A new clue on a bullet With his scalpel, the doctor carefully traced the wound track through the dead man’s body. It entered the man’s left chest and traveled downward. The bullet had passed the third rib, sliced through the right side of the...
Historians are a bit like detectives. They sift through evidence, weigh it, and try to leave no stone unturned. But when they publish their results, they’re a bit like lawyers. They need to be objective enough to gain the credibility of the judge...
I found a message in a bottle when I was a kid. Or more precisely, my friend Linda spotted it first. It was floating in Barnegat Bay, a five-mile wide arm of the Atlantic between Long Beach Island, New Jersey and the mainland. On one of the island’s...
An Interview with Author Kim Murphy Every once in a while, a book comes along that shifts the tectonic plates in my understanding of history. I used to practice law and was the prosecutor for parole revocation hearings in a ten-country region...
Germany’s lower Neckar Valley is Mark Twain country. This stretch of river, the locals will fondly tell you, inspired Huckleberry Finn. The author came to Germany in 1878 with writer’s block and Huck Finn half finished. Twain’s raft trip down the...
Black Elk was a Ripper suspect? My jaw dropped when I first read about it. How did a Sioux medicine man end up on the suspect list? Native Americans must be among the most exotic – and ridiculous – explanations for the series of murders and...
Did women enlist in the Mexican-American War? Last week I blogged about Eliza Allen Billings. She wrote a bestselling book about fighting in the war disguised as a man. Most historians, however, dismiss her story as fictional. But that doesn’t mean...
What could induce a woman in 1846 to trade her needlepoint for a rifle? The Mexican-American War began and several women, disguised as men, enlisted. Women’s places in society were restrictive back then. The gentle sex played supporting roles and...
June 13, 2016 marks the 130th anniversary of Bavaria’s greatest unsolved mystery: the baffling death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. How did the fairy tale king – the builder of Neuschwanstein and the patron of Richard Wagner – die? Many Bavarians say...
An Interview with Author Karen Odden Law and medicine have had an uneasy marriage. Sometimes jurisprudence, with a red rose in its teeth, drops on its knees before its lady, asking her to provide crucial expert testimony upon which the outcome of a...
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