A wary approach to hemlock
Today’s story is about a deadly plant or rather, about its moribund etymology. And yet, when you reach the end, the word’s origin may appear somewhat more transparent, even though the plant will remain as deadly as ever.
Moby-Dick and the United States of Aggrievement
Like the white whale itself, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) seems ubiquitous across time. For nearly a century, readers have turned to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale that took his leg to understand American crises. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency offers a different question about Melville, domination, and US political life: How do Americans gain power by claiming that they have been wronged?
Fashion lingo
As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.
Searching DNA databases: cold hits and hot-button issues
Many criminal investigations, including “cold cases,” do not have a suspect but do have DNA evidence. In these cases, a genetic profile can be obtained from the forensic specimens at the crime scene and electronically compared to profiles listed in criminal DNA databases.
Idiomatic pigs and hogs
According to an aphorism by Maxim Gorky, he who was born to crawl won’t fly. This is probably true of most other creatures. For instance, English speakers have great doubts about the ability of pigs to fly.
The end of the “American Century”?
“We Americans are unhappy,” is the opening line in a famous 1941 Life magazine article, in which Henry Luce called for Americans to harness the nation’s ingenuity as a benevolent force in the world. Partly aimed at the nation’s 1930s isolationism, his earnest exhortation to be imaginative and bold also spoke to a moment when decisive action might well turn the tide of war in Europe.
Half a century with OUP: remembering Bill Leuchtenburg (1922-2025)
In 2003, historian William E. Leuchtenburg signed a contract with OUP for a trade book on the executive branch. It was to be 60 to 80,000 words, 200 printed pages, due September 2005. Because he had two other large book projects underway, Bill did not make that date.
Nature’s landscape artists
Claude Monet once said, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Perhaps he should have given bees equal credit for his occupation. Without them, the dialectical coevolutionary dance with flowers that has lasted 125 million years would not have produced the colorful landscapes he so cherished. For Darwin, it was an abominable mystery; for Monet, an endless inspiration.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee
“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to the literature of America, and left an imprint upon history too deep to be obliterated.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson would have been pleased to have been referred to as “colonel.” He was proud of his military service and happily used the title for many decades after the end of the Civil War and up to his death in May 1911 at the age of eighty-seven.
Dwarf and its past
First, my thanks to those who wrote kind words about my most recent essays. Especially welcome was the comment that sounded approximately so: “I understand almost nothing in his posts but always enjoy them.” It has always been my aim not only to provide my readers, listeners, and students with information but also to be a source of pure, unmitigated joy.
Frances Oldham Kelsey: fame, gender, and science
Frances Oldham Kelsey, pharmacologist, physician, and professor, found fame soon after she finally, well into her forties, landed a permanent position as medical reviewer for the Food and Drug Administration in 1961. One of the first files to cross her desk was for the sedative thalidomide (tradename Kevadon), which was very popular in Europe and other nations for treating morning sickness.
Discussing your research findings
Most research articles in journals have a standard structure with sections entitled “Introduction,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Each has a clear remit except for the Discussion, which, if you’re a less experienced writer, may seem a hopelessly vague description. The occasional alternative of “Conclusion” or “General Discussion” isn’t much better.
We are mythmaking creatures
Many of us feel disconnected, from ourselves, from others, from nature. We feel fragmented. But where are we to find a cure to our fragmentation? And how can we satisfy our longing for wholeness? The German and British romantics had a surprising answer: through mythology.
Fact and fiction behind American Primeval
A popular new Netflix series, American Primeval, is stirring up national interest in a long-forgotten but explosive episode in America’s past. Though the series is highly fictionalized, it is loosely based on events covered in my recent, nonfiction publication, Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath, co-written with Richard E. Turley Jr.
Slow and fast worms, herring, and their linguistic kin
I received several questions in connection with my post for January 29, 2025, on the origin of the word eel and decided to answer them right away and in doing will revive the format of “gleanings.”
The meteoric rise of Louis Armstrong [playlist]
In the five years between his first recording session as a sideman with King Oliver in April 1923 to his final date as a leader in Chicago in December 1928, Louis Armstrong changed the sound of American popular music, with both his trumpet and with his voice. He perfected the art of the improvised solo, expanded the range of the trumpet, popularized scat singing, rewrote the rules of pop singing, and perhaps most importantly, infused everything he did with the irresistible feeling of swing.