Welcome, history cranks and fiends!
I’m Alexis Coe—award-winning presidential historian, New York Times history columnist, senior fellow at New America, and bestselling author.1
Study Marry Kill is my lil’ newsletter salon where I host regular features:
Reply Some (answers to your best questions)
Wordy Wednesday (language under the knife)
Lies We Learned (myth-busting interventions)
Behind the Essay (the story behind my print pieces)
And whatever else needles me or catches my eye.
Yes, there’s a lot on presidents—but I’m not your dad’s presidential historian. (Ironically, those guys are often my biggest fans.)
Back to dead dudes:2 I cover the famous and the forgotten (Coolidge was a smash here), tell overlooked stories, unpack the real origins of holidays, and expose how history still gets mangled. I’ll defend an underpaid interpreter, drag a lazy biographer, drop mini-biographies, and let things get weird…
This newsletter was born in the pandemic, mid-chaos, with a nudge from Substack. It still runs somewhat free—though my mortgage broker won’t take the same posture! Thus some choice bits belong to paid subscribers If that’s not possible, no worries, I have a community option, too. And if you love SMK but not this venue, toss a coin to your historian on Venmo with “SMK” + your email, and I’ll do the rest.
*Oprah voice* Founding members, you get a handwritten note!
No dead people will be harmed in the making of this newsletter.
And it’s not all dudes, though if you’d like to change that, vote for it.
