Here at the New York History blog, I follow hundreds of history oriented blogs, good and bad, from around New York and around the nation. Some of the best have focused their work through regular posts on unique topics – call it “serial blogging.” Here are three of the more outstanding examples:
The Bowery Boys: Know Your Mayors
According to the Bowery Boys, their regular series “Know Your Mayors” is a “modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City.” Recent posts have covered “Philip Hone, the party mayor,” and “Hugh Grant, our youngest mayor” – he was just 31. Check out the entire series here.
Bad Girl Blog: Why I Started Chasing Bad Girls
Brooklynite Joyce Hanson describes her Bad Girl Blog as “a chronicle of my research, experiments and studies about wild women in both history and the present–and my struggle to be more like them.” Hanson’s series “Why I Started Chasing Bad Girls” offers a little insight into the author herself and women she’s hoping to emulate (at least a little more). Posts have included Isabelle Eberhardt who Hanson describes as “A Russian Jew who converted to Islam, Isabelle Eberhardt ran off to the Sahara Desert in 1899 when she was 22, served as a war correspondent for an Algerian newspaper, dressed as a man and called herself Si Mahmoud, slept with Arab boys, routinely smoked kif, and drank absinthe and chartreuse until she fell asleep on the dirt floor of whatever random cafe she happened to be passing through.” Hanson has also written about Bessie Smith, Empress Theodora of Constantinople, and Victoria Woodhull. You can read all the posts in the series here.
Early American Crime: Convict Transportation
Independent scholar Anthony Vaver’s blog Early American Crime only began in September, but he has already staked some substantial bloggy ground with what he calls “an exploration of the social and cultural history of crime and punishment in colonial America and the early United States.” Vaver’s short series on convict transportation to the American colonies has covered “Early uses of Convict Transportation,” “The Transportation Act of 1718,” and “The Business of Convict Transportation.” You can read the entire series here.