I'm doing a history PhD: reading for comprehensive exams and researching a book/dissertation...
The book/dissertation project is more or less under wraps until it's done, accepted, sold, etc. But there'll be time enough to talk about that, later (I have to keep telling myself). In the meantime, here's a link to my "reading" blog, which will cover more or less what I'm looking at day by day. These readings will be duplicated on my rural and radical history sites, if they're part of my field reading. But the odd books will be here -- and it's the odd ones that are often most promising...
Click on Dr. Charles Knowlton, to see what I’ve found out about this fascinating, slightly crazy character who one day will be the subject of a book by me -- I just can’t decide at this point if it’ll be a biography or a novel!
Click on Charles Bradlaugh to see what’s up with my multi-year research project on this British radical and atheist leader. Another book project -- but I really need to see the Bradlaugh papers in London before I finish a biography. I'll be visiting the U.K. for a conference later in the year, so the project is very much alive.
Click on Erasmus Darwin to find out about this grandfather of Charles Darwin who was talking evolution before his grandson was born, and about the really odd story of over a hundred boys named after him in early nineteenth-century Massachusetts. This is a weird glimpse into the minds of regular people in the early Republic -- someday I'll have the time to look a the rest of those Vital Records.
