Nine small islands, called the Isles of Shoals, lie off the coast just over the line between New Hampshire and Maine. One of them, Smuttynose Island, has a mysterious past. Traditional stories going back to the early 19th century, amplified by poetry, folklore and modern tour-guide apocrypha, speak of a Spanish ship called the Sagunto having been wrecked on the shore of Smuttynose Island in January 1813 and fourteen (in some accounts fifteen) of its crew buried on the island by the patriarch who once ruled it. The story of the “Graves of Spanish Sailors” has made it from town records and court documents, through Victorian-era poetry, the mid-20th century tall tales of Edward Rowe Snow, all the way to Google Maps and modern tourist websites. Whether there really are Spanish sailors buried on Smuttynose Island is surprisingly difficult to determine.
In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger again takes on salty New England tall tales, which have surfaced before on this show, to reach a reasonable conclusion about whether there really are 14 Spaniards buried on Smuttynose Island. In addition to former “flying Santa” and coastal historian Edward Rowe Snow, who we tangled with back in Episode 9, you’ll meet the two confusingly-named proprietors of Smuttynose Island during the Second Decade, a histrionic poet who immortalized the story for the benefit of disaster tourists, a Boston abolitionist and doctor whose 1858 “X marks the spot” survey missed a crucial fact about the island’s geography, and the intrepid modern-day archaeologist who set out to science her way to solving the mystery. This is a lighter-hearted episode of Second Decade with some surprising twists.
Note: after this episode, Second Decade will be on hiatus until September 2021.
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55: Smuttynose Island

In March 1815, in London, Elizabeth Fenning served a plate of dumplings to the family that employed her as a cook. Almost all members of the household, including Eliza herself, became violently ill, apparently poisoned. Barely four months later Eliza was dead, hanged for attempted murder after a drumhead trial tainted with misogyny, class prejudice and official corruption. An angry newspaper reporter who witnessed her execution, William Hone, took up her cause and began to expose the web of lies that led to Eliza’s wrongful conviction—but Hone would soon find himself on trial for daring to speak truth to power. This was a major event in the birth of investigative journalism as we now know it, but it didn’t exist before the Second Decade. This is the story of the case that brought it into being.
In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger connects the disparate threads of the Eliza Fenning case and how it affected media and legal history. You’ll hear the likely real story of what happened in the troubled Turner household the day Eliza baked the dumplings, including her own words—ignored by legal authorities and historians alike—suggesting that the genesis of the whole thing was Eliza’s act of resistance against an attempted assault. You’ll meet a parade of corrupt officials and incompetent bureaucrats who tried to railroad her, from a feckless doctor who made a supposed murder weapon out of a sniff of garlic to the odious John Silvester, London’s chief criminal judge who demanded sexual favors in exchange for legal ones. And you’ll learn about the life of William Hone, briefly the most famous man in England, whose own trials in 1817 proved as much of a sensation as Elizabeth Fenning’s. There’s a lot more to this episode of Second Decade than the title suggests!
Content Warning: this episode contains a brief discussion of sexual assault.
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54: The Dumplings of Death

For centuries, the historic region of Lithuania, torn between its powerful European neighbors, was one of the great centers of Jewish culture and intellectual life. In the 1810s, the small town of Volozhin was the site of a uniquely influential yeshiva—a school of Jewish learning—founded by a charismatic rabbi beloved by the community, the brilliant Chaim of Volozhin. But as influential as Chaim’s own contributions were to Judaism, he was also part of a broader movement, spearheaded by an even more legendary rabbi, thinker and philosopher: the mighty Vilna Ga’on, the “Genius of Vilnius.” Together the two men helped plant a uniquely hardy seed of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land whose germination would come to have profound consequences, especially after the vast majority of Lithuania’s Jews who stayed behind perished in the Holocaust.
In this unusual episode of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger puts a rare spotlight on the religious life of Europe in the 1810s, but the story of Chaim of Volozhin eventually becomes epic pageant of adventure, settlement and resistance. In this episode not only will you meet the Genius of Vilnius and his dogged disciple, but you’ll delve into the doctrinal and intellectual disputes among 18th and 19th century rabbis, you’ll walk among the jumbled stones of Jerusalem’s ruined Hurva Synagogue, and you’ll trace the perilous journey that dozens of Jewish families made from Eastern Europe to the land of Israel—only to find, in too many cases, tragedy waiting for them. This episode of Second Decade has been nearly three years in the making.
Content Warning: this episode contains brief descriptions of atrocities during the Holocaust.
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53: The Lithuanian Rabbi

This brief trailer is to introduce you to Second Decade host Sean Munger's newest podcast, a fiction/alternate history show called Age of Confusion. The show examines an alternate timeline of American and world history from 1963 to 1985.
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Bonus: Trailer for Age of Confusion Podcast

This is a crossover episode with the Green Screen podcast.
Leo Tolstoy’s epic 1869 novel War & Peace is undeniably one of the great classics of world literature. Although it covers a considerable time period, its climactic episodes involve the Napoleonic Wars and specifically the French invasion of Russia in 1812. In this, a special crossover episode with Dr. Sean Munger’s other podcast Green Screen, Sean and guest host Cody Climer delve into the 2016 BBC miniseries adaptation of War & Peace, starring Paul Dano and Lily James, focusing specifically on its finale which deals with the Battle of Borodino, the 1812 French sack of Moscow and the aftermath.
In this episode, you will revisit the French invasion of Russia in 1812 (a saga which made an appearance earlier in Second Decade, episodes 10-12) but this time we will see it specifically through the lens of modern cinema. While the 2016 miniseries is the focus, you’ll also compare and contrast this adaptation with previous versions of the novel, filmed in 1915, 1956, 1966-67 and 1972. As Green Screen is specifically about the environment, the environmental and ecological dimensions of the French-Russian war, and of Tolstoy himself, are emphasized. If this is your first exposure to Green Screen, we encourage you to check it out!
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52: War and Peace

After being sold out by the great European powers, especially Great Britain, as a sop to Sweden, the people of Norway felt angry and betrayed. The Norwegian nobility had united behind Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederick, who had promised to lead them to independence—but Christian Frederick’s revolution increasingly looked like a long shot, particularly in the face of resistance by Sweden’s regent, former Napoleonic general Jean Bernadotte. Nevertheless, Christian Frederick and his allies forged ahead, hoping to forge a new vision of the Norwegian nation and its sovereignty, even if full independence couldn’t be obtained. The result was Sweden’s last war and one of the most complicated political deals of the Napoleonic era.
In this, the concluding part of a two-part series, Dr. Sean Munger continues the story of Norway’s tumultuous founding in the final months of Napoleon and how the political and constitutional ideas surrounding the independence movement came to have a legacy that lasted well into the 20th century. In this episode you’ll meet the conservative politician who thought Christian Frederick was moving too fast, his opposite number who thought it was going too slowly, a British diplomat who was taken with the idea of Norwegian independence, and you’ll encounter the complicated legacy of Jean Bernadotte—also known as Karl Johan—who is maybe the villain of the story, but maybe not. You’ll also take a brief stroll down Norway’s main drag in modern times, join dinner table conversation about Norway’s experience in World War II, and track the battles in the forts and fjords of the Scandinavian north. This is one of the more complex stories told on Second Decade.
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51: Norway, Part II

At the beginning of the Napoleonic era, Norway was not its own country, but rather the junior partner in the unequal combination of Denmark-Norway. Just before Bonaparte was defeated and exiled (for the first time), somehow Norway ended up detached from Denmark and "unified" with Sweden, in an act of diplomatic legerdemain that left the Norwegians fuming, the Swedes boastful and just about everyone else bewildered. As it turned out, the Norwegians decided not to take their wholesale selling-out lying down, and in 1814 an independence movement blossomed which, 91 years later, would become the basis of the modern nation of Norway that we know today. The story of this process is supremely complicated but quite interesting, featuring war at sea and on land, the intrigues of kings and princes, and a fundamental sea change in how nations are built and defined.
In this episode of Second Decade, the first of a two-part series, historian Dr. Sean Munger takes you into the convoluted backdrop of Scandinavian politics in the Napoleonic era and how Norway came to be a distinct national and cultural entity. In this episode you'll learn a bit of European geography and medieval history; you'll find out what kind of craft the Danes decided to build to challenge the British Navy in a war that might otherwise have seemed hopeless; you'll meet a French field marshal who dreams of becoming Swedish royalty, a Danish crown prince who fancies the Norwegian throne, and a timber merchant and part-time diplomat who designed an independence movement from the ground up. Various other characters from the long story of the Napoleonic era make cameo appearances, including one-eyed, one-armed Lord Nelson submerged in a coffin of brandy and the little Corsican upstart himself, on his way down after the epic clowning he took in Episodes 10 through 12 of this podcast.
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50: Norway, Part I

The bodies of dead human beings can tell us a lot about the past, but most human remains from the distant past tend to be rich or important people. A discovery in Basel, Switzerland in 1984 proved an exception to this rule when a number of skeletons were recovered from a forgotten graveyard for the city’s poor. One particular set of bones entranced researchers because of two strange notches found in his front teeth. An exhausting effort to identify the man known only as “Theo the Pipe Smoker” would eventually involve a worldwide search for his relatives, sophisticated DNA analysis, and possibly unearth evidence of a 200-year-old murder.
In this episode of Second Decade, historian Dr. Sean Munger will profile the Theo case, the physical evidence from his bones, the historical questions raised by his discovery, and the possible identities that he might have had. In doing so you’ll get a glimpse of life among Basel’s underclass, a world of bakeries, tanneries, factories and dead-end jobs where disease was rampant and economic survival precarious. You’ll meet the two men who are the most likely candidates for being Theo, who surprisingly died on the same weekend in 1816 but whose life stories are markedly different. We may not be able to reach a full resolution of the mystery of Theo, but the journey is illuminating.
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49: Theo the Pipe Smoker

America was growing rapidly in the 1810s, and growth meant building. Buildings of all kinds, from churches, markets and houses to banks and government offices, were sprouting up everywhere. Only a tiny fraction of the many buildings constructed between 1810 and 1820 still survive today, and the loss of the majority—through demolition, development, decay, accident, neglect, or deliberate destruction—represents a staggering loss of architectural heritage and history. Though many buildings have been lost, traces of some remain, through photographs, drawings, eyewitness accounts, memories, and, in a few lucky cases, some physical artifacts. These traces tell tantalizing and compelling stories of what the built environment of the Second Decade was like, and, by extension, glimpses of the lives of the people who lived and worked within it.
In this unique, stand-alone episode of Second Decade, historian Sean Munger will profile 9 specific buildings, constructed between 1808 and 1820 and which no longer exist, that represent a piece of the architectural heritage of the decade. You’ll visit Federal-style mansions in Rhode Island, an Ohio courthouse built to try to lure politicians to a frontier boomtown, a market and exhibition hall at the center of Boston, more than one Southern plantation built by slave labor, a farmhouse that remained frozen in time for nearly two centuries, and several others. The stories of these buildings, the people who built them and why they were lost represent only a small portion of the enormous wealth of historical and architectural heritage of America that is now gone forever.
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48: Heritage Lost

The mysterious weather and climate anomalies of the Year Without Summer did not end with the coming of fall or the end of the calendar year 1816. The Tambora effect—the chilling of the world’s climate by volcanic dust from the 1815 mega-eruption—lingered long after that. The failure of summer crops in many parts of America, Europe and the world meant a lean and hungry winter for millions of people. And for many of them, the brutally cold winter of 1816-17 was much colder and more harrowing than any they had ever lived through before, or would again.
In this episode, the final in this minseries, you’ll shiver along with missionaries and Indians on the frontier; you’ll learn about some of the bizarre theories that people advanced for what was causing the events, such as an “electrical fluid” around the Earth supposedly linked to earthquakes; and you’ll meet a very eccentric Scotsman whose obsession with weather, sparked by the 1816 anomalies, utterly consumed his life for the next half century. This episode contains threads that connect to various other SD installments, including Episode 6 (Jefferson in Winter), 7 (Volcano), 24 (New England’s Cold Friday), and 25 (The Man in the Buffalo Fur Suit).
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47: Year Without Summer, Part III

For many people around the world, 1816 was the oddest summer they ever lived through. Snow from the previous winter was still left in places well into the deep summer; rains and floods lashed central Europe; New England was cold and parched; and nearly everybody worried about what the anomalies were going to do to that season’s crops and foodstuffs. The effects of the strange weather ran deeper, however. It caused some people to be depressed and melancholy; others sought answers in prayers and religion; some, particularly in Europe, literally thought the end of the world was nigh. But everyone filtered the events through their own uniquely human experiences, reflecting a diverse range of reactions and world-views that our scientific understanding of the phenomenon can’t really communicate.  
In this episode, the second in the series, you’ll experience a shocking midnight hallucination with Percy Bysshe Shelley; you’ll rub shoulders with recently-exhumed corpses in a New England cemetery; you’ll learn how making end-of-the-world predictions became a police matter in Italy; and you’ll ride along with a simple Massachusetts farmer as he tries to reap his stunted crops in a growing season where nothing was as it should have been. This episode contains threads that connect to various other SD installments, including Episode 14 (Down & Out at Harvard), 21 (Frankenstein), and 8 (Christmas 1814).  
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46: Year Without Summer, Part II

The “Year Without Summer,” 1816, is one of those things that many people have heard of, but very few know anything substantive about. It was the largest environmental event of the Second Decade. Two volcanic eruptions, one from an unknown mountain in 1809 and the second the disastrous blast of Mt. Tambora in April 1815, filled the atmosphere with toxic particulates and triggered a period of global temporary climate change. But what was it like on the ground to the people who lived through it? What does the name “Year Without Summer” really mean, and what doesn’t it mean? Who noticed it first, and how? These are some of the many questions still swirling around this much-misunderstood event in environmental history.  
In this episode, perhaps the touchstone of the entire podcast, historian Sean Munger will take you to the frigid roads of New England during an unseasonable blizzard, and the decks of ships sailing the South Pacific in conditions that baffled even the most seasoned mariners as well as many other places in the strange spring and early summer of 1816. This is the central story of the Second Decade, and as such connects with numerous other SD installments, such as Episode 7 (Tambora), 13 (Lincoln), 3 (Frost Fair) and 24 (Cold Friday). This is the first of a projected three-part miniseries on the topic.  
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45: Year Without Summer, Part I

In the 1810s, St. John’s, Newfoundland was possibly the most remote and inaccessible corner of British America. Located on an island that was often icebound in the winter months, St. John’s was far from self-sufficient, depending on the Royal Navy for its food, building materials and governance. In February 1816, during the midst of an already dangerous winter made lean by economic depression, fire broke out on the city’s waterfront. It was only the beginning of a cycle of destruction that would char the streets of St. John’s four more times in just a few years, igniting class, ethnic and religious tensions as well as having political repercussions. This is the story of how St. John’s dealt with—or failed to deal with—numerous challenges to its very existence. 
In this episode, historian Sean Munger not only recounts the story of the fires themselves, but also examines the complicated social and political backdrop against which they occurred. You’ll meet the hapless and bronchial Royal Navy governor of Newfoundland, Francis Pickmore; you’ll learn why war meant feast and peace meant famine in St. John’s; and you’ll rub shoulders with the destitute Irish-born fishery workers who were reduced to picking through smoldering ruins for scraps of food. This is a story, not just of a series of disasters, but a community living on the edge whose ultimate survival was nothing less than miraculous.  
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44: The Fires of St. John's

Jane Austen is rightly considered perhaps the greatest British novelist of her day, or any age. Her novels about women, marriage and family among the English gentry, especially Pride and Prejudice, have defined how we think about British society in the late Georgian and Regency eras for all time. Like almost no other person, Austen is the living historical embodiment of the 1810s, the decade that saw the publication of all of her novels—and her untimely death. But how did she come to be? What was her story? What drove her, and why, after a lifetime of writing, did she finally achieve her long-awaited success during the Second Decade?  
In this episode of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger takes you into the modest bedrooms and parlors of Chawton Cottage, Jane Austen’s home for the most productive period of her life, and investigates how Jane’s wonderful literary creations came to be and why they reflect the spirit of the time and the society in which she lived. You’ll get a crash course in the tangled relations of Austen’s family, you’ll learn how and why Jane kept her literary vocation a secret from all but her closest kin, and you’ll gorge on Hog’s Puddings, Vegetable Pie and Toasted Cheese at the dinner table of the Austen women. This is a fascinating look at a genius at work in a very special historical and cultural moment, one that has come to define a country and an age in popular consciousness.  
Correction: in this episode I mistakenly refer to Tom Lefroy as English-born. I meant to say he was Irish-born.  
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43: Austen-tatious

One of the most bizarre and mysterious cultures in human history, ancient Egypt still holds considerable interest for us today. This was even more true in the 1810s, not long after battles between France and Britain in the region of the Nile brought European travelers, scholars and opportunists to the desert to hunt for ancient Egyptian artifacts. One of the most notorious of these characters was Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a former barber and circus strong man who in 1815 became the go-to guy for British agents seeking to make a killing on selling Egyptian artifacts back in Europe. Belzoni’s incredible run of luck in the tomb raiding business, especially in October 1817, resulted in the discovery of numerous undiscovered and forgotten tombs in the Valley of the Kings, bringing to light their mysteries and questions that have lingered for the past 3,000 years.  
In this episode of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger will trace the rise of Europe’s interest in Egypt, why the 1810s was such a crucial part of that story, and the discoveries on (and under) the ground that still tantalize us today. You’ll meet not only the audacious character of “The Great Belzoni,” but an ambitious and superstitious Ottoman prince, a wily British agent seeking to move as much loot as possible from the land of the pharaohs to the British Museum, and an Egyptian king who left behind over 800 wooden servants to work for him in the afterlife. Dr. Munger also has a rare occasion to share a story from his own childhood, one of his very first encounters with history.  
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42: Tomb Raider

If you’ve never heard of John Caragea and have no idea where Wallachia is, you’re certainly not alone. This look at the seamy underbelly of Eastern Europe in the 1810s may be obscure, but it’s no less fascinating than anything else covered on Second Decade. Wallachia, now part of the modern nation of Romania, was 200 years ago a minor province of the Ottoman Empire, and except as a breadbasket the Turkish sultans couldn’t be bothered to care much about it. That’s why rule of provinces like Wallachia ultimately fell to an elite class of Turkish-born Greeks, the Phanariotes, who outdid each other at sending the sultan lavish gifts to secure political offices. But in 1813 the new hospodar of Wallachia, John Caragea, immediately inherits a hot mess when people start dropping like flies from one of the most virulent outbreaks of the bubonic plague since the 14th century. Things get even worse when Caragea puts the city of Bucharest on lockdown, triggering a wave of lawlessness, violence and thievery that pushes Wallachian society to its limit. 
In this unusual look at an event little-studied in the English-speaking world, Dr. Sean Munger pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of the Ottoman Empire and also paints a grim picture of what it was like to live in Eastern Europe two centuries ago. In this episode you’ll find out what a nosegay is, you’ll understand the utterly disgusting biology of bubonic plague, and you’ll appreciate why residents of modern Bucharest are a little wary when construction contractors start digging holes into the sites of plague pits. When this episode is over you’ll finally know something about the history of Romania that has nothing to do with vampire lore, Vlad the Impaler or the Communist era. 
Fair warning: though not profane, this episode contains descriptions of medical conditions that some listeners may find disturbing. 
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41: Caragea's Plague

For most of human history, Antarctica was more of a concept than a reality. Geographers from ancient times and voyagers in the Age of Discovery supposed there was a continent at the bottom of the world, but no one had actually seen it, and some, like Captain Cook, declared that there was nothing useful down there at all. Then, quite suddenly, at the end of the Second Decade, the envelope of humanity’s geographic knowledge stretched just far enough to enable discovery of the icy islands that lie at Antarctica’s northern tip. Exactly who “discovered” Antarctica is not entirely clear, both because there are differing definitions of what “counts” both as discovery and as Antarctica. But we know it happened in 1819 or 1820, and one of the discoveries coincided with the single deadliest disaster ever to occur on the frozen continent.  
In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger will paint the historical context in which the discovery of Antarctica occurred, and he’ll take you onto the ships and into the icy waters of the land at the end of the world to get to the historical truth of what happened there. You’ll meet a reluctant Spanish admiral, a horde of rapacious, blood-soaked seal hunters, you’ll toast the claiming of the continent for the dying King George III several times with rum and spirits, and you may be haunted by the grim discoveries made on one of the world’s most desolate beaches—mysterious echoes of what may have been humanity’s first doomed struggle for survival in Antarctica. This episode also connects with various threads and stories discussed throughout the entire previous run of the Second Decade podcast.  
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40: Antarctica

It’s been a while—too long—since the last episode of Second Decade. In this brief bonus episode, Sean Munger talks to you, the listeners, about the future of the show (yes, it is continuing), some announcements of other podcasts he’s going to be on, and makes an appeal to help Kristaps Andrejson, the producer and host of the popular Eastern Border podcast, who needs your help to return home to Latvia. Please do help out, it will be greatly appreciated!
Kristap’s email address, for PayPal purposes, is ihatebalrog@gmail.com.
You can find the Andy Social podcast here; Sean will be a guest on the March 28 show.
The History by Hollywood podcast is here; Sean will be a guest on the April 7 show (April 6 in North America), discussing The Right Stuff.
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Second Decade Update and Special Appeal

This bonus episode, the third one released in conjunction with Sean Munger’s newly-released novel Jake’s 88 (which is set in the 80s), examines how the 1980s ended and the transition to a new decade. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, the year 1990 begins with an invasion of Panama by the United States to terminate the troublesome narco-dictator Manuel Noriega, an episode that serves as a sort of dress rehearsal for a much more consequential conflict that develops when another dictator, Saddam Hussein, invades Kuwait later in the year. In the meantime, American pop culture begins to change as the era of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna segues into a darker and seemingly less innocent time. In this episode you’ll learn how AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses helped topple a dictator, why Saddam viewed Kuwait as his personal ATM machine, how Bart Simpson and Al Bundy killed the family sitcom, and you’ll encounter guys in Ninja Turtle suits, vengeful Dignity Battalions, an overconfident Prime Minister, a movie with only four colors in it, and much more about the end of the century’s strangest decade.
Jake’s 88 is a coming-of-age romance set in the year 1988. It’s deeply steeped in the curious head space of the decade and loaded with pop culture references. It’s available here on Amazon Kindle and in paperback.
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Off Topic: The 80s (Jake's 88 Special, Part III)

This bonus episode, the second one released in conjunction with Sean Munger’s upcoming novel Jake’s 88 (which is set in the 80s), examines the political, cultural and social history of the 1980s. Sean begins with two dreadful disasters in 1988 involving airliners being blown out of the sky, one over the Persian Gulf, the other over Scotland, and how both were related to the most destructive war of the 20th century, excluding the two world wars, which almost drew in the United States. Pivoting from geopolitics to pop culture, a spot-check of the most popular movies, TV shows and recording artists of 1988 takes you into a dizzying thicket of competing cultural ideas. You’ll learn why Die Hard was not originally a Christmas movie, how television’s most beautiful ingenue was punished for daring to want to have a baby while starring on a hit show, and what cartoon rabbits, airborne cocktail shakers and misheard Beach Boys lyrics have to do with each other.
Jake’s 88 is a coming-of-age romance set in the year 1988. It’s deeply steeped in the curious head space of the decade and loaded with pop culture references. It’s available for preorder here on Amazon Kindle (and a paperback version will also be available). The book releases January 15, 2019.
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