Political Pen Pal

Heather Cox Richardson writes about her new project, which puts current events in a historical context.

The last days of writing a book are all-consuming, and when I was finishing How the South Won the Civil War, I was also teaching during Boston College’s fall semester and moving, so the last thing I expected was to start a nightly political newsletter. But on September 15, 2019, I got stung by a yellow jacket, and as I sat still to see how bad my reaction would be, I wrote a Facebook post noting something big I had seen two days earlier. The House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) had written a letter to the acting director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, calling him out for withholding a whistleblower complaint. Schiff didn’t know what was in the complaint, but he knew it had to be important for Maguire to refuse to hand it over, as the law required.

That post drew lots of questions, so I wrote another, and then another, and so was born the Letters from an American blog and newsletter, chronicling the days of the Trump presidency from a historical perspective. It now has hundreds of thousands of readers, and now listeners: Ani DiFranco reads the letters daily on her radio station.

The Letters have become, inadvertently, a complement to How the South Won the Civil War. But rather than emphasize our failures, as the book does, they celebrate the triumphs of American democracy. heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Faith for the Heart: A “Catholic” Spirituality

Thomas H. Groome

Groome, a prolific writer and professor of theology and religious education, has said that he penned his latest book “for the ‘nones,’ for the ‘spiritual but not religious,’ and for anyone challenged in their faith at this time.” In this exploration of how faith feeds the heart’s hungers—for love, happiness, freedom, and more—Groome makes the case for spirituality in an increasingly secular world.

The Woman on the Windowsill: A Tale of Mystery in
Several Parts

Sylvia Sellers-García

True-crime aficionados will want to hit pause on their podcasts and pick up this account of a brutal murder in Guatemala City during the summer of 1800, when a mapmaker opened his study window to find a pair of severed breasts. Sellers-García, an associate professor of history, sheds light on the criminal case, revealing how it altered justice systems throughout Latin America.

Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s
Korean Cinema

Christina Klein

A screening of the South Korean director Han Hyumg-mo’s 1956 movie Madame Freedom left Klein, an associate English professor, wondering about the climate that produced such a scandalous-for-its-time film. Klein’s book is the first monograph devoted to Hyumg-mo—“a talented filmmaker whose work has not been fully appreciated by film scholars,” as she told The Korea Times.

In Storied Places: Pilgrim Shrines, Nature, and History in
Early Modern France

Virginia Reinburg

Get lost in this study of French pilgrim shrines by Reinberg, an associate professor of history. Demonstrating the role that Sainte-Reine, Notre-Dame Du Puy, Notre-Dame de Garaison, and Notre-Dame de Betharram played in the Catholic revival following the religious wars, Reinburg evokes a sense of place as she probes the legends surrounding these sacred sites. —Courtney Hollands

what i’m reading
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan

This beautiful, elegant novella tells the story of a couple in 1962, just married and embarking on their life together. While it describes the couple on honeymoon, ultimately it reveals itself as a meditation on the consequential permanence of life’s most fleeting moments.

—Steve Koh, Marianne D. Short and Ray Skowyra
Sesquicentennial Assistant Professor of Law