or camp chamber ensemble) under Laks’s direction, was likely a major source of inspiration for Maria Mandl’s idea to develop a women’s orchestra. The Laks orchestra played in the men’s sector of Birkenau, known as B1b, and Mandl proposed that the women’s orchestra should be housed in a separate but nearby section known as B1a, which would similarly play marches for the female prisoners going out to work.

“I had to organize the orchestra under Mandl,” Helen “Zippi” Spitzer said in an interview in 2000, adding that “she noticed I’m an artist and a musician.”

Zippi’s comments are an interesting indication of the degree to which she had ingratiated herself with Mandl. She had a sure instinct of how best to survive the Nazi extermination system, deploying every aspect of her varied background and wide-ranging abilities to make herself indispensable to Mandl, who had the power of life and death over all the women prisoners. “Even she did not understand the system,” Zippi said of Mandl. “She wanted results. If she asked for 18 or 20 diagrams for Berlin she couldn’t care less when I did it, how I did it, as long as it was done.”

Once, when Zippi was ill with stomach cramps, she needed to lie on her bunk bed until they passed, a serious infringement of camp rules. Mandl found her there, but, instead of punishing Zippi, the normally brutal guard simply touched her gently on the forehead in a motherly way and allowed her to remain. “She knew I did my job and delivered and worked during the night sometimes. So I could have the day free,” Zippi explained in the same interview. “Some kommandos were protected…I didn’t investigate how I knew it. I just did.”

As soon as Mandl discussed her orchestra project, Zippi realized that her claim to be a “musician,” even though she could only play the mandolin to a basic level, would create further dependence. And in this way the ring of mutual manipulation tightened.

The Remains of Block 12. Photo by Anne Sebba.
All that remains today of Block 12, the musicians’ block, with the central pile of bricks that once provided a stove. Photo courtesy of Anne Sebba.

However, establishing an all-female orchestra was bound to be complicated, especially since the decision was not up to Mandl alone. First, she had to clear the project with a senior male SS camp official. In early 1943 she approached Paul Müller, camp director and number two to the commandant, who, fortunately for her, saw there were advantages as it simplified counting the rows of prisoners marching to work and made the imposition of faux military discipline easier. He agreed to help her with the paperwork that was necessary to propose the project to Rudolf Höss, overall commandant of the camp.

Zippi’s role in helping Mandl set up the women’s orchestra was in fact rather more ambiguous than she made it sound. Although Zippi explained that she had already been “very creative” in the camp drawing office and so now grabbed “the chance to talk about music and artistic things,” she nonetheless said that Mandl had initially turned to Katya Singer, a fellow Slovak Zippi had befriended on the journey to Auschwitz, for help with this venture and it was Katya who then approached Zippi. “The camp hierarchy wanted Katya, because she was the top administrative inmate at this time, to go with them to Auschwitz I and make contact with the men there partly to get instruments and partly to discuss procedures…But Katya did not understand music so she suggested I go in her place. So that was the beginning.”

Katya did not speak about the origins of the orchestra in her one known interview but spoke highly of Zippi as her assistant. “Zippi never did anything harmful to anyone. She was always straightforward with me.” In an earlier interview in 1983, Zippi described the origins of the orchestra slightly differently, omitting Katya’s initial role.

“[Mandl] was coming to our camp office and started to discuss how to go about it…we promised her we’d get professional musicians from the card index and if not we’d make inquiries.” Zippi was clearly keen to be involved: “I wanted the contact with the men,” she said, claiming later that she thought they would be a useful source of information for any resistance activities. She thus asked for permission to be included in the group that went to the men’s camp in Auschwitz I “to see how they did it.”

Zippi provided a slightly different version in 1982 of how the women’s orchestra began. “We wanted to see how the men functioned,” she said. “I had a dual role working with and reporting to Katya Singer on the negotiations with the men’s orchestra. They agreed to supply us with violins and all the necessary instruments in abundance. They had their own and there were thousands of instruments from all over Europe from deportees…even the sheet music they brought with them was used by the camp orchestras…after four weeks the orchestra had a barracks. It was Block 12.

In early 1943, while these preliminary discussions were continuing, a specially convened block leaders’ meeting in Birkenau announced the plan to start another orchestra, this time for female-only players. Hanna Szyller (later Palarczyk), deputy block elder in Block 12, attended the meeting and was in no doubt that the idea for an all-female orchestra originated from Mandl. Female block elders, the slightly privileged prisoners whose job was largely to maintain discipline and distribute food, were now instructed to seek out prisoners who could play instruments.

Among the first to volunteer immediately when she heard about the creation of the new orchestra was Zofia Czajkowska, a thirty-six-year-old Polish music teacher, who had arrived on April 27, 1942, from her hometown of Tarnów on the first Polish women’s transport to Auschwitz. Zofia had been tortured in prison before deportation and then spent a year at the camp assigned to the most exhausting physical labor. By early 1943 she was in a weak physical and mental state and saw the orchestra as possibly the only means of escaping from her plight.

The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz Copyright © 2025 by Anne Sebba. All rights reserved.

 

Anne Sebba
Photo credit: Serena Bolton

ANNE SEBBA is a prize-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written several books, including That Woman and Les Parisiennes. A former chair of Britain’s Society of Authors and now on the Council, Anne is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. She lives in London.

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]]> Featured Excerpt: JFK: Public, Private, Secret https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/featured-excerpt-jfk-public-private-secret/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=featured-excerpt-jfk-public-private-secret Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:14:22 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=11022 by J. Randy Taraborrelli J. Randy Taraborrelli shares with The History Reader an excerpt from his instant New York Times bestselling book, JFK: Public, Private, Secret. Read on to discover how Jackie’s parents and John’s parents felt about their budding relationship as well as early details on how John’s family supported his early political career. […]

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by J. Randy Taraborrelli

J. Randy Taraborrelli shares with The History Reader an excerpt from his instant New York Times bestselling book, JFK: Public, Private, Secret. Read on to discover how Jackie’s parents and John’s parents felt about their budding relationship as well as early details on how John’s family supported his early political career.

Jackie Bouvier and John F. Kennedy married in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 12, 1953.
Jackie Bouvier and John F. Kennedy married in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 12, 1953. Public domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia.

“The secret to happily-ever-after,” Janet Auchincloss had been preaching to Jackie and Lee ever since they were little girls, “is money and power.” She always believed she was entitled to affluence and security. Rose Kennedy felt the same way. Many women of that time, in fact, felt similarly even if, like Rose, they didn’t come right out and say it. While they dated and married with money and power in mind, to verbalize it would’ve been considered gauche, and certainly to explicitly pass it on to your daughters as a mandate, vulgar. They should learn by example, as Rose’s daughters did. With the exception of Rosie, all of them would marry men who had the potential to make a lot of money and be very powerful. The Kennedy girls would go into their marriages with their own wealth, unlike Jackie and Lee, who had no money of their own. Jack Kennedy met both of Janet’s standards, money and power. Her daughter could do a lot worse, and with John Husted, she would have. Therefore, JFK had Mummy’s approval, though she did have some reservations.

Janet knew her former husband, Jack Bouvier, and her father, Jim Lee, had strong feelings about Jack’s father, Joe. Jackie’s cousin John Davis explained: “In 1945, Jackie’s grandfather, Jim Lee, confided in Joe that he was about to invest in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. That was prime real estate. Joe acted quickly and bought it for himself, thereby double- crossing Jim. Earlier, when Joe was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, his crackdown on the way certain stocks could be traded had decimated Jack Bouvier’s portfolio. ‘My father and ex-husband hate Jack’s father,’ Janet told Mrs. [Martha] Bartlett. ‘So?’ Mrs. Bartlett countered. ‘What’s that got to do with Jackie?’ Janet couldn’t disagree with that, I guess.”

Joe Kennedy had been impressed with Jackie when he first met her in Palm Beach in December 1951. Once he realized she might be a factor in their lives, he took it upon himself to look into her background. “He’d heard she was an heiress, but when he checked it out, he found it wasn’t true,” said his nephew Joey Gargan. “He also assumed she was mostly French, given her surname. In fact, he learned she was only about one-eighth French, no matter what her mother, who was mostly Irish, might claim. She had also said the Bouviers were descended from French aristocracy, which also wasn’t true.”

Joe Kennedy’s secretary, Janet DesRosiers, recalled, “Joe used to say, ‘It doesn’t matter who you are. It matters who people think you are.’ That was politics, after all. He decided to keep an eye on Jackie while also giving Jack the freedom to pursue her. After all, she was, by any measure, the perfect political wife on paper. We all saw that. She looked good on Jack’s arm. That mattered.”

At this same time, Jackie was given a promotion at the Times-Herald. Her “Inquiring Photographer” column would be known as the “Inquiring Camera Girl” and would carry her byline. While she was determined to continue working, she felt there was no reason she couldn’t also date Jack. However, their budding romance would be complicated by his workload as he traveled about and laid the groundwork for his Senate campaign. “It was a very spasmodic courtship,” she later said, “conducted mainly at long distance with a great clanking of coins in dozens of phone booths.”

On April 6, after assembling a crackerjack team to help him get to the finish line, Jack officially announced his Senate run. His team included Dave Powers from Boston, a loyal friend who’d been in charge of his congressional campaign. There was also Larry O’Brien, an experienced politico from Springfield, and Kenny O’Donnell, Bobby’s old college roommate, a fellow Irishman who had served in the Army Air Corps.

A big part of Kenny O’Donnell’s job would be taming Jack’s father, who was financing the whole operation but who everyone agreed had a damaged reputation and weak political instincts. Joe could be a bully, unreasonable, contentious, and prone to spreading conspiracy theories. On the plus side, he was a great media strategist, knew how to plant just the right stories at just the right times, and was able to secure the important endorsement of top newspapers, even if he had to pay for them. In a couple months’ time, he’d write a check for half a million dollars to get the support of the conservative Boston Post. Jack would say his father had to “buy the newspaper” to get such great backing. Joe had plenty of money and would spend as much as he needed to in order to see his son win. “Kennedys must win” was his philosophy, always. There had to be a way around him, however, in building the kind of statewide campaign necessary for Jack to win. Kenny had the smarts to figure it out, and a big part of how he did that was to pass the buck on to someone who had real influence over the patriarch: his son Bobby.

Twenty-six-year-old RFK knew that to control his father he needed to act as if he was seeking his approval when, actually, he was strategizing ways around it. Jack too often vehemently disagreed with their father, which always caused havoc, and Teddy, of course, was too young to be a factor. Bobby had turned pacifying the old man into a fine art; he’d been doing it all his life. When his two older brothers were off finding themselves, he was home sparring with Joe. Now, he would be used to tame him. Bobby would end up being a titanic force on Jack’s team, from this point forward . . . and all the way to the White House.

JFK: Public, Private, Secret © 2025 by J. Randy Taraborrelli. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: Ashton Bingham

J. RANDY TARABORRELLI is the acclaimed author of numerous New York Times bestsellers about the Kennedys, including Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot, adapted as a miniseries by NBC, and The Kennedys – After Camelot, adapted for television by Reelz. His other bestselling works include The Kennedy Heirs and Jackie, Janet & Lee. His most recent book, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list. Taraborrelli is currently adapting both Jackie: Public, Private, Secret and JFK: Public, Private, Secret for television.

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]]> Featured Excerpt: The Sea Captain’s Wife https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/featured-excerpt-the-sea-captains-wife/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=featured-excerpt-the-sea-captains-wife Tue, 09 Dec 2025 09:14:38 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=11041 by Tilar J. Mazzeo In The Sea Captain’s Wife, New York Times bestselling author Tilar J. Mazzeo reveals the true story of the first female captain of a merchant ship and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica’s deadly waters. Read on for a featured excerpt! This story begins in another place, another time, in a world […]

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by Tilar J. Mazzeo

In The Sea Captain’s Wife, New York Times bestselling author Tilar J. Mazzeo reveals the true story of the first female captain of a merchant ship and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica’s deadly waters. Read on for a featured excerpt!

Neptune's Car Clipper Ship.
Neptune’s Car Clipper Ship, 19th Century. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.

This story begins in another place, another time, in a world of which only fragments remain. 

Close your eyes and imagine, first, a cold and angry emptiness. The emptiness roars around you. You are on a sea, hurtling where the wind and water take you. You fall and you rise in darkness. The falling is fast and unforgiving and twists your gut as you count the seconds downward. The rising is worse. The sea towers forty feet above you, and you know only the terror that comes before falling. 

Into this emptiness, build yourself a ship. A mighty, ghostly clipper. She is long and lean. Two hundred feet or more from bow to stern, painted coffin black to ride this darkness. You stand on her deck, held aloft with each angry swell by a million board feet of pitch pine laid out in planking, which moans and bends with the force of the ocean: her flesh and muscle. A forest of timber ribs is her backbone. Above this hull, three barren masts rise, a hundred feet above the sea. In fair winds, these ancient, empty trees are strung with 3,500 yards or more of crackling stiff canvas to carry you with unimagined speed around the globe and home again if you are lucky. This night, her yardarms are howling, empty crucifixes. This ship is Neptune’s Car—the mythic chariot of a jealous god of storm and sea. Her name: a tribute to appease a fickle master.

Let the globe of our world spin slowly. Set this chariot upon a point, a latitude, a longitude. Turn west to the New World. Follow the line south from New York City and south some more, past Brazil, to the very last reaches, a place called Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire. Put your finger somewhere in that furious passage, between the end of the Earth and the frozen land of ice, Antarctica. Here is our tempest. Trace your finger around the tip of the continent, westward again, past the fearsome headland of Cape Horn and then past Robinson Crusoe Island. Let your finger take you, following a point somewhere in the great Southern Ocean, back northward, up the coast of two continents, along the edge of the Pacific, until you reach San Francisco: your destination, the city of gold dust. 

We are on a dangerous journey. A journey in which wealthy shipowners pit young men against each other with the promise of riches, urging them on to reckless dangers, in the name of another man’s lucre. The year is 1856. The season is early September: just before spring in the southern hemisphere, too early for this voyage. Somewhere in the darkness, three other ships, our competitors, careen the waves with us. Not all of us will survive this journey. 

At the helm of our ship is a man, the captain, Joshua. He is twenty-nine, but his face is already weather-beaten and tired. The headaches blind him. He castigates himself now. He had misgivings before he saw this ship out of New York’s harbor. He has been ill. He feels his force draining. Sometimes there is a cough; sometimes a fever. He has stood on this deck, sleepless, vigilant, for eight days and nights fighting the blast and the water. At the ropes and in the rigging far above the twisting sea are his crew. Men and boys, barefoot on icy decks too slick for shoe leather. They, too, are frightened, tired. One among them, shackled in chains below these decks, is angry, vengeful.

There is a woman, too, the sole female inhabitant of this bark. She is small and plump, and her black, plaited hair cannot be contained in this tempest. She is the sea captain’s wife and just nineteen: Mary Ann. Her wide skirts and oilskin cloak, her only defense against a polar wind, disguise for the moment the warm, gentle swell in her belly. 

She wants desperately for them to win this race. The prize means, for her and Joshua, freedom. With this purse, with the sale of this cargo, destined to fuel a gold rush making more men rich in distant California, there will be enough. Enough to imagine a different future for them and their baby. Enough to buy a share of a ship and chart one’s own course. Enough, they said to each other when they dreamed, to build a little farm on their land in Maine, where the Weskeag River meets the sea and the salt marshes stretch beyond for many acres. 

But, first, they must survive. 

For eight days and nights Joshua has stood on the quarterdeck and fought the sea. In the gray half-light of the ninth morning, there is no fight left in him. He slips to the deck and lets the darkness take him. There is a cry from somewhere among the crew: “Captain!” In the shadows below the deck, the angry, vengeful officer waits, indignation swelling, also expectant. His eyes narrow. Mary Ann understands. There will be no safe harbor in San Francisco, no freedom, no farm running down to the banks of the Weskeag River unless she fights for them. 

This is the moment her story begins.

The Sea Captain’s Wife Copyright © 2025 by Tilar J. Mazzeo. All rights reserved.

Author Tilar J. Mazzeo
Photo Credit: Janis Jean

DR. TILAR J. MAZZEO is the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of numerous award-winning works of narrative nonfiction, including history and biography titles. Formerly the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College and Professeur Associée in the Department of World Literatures at the University of Montreal, Dr. Mazzeo left the academy in 2019 to focus fulltime on writing. A fifth-generation sailor and tenth-generation Mainer (where the Patten story begins), she lives today on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where, with her husband, she captains a Vancouver 42 offshore sailboat.

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]]> 2025 Holiday Gift Guide https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/2025-holiday-gift-guide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2025-holiday-gift-guide Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:26:22 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=11016 This December, we’re taking a look back at the many fascinating history books that published this year. From axe murderers to the history of rope, from the biography of Mt. Rushmore to a diverse array of WWII stories, the 2025 Holiday Gift Guide has a book recommendation for every history lover. Organized by general topic, […]

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The History Reader 2025 Holiday Gift Guide

This December, we’re taking a look back at the many fascinating history books that published this year. From axe murderers to the history of rope, from the biography of Mt. Rushmore to a diverse array of WWII stories, the 2025 Holiday Gift Guide has a book recommendation for every history lover. Organized by general topic, don’t blame us if you find yourself adding both gifts and books to keep to your shopping cart!

History of a Singular Subject

Two-time National Outdoor Book Award-winning author Buddy Levy’s thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship―and the men who sacrificed everything, including their lives, for science, country, and polar immortality. Named one of Amazon’s Best History Books of 2025!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

A brilliant and bloody examination of the axe’s foundational role in human history, from prehistoric violence, to war and executions, to newspaper headlines and popular culture.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Threads of Empire by Dorothy Armstrong

Carpet specialist Dorothy Armstrong tells the stories surrounding twelve of the world’s most fascinating carpets.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

Rope by Tim Queeney

A unique and compelling adventure through the history of rope and its impact on civilization, in the vein of single-subject bestsellers like Salt and Cod.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

The Zorg by Siddharth Kara

From the Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red, The Zorg is the astonishing yet little-known true story of the most consequential slave ship that ever crossed the Atlantic. Named one of Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s Best History Books of 2025!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger

From the bestselling co-author of Apollo 13 comes the thrilling untold story of the pioneering Gemini program that was instrumental in getting Americans on the moon.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

A Biography of a Mountain by Matthew Davis

Just in time to celebrate the monument’s 100th anniversary, A Biography of a Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

Progress: How One Idea Built Civilization and Now Threatens to Destroy It by Samuel Miller McDonald

For readers of Thomas Piketty, David Graeber, and Jared Diamond: A bold, provocative, wide-ranging argument about the human idea of progress that offers a new vision of our future.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

World War II History

Propaganda Girls by Lisa Rogak

The incredible untold story of four women who spun the web of deception that helped win World War II.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

Award-winning author Keith Lowe’s newest critical deep-dive into the history of Naples during WWII.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour with Jude Dobson

After decades of silence, the last surviving World War II spy operating in the deadly world of Nazi France, reveals the real, untold story of her time as a secret agent.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba

From New York Times bestselling author of Les Parisiennes and That Woman: A Life of Wallis Simpson, this is a powerful and vivid portrait of the women who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz.

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Running Deep: Bravery, Survival, and the True Story of the Deadliest Submarine in World War II

From New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin comes the true story of the deadliest submarine in World War II and the courageous captain who survived torture and imprisonment at the hands of the enemy. Named one of Barnes & Noble’s Best History Books of 2025!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

Historical Figures

A Matter of Complexion by Tess Chakkalakal

A New York Times Editor’s Choice, a biography of Charles Chesnutt, one of the first American authors to write for both Black and white readers.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

The Ride by Kostya Kennedy

Timed for the 250th anniversary of America’s revolution and founding: Paul Revere’s heroic ride, newly told with fresh research into little-known aspects of the story Americans have heard since childhood but hardly understood. A USA Today bestseller and one of Barnes & Noble’s Best History Books of 2025!

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The Rebel Romanov by Helen Rappaport

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters comes the story of a courageous young Imperial Grand Duchess who scandalized Europe in search of freedom.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

JFK: Public, Private, Secret by J. Randy Taraborrelli

From the New York Times bestselling Kennedy historian and author of Jackie: Public, Private, Secret comes the other side of the story—her husband’s: JFK: Public, Private, Secret. Named one of Amazon’s Best History books of 2025!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Milena and Margarete by Gwen Strauss

New from the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Nine, a “narrative of unfathomable courage” (Wall Street Journal) about the two women who fell in love in the Ravensbrück concentration camp at the risk of their lives.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

Winning the Earthquake by Lorissa Rinehart

The first major biography of Jeannette Rankin, a groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and the first American woman to hold federal office.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Military/Espionage History

A Rage to Conquer book by Michael Walsh

Award-winning author Michael Walsh looks at twelve momentous battles that changed the course of Western history.

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Peace Is a Shy Thing by Alex Vernon

The first literary biography of Tim O’Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews.

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Every Weapon I Had by Paris Davis

The story of a Green Beret commander’s heroism during the Vietnam War, and the long fight to recognize his bravery.

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Project Mind Control by John Lisle

The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 

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]]> The Education of John F. Kennedy https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/the-education-of-john-f-kennedy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-education-of-john-f-kennedy Wed, 05 Nov 2025 09:36:05 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=10954 by J. Randy Taraborrelli New York Times bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli shares with The History Reader how John F. Kennedy (JFK) became a stronger leader after publicly apologizing for the Bay of Pigs disaster, which caused the president global humiliation. Read on to discover the education of JFK. When John F. Kennedy was elected […]

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by J. Randy Taraborrelli

New York Times bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli shares with The History Reader how John F. Kennedy (JFK) became a stronger leader after publicly apologizing for the Bay of Pigs disaster, which caused the president global humiliation. Read on to discover the education of JFK.

John F. Kennedy Oval Office Photo
John F. Kennedy Oval Office Photo; July 11, 1963. Cecil Stoughton. Public domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he inherited more than a Cold War. He inherited a national security establishment that believed it knew better than any civilian, especially a 43-year-old with a Harvard accent and chronic back pain. The CIA, the Joint Chiefs, and the Pentagon had all operated with near-total autonomy under Eisenhower. They didn’t expect to be second-guessed by someone they saw as young, untested, and maybe a little too intellectual for his own good. From the moment JFK took office, he was caught in a tug-of-war between his own instincts and the forceful advice of these men around him. It nearly cost him everything.

The Bay of Pigs was the first wake-up call.

In April 1961, Jack Kennedy approved a CIA-led plan to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. The operation had been developed under Eisenhower, refined by the CIA, and signed off by the military brass. Kennedy was uneasy about it from the beginning. He thought the plan was sloppy and overly optimistic, but the experts insisted it would be quick and clean. Therefore, he reluctantly gave it the green light.

It was a disaster. The Cuban exiles were slaughtered or captured, and Castro emerged even stronger. JFK ended up humiliated on the world stage.

Bobby urged Kennedy to take responsibility. “You have to own up to it,” he told him. “People forgive when you admit mistakes.”

Jackie, on the other hand, was suspicious. Her mother, Janet Auchincloss, wrote to a close friend:

Last night Jacqueline told [me] – “Not one goddamn thing should come out of the President’s mouth in terms of admitting anything in relation to it [Cuba].”

The patriarch, Joe Kennedy, agreed: “The president does not apologize,” he roared. “He’s the goddamn president!”

In the end, JFK sided with Bobby. “There’s an old saying,” he told reporters at a State Department press conference four days later, “that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. I am the responsible officer of this government.” He fell on his sword and did so humbly. He didn’t blame the previous Eisenhower administration or lament what he had inherited from it. What happened under his watch was his fault, he said, and that was the end of it.

While writing JFK: Public Private Secret, I spent a lot of time studying how that single failure shaped pretty much everything that came next. What I discovered was that the Bay of Pigs broke Kennedy’s trust, but it also built his backbone.

Allen Dules; 5th director of the CIA
Allen Dulles, 5th director of the CIA. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Within months, JFK fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and reshuffled the intelligence leadership. He stopped deferring to titles and medals. He started asking better questions. Most importantly, he stopped being impressed by resumes and started being guided by conscience.

So when the next crisis hit, he was ready.

In October 1962, American spy planes discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, just ninety miles from Florida. The Joint Chiefs and many in the CIA immediately pushed for airstrikes, followed by an invasion. It was Bay of Pigs 2.0, and this time with nuclear consequences.

But Kennedy had changed. He slowed things down. He insisted on hearing every side. He formed a smaller advisory group called ExComm and demanded honest debate, not groupthink. The loudest voices in the room called for action. But JFK knew what would happen if a single shot were fired: Khrushchev would have to respond, and the world would descend into nuclear war.

“There was no waking or sleeping,” I quote Jackie as having recalled. “No day or night.”

Instead of striking, JFK ordered a naval blockade. It was firm but not aggressive. Importantly, it bought time.

Behind the scenes, JFK opened backchannels to Moscow. He figured Khrushchev wasn’t just an enemy–he was also a man who wanted to avoid annihilation.

It worked. The Soviets agreed to withdraw their missiles. The U.S. quietly agreed not to invade Cuba and also to remove American missiles from Turkey.

Crisis averted. But more importantly, precedent shattered.

In JFK: Public Private Secret, readers will see how close Kennedy came to ignoring his instincts. Again. Most of the men in the room wanted escalation. But this time, JFK stood his ground. “The military are mad,” he confided. “They think in terms of military victory, not human survival.”

It wasn’t just JFK’s brilliance that saved the world. It was the humility of a man who knew what it felt like to get it wrong and not want to make that same mistake again.

As I researched this part of my book, I couldn’t help but wonder: if Kennedy had lived, how far would he have pulled away from Cold War thinking? Would he have drawn down in Vietnam? (In fact, as I wrote, he did have a plan to de-escalate things there.) Could he have reshaped American foreign policy? We’ll never know.

But what we do know is that by the time he and Jackie left for Dallas in November 1963, JFK was no longer the man who nodded politely in briefings and deferred to the so-called experts. He had been burned, and unlike so many others in power, he actually learned from it.

That’s not always part of the Camelot myth. But it should be.

 

Photo credit: Ashton Bingham

J. RANDY TARABORRELLI is the acclaimed author of numerous New York Times bestsellers about the Kennedys, including Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot, adapted as a miniseries by NBC, and The Kennedys – After Camelot, adapted for television by Reelz. His other bestselling works include The Kennedy Heirs and Jackie, Janet & Lee. His most recent book, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list. Taraborrelli is currently adapting both Jackie: Public, Private, Secret and JFK: Public, Private, Secret for television.

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]]> New Books to Read as the Days Get Shorter: November 2025 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/cultural-history/new-books-to-read-as-the-days-get-shorter-november-2025/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-books-to-read-as-the-days-get-shorter-november-2025 Fri, 31 Oct 2025 17:16:58 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=10945 As the days get shorter and the temperatures drop, you’ll want to stay inside to enjoy these fascinating history books publishing this month. From Lorissa Rinehart’s major biography of the first woman to hold a U.S. federal office to Jeffrey Kluger’s highly anticipated story of NASA’s Gemini program, you can’t go wrong with any of […]

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The History Reader Upcoming Books November 2025

As the days get shorter and the temperatures drop, you’ll want to stay inside to enjoy these fascinating history books publishing this month. From Lorissa Rinehart’s major biography of the first woman to hold a U.S. federal office to Jeffrey Kluger’s highly anticipated story of NASA’s Gemini program, you can’t go wrong with any of these history selections.

Winning the Earthquake by Lorissa Rinehart

The first major biography of Jeannette Rankin, a groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and the first American woman to hold federal office.

A suffragist, peace activist, workers’ rights advocate, and champion of democratic reform who ran as a Republican, Rankin remained ever faithful to her beliefs, no matter the price she had to pay personally.  In Winning the Earthquake, Lorissa Rinehart expertly recovers the compelling history behind this singular American hero, bringing her story back to life.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

 
 
A Biography of a Mountain by Matthew Davis

Just in time to celebrate the monument’s 100th anniversary, A Biography of A Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life. From the land’s origins as sacred tribal ground to the expansion of the American West to the politicized present-day conflict over the site, Matthew Davis writes with sensitivity about the complex past and future of one of America’s most recognizable landmarks.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger

From the bestselling co-author of Apollo 13 comes the thrilling untold story of the pioneering Gemini program that was instrumental in getting Americans on the moon.

Told with Jeffrey Kluger’s signature cinematic storytelling and in-depth research and interviews, Gemini is an edge-of-your-seat narrative chronicling the history of the least appreciated—and most groundbreaking—space program in American history. Finally, Gemini’s story will be told, and finally, we’ll learn the truth of how we landed on the moon.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

A Promise Delivered by Ty Seidule and Connor Williams

In 2020, a bipartisan act of Congress mandated changing the names of nine military bases previously named for Confederate soldiers. Over the course of twenty months, the commission completed their mission, carefully combing through years of American history and hearing from tens of thousands of Americans from all walks of life. The commission ultimately chose ten Americans whose individual heroics reflect the collective best of all that America is and could be. 

This is the inspiring story behind the ten American heroes whose names had been originally chosen, told by two members of the Naming Commission that selected them.

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Indignity: A Life Reimagined by Lea Ypi

The author of Free returns with an extraordinary inquiry into historical injustice, dignity, truth, and imagination.

When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, she is faced with unsettling questions. She had been told all records of her grandmother’s youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania. But there her grandmother is in the photo, taken during her honeymoon, smiling as WWII rages on.

What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, spanning the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, and the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity shows what it is like to make choices against the tide of history—and reveals the fragility of truth, collective and personal.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Realm of Ice and Sky by Buddy Levy

Two-time National Outdoor Book Award-winning author Buddy Levy’s thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship―and the men who sacrificed everything, including their lives, for science, country, and polar immortality. Now available in paperback.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

A pathbreaking new way to examine US history, through the lens of the bestselling video game series: Red Dead Redemption.

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as re-creations of history?

In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike. Now available in paperback.

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]]> Featured Excerpt: Lincoln’s Ghost https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/featured-excerpt-lincolns-ghost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=featured-excerpt-lincolns-ghost Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:00:55 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=10927 by Brad Ricca In Lincoln’s Ghost, author Brad Ricca shares with The History Reader the incredible untold story of how the world’s greatest magician, Harry Houdini, waged war upon Spiritualism, uncovering unknown magic, political conspiracies, and surprising secrets along the way. Read on for a featured excerpt that focuses on Mina Crandon, an American psychic […]

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by Brad Ricca

In Lincoln’s Ghost, author Brad Ricca shares with The History Reader the incredible untold story of how the world’s greatest magician, Harry Houdini, waged war upon Spiritualism, uncovering unknown magic, political conspiracies, and surprising secrets along the way. Read on for a featured excerpt that focuses on Mina Crandon, an American psychic who performed under the stage name Margery the Medium.

THE CURSE 

AUGUST 23, 1924 
THE COPLEY HOTEL
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 


American psyhic medium Mina Crandon, also known as Margery the Medium.
American psychic medium Mina Crandon, also known as Margery the Medium. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public domain.

“DO YOU WANT TO SEARCH ME?” asked the blond woman to the man who was convinced she could not speak to the dead. Mina, for that was her real name, was trapped in a wooden cabinet in the center of the room. It was warm, and her bobbed hair was clinging in strands to her forehead. The man—the magician—had put her there, boxed up like some oversize child’s toy. Four other dour men were present, along with a secretary. The others were circled around Mina, in chairs, listening. Her question sounded like a dare. Mina then stretched her neck back, her face almost glowing in its whiteness. Her pale arms draped like willow branches out of rough-cut holes in the sides of the box. She looked at the magician with the slight curl of a smile, waiting for his answer. 

“No,” he said eventually, in a voice that stopped and started like a kind of music. “Never mind. Let it go.” He waved his hand off through the air as if dismissing an insect. “I am not a physician,” he said. 

The magician was somewhere on the edge of fifty, with silver in his eyes and at the temples of his black, curly hair. He was stocky and in shirtsleeves. He sat down on the edge of his chair and slipped his left hand into Mina’s. Her hand was soft; his was large and muscular, with scars that wound like cords around his wrists. His face still looked like the photographs, but also different. Older, for sure, but also more animated. His face was far more alive than the dots of ink in the newspaper that told stories of his daredevil escapes. He was searching and studying as if he were trying to see something.

The men joined hands in their ragged circle around the woman in the box. They had come to Boston months ago on behalf of Scientific American to test the powers of Mina, known in the press as Margery the Medium, to protect her identity and that of her husband, Dr. Le Roi Crandon. At stake was a hefty $2,500 prize. But the real reward would be the stamp of approval that her powers were indeed real. It would be proof of a life beyond death itself, of a door beyond our common inescapable future. It would be proof that the dead could speak again. 

Mina closed her eyes. Even in the low light, they could all see the top of her green silk kimono as it crept up the hollow of her neck. It was the kind one would purchase at Jordan Marsh. Underneath the robe, she wore nothing. The other men in the room—scientists and doctors—were very much aware of this. The lights were then fully dimmed, and the minutes began by the secretary, Miss McManama, who walked behind a thin wall. This was not the kind of sleepy morning darkness chipped away at by birds but the kind of midnight that lay out somewhere in the deep woods. The kind found under a cold lake. 

Magician Harry Houdini
Magician Harry Houdini. 1907. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.

A whistle, low and piercing, sounded out from somewhere. The magician cocked his head. The sound then turned, in the air, and became something more like a deep growl. It came from a hole in the middle of the circle. 

“Walter,” said the voice. It was Mina’s brother, who had been in a terrible railroad accident many years earlier. He’d died in 1911. He was speaking. 

The magician tried to see Mina’s features, but he could not manage with his eyes against the dark. He tried to reach out through his fingers and feet to feel if she was moving, or at least strengthening a tendon somewhere. He thought he felt some part of her move. Almost like a snake. “Houdini,” said Walter, in a deep, resonant voice. The magician focused his blinded eyes on Mina even further, while also trying his best to listen. The ghost—if that is what it was—was speaking to him. 

“You are very clever indeed,” scolded Walter. “But it won’t work.” His voice hung there, almost swinging in its slight echo. “I suppose it was an accident those things were left in the cabinet?” he asked.”

What was left in the cabinet?” snapped Houdini. He felt the other men jolt in their seats. He had no time for regulations. 

Walter laughed calmly, a low and eerie sound. 

“Pure accident, was it? You were not here…but your assistant was.” 

“What was it?” asked Houdini. The cabinet that Mina was locked up in was of his own design. He had constructed it with the help of his assistant, Jim Collins. The cabinet was meant to safeguard against her using tricks to fake the séance. If anything had been found in the cabinet, it would indicate conspiracy. He would be accused of abetting her. Or even worse, framing her. 

Walter laughed again.

 “A ruler is in the cabinet,” he said. “It is in a box under a pillow at the medium’s feet. You put it there to throw suspicion on my sister.” 

Houdini’s thoughts raced. A portable ruler could easily be extended to ply Mina’s trickery, and it could have been smuggled into the box without any of them knowing. He looked over at Mina. She was still a shadow, but Houdini’s eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark by now. He fixed his eyes upon her. Her neck muscles were straining. If only he could see all of her. 

“I didn’t—” he started, but was cut off.

 There was a moaning sound. 

They could all feel Mina stiffen through the circuit of their held hands. Houdini could barely see her head drift back, her eyes closed. She seemed to calm down again before starting to tremble slightly. 

“Walter has taken control of her!” someone in the circle whispered.

 Just as quickly, Mina’s head straightened, and her eyes snapped open. Houdini could barely see her pupils; they were nothing more than circles in the dark. They were focused on the center of the room. 

She turned to look at him. 

“Houdini,” she said softly. It was more her voice than Walter’s now. “What did you do that for, Houdini?” 

Walter spoke next in a thundering roar. 

“You goddamned son of a bitch! The idea of your putting up a plant like that on a girl!” 

The other men froze in fear. 

“You won’t live forever, Houdini. You’ve got to die!” 

Walter drew in a breath. 

“I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life! Now you get the hell out of here and don’t you ever come back!” 

It was very hard to see what Houdini was doing at that moment. He was not a creature of the dark, but he was at home in the invisible. Some in the room felt he was listening intently. Or was he smiling? Dr. Comstock spoke up to defend him. He told Walter that the ruler could have been left there by workmen. It must have affected the spirit—or Houdini—because Walter wanted to take some of it back.

 “Please cut all the nasty words out of the record,” said Walter, “but leave all the rest.” 

When the séance was over and the lights brought up, Mina Crandon was slumped over and covered in glistening sweat, spent by the ordeal. Houdini immediately turned toward Miss McManama with a wild look in his eye.

“I want that part of the record,” he said. “Leave it in.” 

Alone in his hotel room, Houdini took out stationery from the desk and started to write a letter. It was two o’clock in the morning, and the streets outside his window were quiet. The pen scratched across the paper. 

Darling, Everytime I write Aug., I start Jan., maybe it’s because of your birth month. A very lucky and happy month for me. Have just wired you. . . . “Walter” begged my pardon for calling me names and wanted it crossed out of the record. But it remains as is.

 All your sweetheart, Houdini 

Houdini put the letter in the telegram envelope and sealed it shut. He turned it over and addressed it to Mrs. Beatrice Houdini, 278 West 113 Street, New York City. He marked it Special Delivery and Run Postman Run. Then he turned off the light.

Lincoln’s Ghost. Copyright © 2025 by Brad Ricca. All rights reserved.

Author Brad Ricca

BRAD RICCA earned his Ph.D. in English from Case Western Reserve University where he currently teaches. The author of Super Boys, he has spoken on comics at various schools and museums, and he has been interviewed about comics topics by The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and All Things Considered on NPR. His film Last Son won a 2010 Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas International Film Festival. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

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]]> The Man Behind the Idea of Mount Rushmore https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/the-man-behind-the-idea-of-mount-rushmore/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-man-behind-the-idea-of-mount-rushmore Mon, 27 Oct 2025 12:00:11 +0000 https://www.thehistoryreader.com/?p=10916 by Matthew Davis Matthew Davis, author of A Biography of a Mountain, discusses Jonah Leroy Robinson: the man behind the creation of Mt. Rushmore, one of the most recognizable memorials in the United States. Mount Rushmore has become one of the most influential and important works of political art in the United States, and many […]

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by Matthew Davis

Matthew Davis, author of A Biography of a Mountain, discusses Jonah Leroy Robinson: the man behind the creation of Mt. Rushmore, one of the most recognizable memorials in the United States.

Mount Rushmore has become one of the most influential and important works of political art in the United States, and many assume that the force behind the memorial’s creation was either its controversial sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, or the federal government. However, the original idea of creating monumental art in the Black Hills of South Dakota came from a mild-mannered state historian named Doane Robinson.

Doane Robinson circa 1915. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.

Jonah Leroy Robinson was born in Wisconsin in 1856. His younger sister could not pronounce his name and called him, “Donah,” the name eventually settling at Doane. Robinson was raised and schooled in Minnesota, where he attained a law degree before eventually moving to Watertown, South Dakota, to practice law. Pictures of Robinson at this time show a man who resembles Wyatt Earp—hair combed and parted, a distant stare, sharp jaw, and an impressive moustache with twirled waxed ends.

Though Robinson’s profession was the law, his passion was journalism. He published a magazine in South Dakota from 1898-1904 that featured poetry, history, and artwork, and he wrote the first Western history of the Sioux in 1904. When he became state historian in 1901, his interests grew beyond the literary to include state matters of practical and economic importance. Robinson concerned himself with the design of the state flag, the technology of bridges meant to span the Missouri River, and the new kinds of alfalfa farmers grew on their farms.

In the 1920s, when Robinson was gracefully aging into his older years, he began to concern himself with the state economy.

South Dakota commodities and agricultural markets had boomed during World War I, as European agriculture suffered from the impacts of war. But in the early 1920s, as European fields and markets recovered, the markets of South Dakota and many other Midwestern states cratered. Prices slumped, farms foreclosed, and banks shuttered their doors in a presaging of the national Great Depression that was mere years away.

Doane Robinson was attuned to these changes and challenges, and he began to think of ways to diversify South Dakota’s economy from its reliance on agriculture. On January 22, 1924, during a speech to the Black and Yellow Trail Association—a group affiliated with the Black and Yellow Road that connected the Black Hills to Yellowstone National Park—Doane Robinson publicly proposed South Dakota build sculptures into the Black Hills. He wanted to attract the growing number of regional car tourists, and he thought a sculpture in the Hills would divert travelers willing to spend money in Black Hills communities.

Robinson envisaged a sculpture similar to the Eternal Indian, a large, concrete sculpture along the Rock River in Oregon, Illinois. Chicago artist Laredo Taft, who had literally written the book on American sculpture, had created the Eternal Indian, and Robinson wrote him in 1924 to gauge his interest in creating a sculpture in South Dakota. Robinson suggested sculptures carved into the granite pinnacles of the Black Hills that featured characters associated with the American West—Red Cloud, Custer, Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea.

Taft declined the commission because of poor health, but it is a sliding doors moment for what would become Mount Rushmore. What would the sculpture look like if Robinson’s initial idea had been carried through? If Taft would have taken the commission? 

Instead, Robinson turned his attention to another prominent American sculptor, a man who was then carving the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. When Robinson telegrammed Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor knew this was an idea and artistic possibility for the ages. He sent an encouraging reply to Robinson and soon planned a trip to the Black Hills.

On that trip, in September 1924, Borglum studied both Robinson’s idea and the landscape of the Black Hills. Together, the two men hiked to the top of the tallest mountain in the Hills, then named Harney Peak, which offered an uninterrupted view of the granite and pine forests. “Here is the place,” Borglum reportedly said, “American history shall march along the skyline.” Borglum had already begun to transform Robinson’s idea into something both more grand and more political. And by the time he left the Black Hills, the sculptor handed the historian an initial sketch, a pencil drawing of George Washington in colonial garb, his hat angled off the front slope of his head.

Doane Robinson didn’t know it at the time, but his place in the Rushmore story was largely complete. He had originated a far-flung artistic idea to improve South Dakota’s struggling economy and hired a force of personality to implement it. Now, that personality was poised to create the most ambitious piece of political art in the United States.

Mt. Rushmore photo
Mt. Rushmore. National Park Service Image Gallery. Courtesy of WikiMedia. Public domain.

 

Photo Credit: Anne Giebel

Matthew Davis is the author of When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Guernica, among other places. He has been an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, and a Fulbright Fellow to Syria and Jordan. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Davis lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, a diplomat, and their two young kids.

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