Recently Added Articles

"Writing in his History of Zionism, Nahum Sokalow looked in to the future: 'The Jews have grown tired of their roll as the homeless Chosen People and would prefer to be a self-supporting small nation with a quiet spot of earth for themselves...'. The spot for which the Jews had yearned proved to be about as quiet as a live volcano."


The Capture of General Hideko Tojo (Yank Magazine, 1945)

War correspondent George Burns reported on the momentous day when the American Army came to arrest the former Prime Minister of Imperial Japan, General Hideko Tojo (1884 - 1948). Tojo served as Japan's Prime Minister between 1941 and 1944 and is remembered for having ordered the attack on the American naval installation at Pearl Harbor, as well as the invasions of many other Western outposts in the Pacific. Judged as incompetent by the Emperor, he was removed from office in the summer of 1944.


The Blowtorch Blonde (Coronet Magazine, 1952)

Here is an article about the legendary Marilyn Monroe (né Norma Jeane Mortenson: 1926 – 1962), her painful beginnings, the cheesecake pictures, the bit-parts and her enormous popularity as a star are all woven into a narrative that never lets the reader forget that her unique type of appeal was something entirely new.


Japanese Feudalism Overturned (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

The reforms that were imposed upon Occupied Japan in the Forties and Fifties did not simply come in the form of death sentences for war criminals - but additionally the Japanese came to know the rights and protections that are guaranteed to All Americans under the United States Constitution. For the first time ever Japanese women were permitted to vote, unions were legalized and equality under the law was mandated. This small notice concerned the overthrow of the feudal laws that governed the Japanese tenant farmers.


Colorful Menswear (Literary Digest, 1937)

This 1937 fashion report let it be known that men's fashions were getting more colorful; items that we associate with the Fifties such as plaid cummerbunds made their appearance first in 1937. The first clothing item to cross the color line was, in all probability, the Hawaiian shirt - which came into vogue some five years earlier.

Click here to read a related article from 1919.

The New Yorker ('48 Magazine, 1948)

Twenty-three years after Harold Ross (1892 – 1951) launched The New Yorker, this profile of the man appeared on the newsstands:

"Ross is a kind of impostor. The New Yorker is urbane; cactus is more urbane than Ross. The New Yorker carries understatement almost to the point of inaudibility; with Ross the expletive crowds out most of the eight parts of speech....It is true that he never had a high school education; but it is also true that he is a master grammarian, and that the superb sense of style which informs The New Yorker flows in part from his clean, uncompromising feeling for the English language."

Click here to read the second half of the Harold Ross profile. This portion is decorated with rejected cartoons from The New Yorker ...

Ross never forgot his days in Paris as the editor of The Stars & Stars, click here to read an article about that period in his life.


Protestants in America (Pageant Magazine, 1952)

This is a report from 1952 on the largest group of Christians in the United States during that period in time:

"The United States is sometimes called a 'Protestant nation.' It isn't, of course. It is a nation of 150,697,361 free people, free to choose whatever path to God they please. But it was settles largely by Protestant denominations; it has, in fact, the largest Protestant population of any nation on earth. By latest tally, 81,862,328 Americans belong to religious bodies. Of these 59 percent are Protestant. Roman Catholics account for 33 percent, Jews for six percent and other faiths for two percent."


Scientific Proof That Women Should Not Be Allowed to Vote (Current Opinion, 1912)

This article was written by the well respected British bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Wright (1861 - 1947) concerning his belief that women should be denied the vote. Relying upon his scientific training, Wright held that women, as a result of their flawed nature, simply lacked a sense of reasoning.

The Work of J.D. Salinger (The Hibbert Journal, 1964)

A Literary journal's review of The Catcher in the Rye as well as the short stories contained in Salinger's collection Franny and Zooey:

"Salinger seems both to have a teenager's view of the adult world... and to have portrayed someone with whom a great many teenagers passionately wish to identify themselves."

A Bewildering American Phenomenon (Scribner's Magazine, 1937)

This well-read writer recalls the great novels leading up to the publication of Gone With The Wind (1936). Along the way, she lists some of the many foibles of The Great American Reading Public - in the end she recognizes that she shouldn't have been surprised at all that the historic romance was an all-time-best-seller and that Margaret Mitchell was awarded a Pulitzer.