Claudia Keenan

The Sad, Glorious World of Margaret Anderson

A new biography of the bohemian powerhouse Margaret C. Anderson opens with a quotation from Anthony Comstock, who has been in the news recently, although he died over 100 years ago. Comstock was a censorious bully who objected to the publication and distribution of written material that he deemed offensive.…

Claudia KeenanDecember 9, 2025

The Queen of Bohemia Returns to the Page

Zoe Anderson Norris hid in plain sight for well over a century but now she is back on the scene! A prolific writer and social activist, Zoe (rhymes with “no”) moved to New York City in 1898. Alternately chagrined and captivated by urban life, she remained haunted by her dark…

Claudia KeenanNovember 13, 2025

Rising, Resilience and Resistance in the World of Black-Owned Bookstores

America’s first Black-owned bookstore belonged to a fervent abolitionist, David Ruggles. From the start, he encountered racial harassment that would plague Black bookstore owners through the next century and beyond. The ordeal of Ruggles, who opened his shop in 1834 on Lispenard Street in lower Manhattan, is where journalist Char…

Claudia KeenanNovember 3, 2025

Nonfiction

The Martians are Coming: A Scientific Melodrama

Of all the planets in our solar system, Mars has long possessed a special allure. Indeed, its reddish hue caught the eye of many an ancient human who stared into the night sky. Starting with Galileo’s telescope in 1610, technology brought the planet into better focus. Until the late nineteenth…

Claudia KeenanAugust 28, 2025

Nonfiction

Joy Goddess of Harlem: A’Lelia Walker’s Dazzling Life at the Heart of the Renaissance

Romance eluded her, friends betrayed her, and she lacked her mother’s sharp instincts for business and philanthropy. But the heiress with intense eyes and fabulous style, who loved poetry and parties, turned out to be one of the twentieth century’s intriguing protagonists. She was A’Lelia Walker, the subject of an…

Claudia KeenanAugust 8, 2025

Nonfiction

Historical Chronicle of Roosevelt Brothers’ Grave Pursuit of Elusive Panda

Well over a century has passed since President Theodore Roosevelt and his family captivated the world with their escapades and high energy. The madcap TR, his patient wife Edith, and five children plus Theodore’s daughter from his first marriage, occupied the White House between 1901 and 1909. Arriving as the…

Claudia KeenanJuly 4, 2025

Nonfiction

99 Years Later, Sensational Evolution Trial Comes Full Circle

The sensational “monkey trial” of 1925 didn’t actually concern monkeys. The issue was whether a young schoolteacher in rural Tennessee had violated state law by teaching the scientific theory of evolution to his public school students. In her new history of the Scopes Trial, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and…

Claudia KeenanSeptember 5, 2024

Nonfiction

The Klan Comes to the Midwest: Brutality, Power and Terror in 1920s Indiana

American history is replete with horrors that have been buried over time. Like an ancient skeleton that may never be discovered, the stories remain untold unless someone comes along to excavate. That is exactly what occurred when Timothy Egan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, decided to write about the Ku Klux…

Claudia KeenanJune 28, 2024

Nonfiction

The Long Journey & Ultimate Triumph of the Famine Irish

Throughout modern history, immigrants have journeyed to the United States (even if some of our citizens believe it is a recent phenomenon). Typically, immigrants arrive in waves. During the 17th century, the first wave came from the British Isles. During the 19th and 20th centuries, waves of Northern Europeans, Asians,…

Claudia KeenanJune 6, 2024

Nonfiction

Way Back in the Twentieth Century: A Tale of Fashion, Influence & Vision

Three women, three stores and a vanished world. You may be lucky enough to remember Lord & Taylor, Bonwit Teller and Henri Bendel — fabulous emporiums that drew elegant women shoppers from all over the world. Alas, times changed and the stores declined. Malls, catalogues, discount stores and the internet…

Claudia KeenanJune 3, 2024

Preacher teacher Hater Fraud by Charles Trantanella

Nonfiction

Seeking the Limelight: A Forgotten Actor in a Great American Tradition

No doubt about it—the twenty-first century is bursting with unsavory influencers, but this type of character has always been around. Social media gives them greater reach and louder voices than those who racked up followers 150 years ago. Yet human nature does not change. A Life of Intrigue and Notoriety…

Claudia KeenanMay 13, 2024

Nonfiction

American Disaster: A New History of the San Francisco Earthquake in “The Longest Minute”

Thousands of years before Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived in California, its northern coast was inhabited by Native Americans. The Ohlone people lived on the land that would become San Francisco. This beautiful peninsula, encircled by the ocean and bay, would be seized by the invaders in the 1770s, sending…

Claudia KeenanMarch 13, 2024

Nonfiction

Twin Sisters Behind the Camera: Groundbreaking Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines

The beautiful, chic McLaughlin sisters were born in Brooklyn in 1919. Within five months their father died of influenza, leaving the twins in the clutches of their over-protective mother Kitty. But Kitty was resourceful. She belonged to an Irish Catholic clan that lived in picturesque Wallingford, Connecticut, and wasted no…

Claudia KeenanMarch 5, 2024

Nonfiction

Jim Crow Never Ends: A Legacy of Mental Illness and Torture

When she began studying the history of medicine at Harvard in 2011, Antonia Hylton found herself captivated by the development of modern psychiatry. But she kept wondering where Black people fit into that history. As the award-winning journalist writes in Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum: “What…

Claudia KeenanJanuary 15, 2024

Nonfiction

Portrait of the Astors, a Wealthy and Powerful Family That Defined the Gilded Age

For more than 200 years, the descendants of John Jacob Astor dominated American society, style, and commerce. Yet the name Astor signifies little to recent generations. Astor, the Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe will certainly make readers sit up and pay attention.…

Claudia KeenanNovember 10, 2023

Nonfiction

Lessons From the Pacific Northwest: The Black Student Movement of the 1960s

In 1967, Stokely Carmichael visited Seattle and delivered a speech that galvanized his largely Black audience. The civil rights activist and future Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party spoke urgently: “. . . it is simply a question of he who has power. And we don’t have that. We…

Claudia KeenanAugust 21, 2023

Claudia Keenan

The Sad, Glorious World of Margaret Anderson

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