Rhode Island – General

A book review: The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. By Mark Peterson. Princeton University Press, 2019.

Once upon a time there was …
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Rhode Islanders have produced some of America’s greatest patriotic songs. Julia Ward Howe, who composed “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a Civil War anthem, was descended from two Rhode …
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Two of Rhode Island’s greatest companies in its history are Brown & Sharpe and the Gorham Manufacturing Company.  Each company showed remarkable innovation, produced incredible products, employed thousands of Rhode …
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In light of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, I thought it might be somewhat of a mildly amusing diversion to tell a few stories of my …
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[Note from the author: This article is a slightly edited reproduction of my September 2019 welcoming address to the National Conference of the American Speakers of the House held in …
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Note from the author: This article is a slightly edited reproduction of my September 2019 welcoming address to the National Conference of the American Speakers of the House held in …
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One of the most exciting European visitors to colonial America was the Very Reverend Dr. George Berkeley (1685-1753), who spent most of three years in Rhode Island. The rest of …
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This is a short history of modern pandemics, starting with the Great Influenza of 1918, and ending with the modern coronaviruses, SARs, MERs and COVID-19. Most of the last part …
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Rhode Island once had a mass transit system that crisscrossed the state. Workers took horsecars and electric streetcars from their tenements to the mills and factories during the week. On …
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Seth Luther was one of the most memorable figures in the early days of unionism in Rhode Island. When he died in 1863, a Providence Journal obituary said that he …
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