Thanks to all of you who filled out the survey! If you’d still like to weigh in, please do; I’m basing next year’s changes on your answers. And last week’s holiday special was quite popular, so I’m extending it. Details below.

History cranks and fiends, here are the most popular 11 posts of 2021. I’m thrilled to see my readers embrace such a wide range of topics, and my favorites among them.

11. “Founding Feathers.”

You cannot deny that many of the founders looked like birds.

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10. “After all that, who is J. Edgar Hoover to her? Just another man in her way.”

Selma Burke, decades later, poses in front of her bust of FDR. It looks awfully similar to the FDR later engraved on the dime, for which John R. Sinnock, a white man, claimed credit. (Not dated via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

A great interview with Kelvin Parnell Jr. on Selma Burke, a Harlem Renaissance sculptor who exists in presidential history as part of an anecdote about FDR. We take turns unpacking the story, and find there’s still much to be learned.

9. “A crocheted Uterus for Judy Blume.”

I love texting with patron saints of collective knowledge, and the first feature in a series with Rosemary K. J. Davis, the Accessioning Archivist for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, did not disappoint. Come for the uterus but stay for Blume’s “Idea Box,” and other surprising details.

8. “‘He’s a silly bastard! I wouldn’t have him running a cathouse!’ JFK’s White House Recordings.”

On July 25, 1963, President John F. Kennedy called General Godfrey McHugh about his aide’s “obvious fuck- up.”

7. “Your Favorite Professor. Georgetown’s MVP gets set up by her students, and finds her second visit to Mount Vernon just as bad as the first.”

Gloria Richardson Dandridge was the leader of the Cambridge Movement, a civil rights struggle on the eastern shores of Maryland, and one of the signatories, along with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, of “The Treaty of Cambridge.” (1963 via LOC/courtesy of NBC)

Historian Marcia Chatelain, the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize-prize winner for history, talks about everything from whom she would study, marry, and kill to the “oppressively white” modern makeup of Mount Vernon.

6. “The Insanity Trial of Mary Lincoln.”

A long essay on the long- forgotten origin of that misnomer: Mary’s sensational 1875 insanity trial, a kangaroo court orchestrated by Robert Lincoln, her only surviving adult child, who hoped, like so many of men his time, to rid himself of a woman who embarrassed him. Robert’s plan backfired, but Mary’s legacy withstood the most damage. Mary was declared sane by the court and the press was sympathetic towards her situation—but in America’s collective memory, she’s still crazy.

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5. “On Popular History.”

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.*

When it comes to talking craft and process, history is a rare but esteemed guest of the American literary community. In May, I focused on popular history, and had the honor of interviewing New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Traister, Times op-ed columnist Jamelle Bouie, Pulitzer Prizers-prize winner T.J. Stiles, historian Rebecca Onion, editor Brian Wolly, author Pamela Newkirk, and podcast hosts Jody Avirgan, Kellie Carter Jackson, and Nicole Hemmer.

4. “Why Do We Think Mary Lincoln Was Crazy?

“O, Robert, to think my son would have ever done this.” (Library of Congress)

Mary was branded as “crazy” long before the trial began, and scholars have done little to correct the record.

3. “Confessions of a Feminist. A serialized biography of Jane Grant (1892-1972), first woman reporter at The New York Times and co-founder of The New Yorker.”

Jane Grant has no biography to challenge the ones that have reduced, diminished, and ignored her work. She has a hard-to-find memoir, and her name appears in fewer than a dozen articles on The New Yorker’s website, none of them dedicated to her. After a disappointing adventure in historiography, I paid deference to my inner public historian and serialized my research with a request: I hope that someone will write this essential woman’s biography.

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2. “Taft is still NOT stuck in the bath. Let’s drown this fat-shaming myth about the 27th president.”

William Howard Taft with his family, c.1910-1921 (Library of Congress)

William Howard Taft did not need to be pried out of the bathtub. He preferred baths to showers, it’s true, but there was no nightly fiasco when it was time for bed. There’s not a single historic news article or magazine story, eyewitness, or gumshoe historian who has said otherwise.

1. “Chernow Gonna Chernow. A Pulitzer Prize winner punches down.”

*Jessie Serfilippi earned Ron Chernow’s ire when she published a paper that provided strong evidence that Alexander Hamilton owned enslaved people. (℅ Serfilippi)*

As reviewers and readers of You Never Forget Your First noticed immediately, I take issue with how Ron Chernow handles women and slavery in his own biography of the first president, but he never responded to any requests or comments about it. Yet when Jessie Serfilippi, 27, posted a paper about Alexander Hamilton’s life as an enslaver to her employer’s website, the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, Chernow had comments for all the major outlets. Did he defend his scholarship? No. He issued vague attacks on Serfilippi, whose paper was a direct challenge to the man he’d sold as an “uncompromising abolitionist.”

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HOLIDAY SPECIAL

You Never Forget Your First and/or Alice+Freda Forever make excellent holiday presents! If you send a receipt to studymarrykill@gmail.com before the end of the year, we all win!

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ON A RELATED NOTE

I’m honored to be featured, along with Marcia Chatelain, Eric Foner, Marcus P. Nevius and many more in PBS’s “Preserving Democracy: Pursuing a More Perfect Union.”

See you next week! In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram and my books, as well as others mentioned on SMK, on Bookshop, Amazon, and your local bookstore or library. If you have a question or comment, I want to hear it! studymarrykill@gmail.com.

Study Marry Kill

The 11 Most Popular Posts of 2021