Sublime

Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must

The “Q” was truly one of America’s best and most-profitable roads. Well capitalized, well constructed, and well managed by two of the giant figures of American railroading, John Murray Forbes and Charles Perkins, along with their New England associates, it served a densely populated and fertile agrarian hinterland stretching across Illinois and Iow

Her oldest son, Frederick, put on a uniform and went off to fight. Impatient with Lincoln for not announcing emancipation right away, she went down to Washington when he finally proclaimed that the slaves would be free, and was received privately in the White House. The scene is part of our folklore. “So this is the little woman who made this big w

Had Albizu ordered this? Lolita Lebrón, the chief shooter, took full responsibility. Albizu declared the shooting an act of “sublime heroism” and said no more. Yet Muñoz Marín had little doubt Albizu was behind it. Though he’d previously pardoned Albizu for political reasons, he revoked the pardon and sent police once more to the Nationalist headqu

To Harriman, the “Q” offered the same advantage it did to Hill: superb access to Chicago and the Upper Midwest. But to him it also offered the counterincentive of a threat; the Nebraska-Billings Gateway extension of the Burlington, in the hands of Hill and Morgan, would allow the NP-GN lines to invade freely the central midwestern heartland of the

Unlike the professorial Declan, Ben Diamond looks vaguely menacing, with his shaved head and black leather jacket. It takes innate command presence to pull off a look like that at age seventy-three, but Ben still has it.