Cleveland History Blogs

William Beinart and Lotte Hughes argue that tsetse did not inhibit economic development. They demonstrate that through the insight of British scientists they controlled the spread of trypanosomiasis and were […]

The phenomena of the English traveler dates to the sixteenth century. Alison Games provides in depth detail about the traveler in: The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion 1560–1660.Some […]

In The Retreat of the Elephants, Mark Elvin explains that technological lock-in is an economic term that describes a second best system that is used because the cost to replace it outweighs the economic benefits […]

In her book, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Susan Strasser uses the term “stewardship of objects” to describe how Americans valued and kept their personal possessions prior to 1890. They mended old […]

In Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation, Karl Jacoby demonstrates how capitalist ideology was instituted in the Western frontier of the United States […]

The Sanitary City demonstrates how Americans have dealt with the removal of waste and refuse, as well as how how they have delivered water supply through time from colonial times to the present. Throughout the […]

Donna R. Gabaccia’s book, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans, demonstrates how American identities have formed through culinary cultural exchange. Ethnic foods that were found in immigrant […]

Rothschild’s review of the treponemal disease study reveals a New World origin of syphilis. The study determined that prior to Columbus’ voyage, treponemal disease was manifested in a non venereal form of bejel […]

Having spent two summers living in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1970s, I find it curious that my olfactory sense holds the most vivid memory of the experience. The scent of cedar is ingrained in my […]