Blogs in August 2016

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 11th August 2016

On December 31, 1999, after nearly a century of rule, the United States officially ceded ownership of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. That nation did not exist when, in the mid-19th century, Europeans first began to...

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Geisha 10th August 2016

The author, the only non-Japanese ever to have trained as a geisha, offers an insider’s look at the exclusive world of female companions to the Japanese male elite. The new preface considers the geisha today as a vestige of...

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London: A Life in Maps 10th August 2016

A city long shrouded in literary and historical mists—not to mention real ones—London seduces tourists and natives alike. From Big Ben to the grimy Victorian streets of Dickens novels on up to the sleek high-rises that dot the skyline...

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London Under London: A Subterranean Guide 10th August 2016

The London we know and see is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the familiar surface lies an unknown city, a Hades of buried and forgotten rivers, sunken sewers, underground railways, pipes and passages, tubes and tunnels, crypts...

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Curse of the Narrows 6th August 2016

The events of the horrific Halifax explosion are well documented: on December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc and the Belgian relief ship Imo collide in the Halifax harbour. Nearly 2,000 people are killed; over 9,000 more...

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