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Tue, 03/03/2009

Using the Internet for Historical Research, by Martha A. Sandweiss:

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It would have been all but impossible to write Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line without access to online resources, particularly to the digitized census records that proved such a rich source of information for my story. In the past, historians who wanted to find someone in these records would have to scroll through roll after roll of microfilm, looking at the handwritten records compiled by the census agents who assembled their data household by household as they walked down a street. If you didn't know a person's exact address, it could be all but impossible to find them in a large metropolis like New York City.

But now all that has changed. Thanks to databases like the one assembled by Ancestry.com, a researcher can find a particular individual in just seconds and then track them across the decades. Federal census records offer little more than a snapshot of American life, and they're compiled just every ten years. But they provide an astonishing amount of information. The census of 1900, for example, not only lets you see where your subject lived, but who lived in their household, when and where they were born, what language they spoke at home, where their parents came from, whether they were literate, and what they did for a living. You can see who lived next door and who lived down the street and imaginatively reconstruct the neighborhood. All of this was possible with microfilm, but it took much, much longer.
Posted by Penguin Group USA on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 5:31pm. in
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Tue, 03/03/2009

Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Passing Strange, our guest blogger the week of 3/2:

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Martha A. Sandweiss is our guest blogger during the week of March 2nd. If you have any questions for Martha A. Sandweiss add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is some more information about Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West and the woman he loved

Clarence King is a hero of nineteenth-century western history. Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, bestselling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation." But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life-as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada King, only on his deathbed.

Posted by Penguin Group USA on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 5:18pm. in
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Tue, 03/03/2009

Listen to our Author's Podcasts Running the Week of 3/2:

 

 

 

 

» June Casagrande reads from her book, Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies, which uses humor to focus on grammar usage and examines why grammar snobs are the way they are.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

» Read more about Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies

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Posted by Penguin Group USA on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 12:47pm. in
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Tue, 03/03/2009

3/3/09 is Square Root Day, by Julie Schaeffer:

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If you are a math lover then you might have already realized that today is a special day. Today is 3/3/09, otherwise recognized by the dorky as Square Root Day. Of course, the last Square Root Day occured on 2/2/04 and the next will not be until 4/4/16 so let's celebrate now while we can. For more info on the day, check out CNET news.

To get the party started, here are some math-licious books:

 

Posted by Penguin Group USA on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 11:48am. in
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