Hi everyone!

My name is Danielle and I graduated last summer from UK with a Ph.D. in British History. Why British History? I get this a lot, and the answer is that I just decided at like age 10 that I wanted to tell people about England for a living and I never really came up with a better plan. As you might imagine, jobs for professional anglophiles aren’t exactly plentiful, so I’ve since found an equally satisfying career in development at a private school in Louisville and I still get to talk about England by teaching evening classes at Bellarmine University. Jessica asked me to share some of my favorite non-fiction reads with you all and I couldn’t be more excited, both because I think the world of Jessica and her blog and also because no one has ever actually asked me this question before and it was really fun to come up with this list!

Honestly, almost everything I read in grad school was miserably boring; I had to carve out time in my schedule for accidental naps when a book got too tedious. This boredom mostly came from that fact that, for a very long time, history books were mostly written by stodgy old white guys who wrote about other dead white guys. In the last few decades though, historians have discovered marvelous, exciting, horrifying, eye-opening things about all different types of people. And yet, a lot of this exciting stuff is still written by people trying to emulate the old boring historians by using tangled academic jargon in order to get tenure. In fact, this is seriously how most academic history reads: https://phrasegenerator.com/academic
(See - you want to nap too now, right?)

I often felt at odds with the jargony, competitive culture of grad school (and Jessica’s post on academia explains this culture far more eloquently than I ever could). But, I still love reading non-fiction because, when someone writes about life well, it’s funny and tragic and quirky and brilliant. My very favorite non-fiction books also have one thing in common: they’re all cultural histories.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what culture is or what it looks like (now or in the past), but I think of it as all the stuff that makes up reality in a given moment. While Queen Victoria was flirting with Prince Albert or explorers were off conquering Africa, what was everyone in England else doing? What did they wear, eat, talk about, listen to, or do for fun? Did people feel the same emotions and describe them in the same way? Did we think the same things about sex or relationships or find the same things attractive? The answers to those questions start to capture cultural history. Cultural history is also the stuff that can be the hardest to find, because few people bother to write down the things they accept as ordinary or routine. So, today I’m going to focus on the cultural history books that, like my favorite works of fiction, made me see the world in totally new ways or understand myself a little better.
 
1. Lynda Nead's Victorian Babylon.
You know the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy wakes up in Oz, leaving behind her black-and-white life in Kansas and entering this lush, technicolor world? That’s kind of what happened when I read this book. Nead’s introduction is heavy on the academic jargon, but the rest of the book beautifully recreates the world of Victorian London. Before I read Victorian Babylon, I hadn’t ever imaged what Victorian London looked or smelled like or what I’d hear walking down a Victorian street. I didn’t realize what an assault on the senses the very first industrial city would have been.

It turns out that creating a modern city requires a massive amount of destruction, and Nead’s chapter on how Londoners struggled to come to grips with these dramatic changes to their environment forever changed how I saw urban history. London in the Victorian period was the largest city the world had ever known, so urbanization came with a host of problems that no one had ever really had to solve before. Nead looks at how urban planners tried to solve these problems by creating new technology to move things (water, waste, traffic, and people) around the city more efficiently. In the process, Nead dips into the history of maps, porn, the Underground, and about a million other cool topics.

I didn't really know what cultural history was when I first read this, so Nead opened my eyes to the reality that fashion, literature, and pop culture were all legitimate objects of historical study. If you aren’t sold yet, at the very least, the pictures of life in Victorian London in this book are incredible. Keep this thing in the bathroom or on the coffee table and I promise it’ll start some conversations.
 
2. Stephen Johnson's The Ghost Map traces how a contaminated well in Soho led to a huge Cholera epidemic that ravaged London and killed more than 30,000 people. Johnson shows just how hard it was for scientists to convince the public that germs weren’t fake news (many scientists at this time struggled to let go of a belief that invisible vapors called “miasmas” spread disease), and he follows the struggle urban planners faced as they tried to make government officials prioritize municipal improvements. Mostly though, this book taught me that living in the past would have meant dealing with a LOT of poop. Like, everywhere.

I liked this book so much that when I was last in London I actually made a pilgrimage to this infamous well pump in Soho. I was, unsurprisingly, the only person there that day. If you ever decide to make a similar pilgrimage, there’s a pub named for the doctor who discovered cholera (Dr. John Snow) just across the street and it’s definitely more interesting than the pump.

3. Erika Rappaport (Shopping for Pleasure: Women and the Making of London's West End) and Lindy Woodhead (Shopping, Seduction, and Mr. Selfridge) both showed me that the history of shopping was a real thing. I really love shopping, but I used to think that my love of shopping and my love of reading were never really going to merge, unless you count reading Instyle or the Anthropologie catalogue. Then I discovered these books. These authors revealed how women in the past used shopping to assert power, challenge authorities, and carve out supportive female spaces in the city. Victorian city planners could literally keep women at home by refusing to build things like restroom facilities for women, but department stores helped to change all of that by offering bathrooms, places to eat and drink, and sometimes even classes or reading rooms for women (along with great shopping, too). Women back then also made the connection between shopping and power; suffragettes broke hundreds of shop windows all over central London in 1912 as a way to protest the lack of political support for granting women the vote.

If you don’t want to commit to reading an entire book on the history of shopping, catch the PBS show Mr. Selfridge instead. The show is over the top in a great way, but it also covers many of these issues about female empowerment and the creation of shopping culture. Plus, Jeremy Piven makes a really attractive Gordon Selfridge.
 
4. Bill Bryson's At Home.  I think Bill Bryson is a national treasure. He’s written on everything from hiking the Appalachian Trail to the life of William Shakespeare to the creation of the universe, and he makes it all funny, interesting, and just really damn charming.

At Home tackles the history of the modern house and each chapter is divided into a different room. One of my favorite chapters, “The Bedroom,” looks at the history of beds themselves. Bryson spends like eight pages talking about different kinds of bed fillings (hint: they’re all terrible) and his descriptions of the critters that were attracted to these fillings proved that the time I woke up in bed with a centipede crawling across my face was actually not that bad.

In keeping with the idea that the bedroom is the room where the “magic” happens, Bryson also covers changing ideas about proper sexual behavior. In one of my favorite parts, he notes that some (clearly demented) inventor in the 1850s created a “penile pricking ring” that was supposed to be worn at bedtime to deter from any nocturnal impulses. The moment the wearer “woke up,” prickly thorns on the inside of the ring quickly brought things back down to normal. I’m going to stop here and just say that Bill Bryson’s books - especially this one - are worth adding to your reading list soon.

Note: Bill Bryson’s latest book, The Road to Little Dribbling, was disappointingly filled with cranky old man lectures about how England changed since he wrote his last (SUPER CHARMING!) travel memoir on Britain, Notes from a Small Island. Treat this like the last Sex & the City movie and pretend it never happened.

Lastly, I can’t recommend these personally yet, but I do have two non-fiction reads on my bookshelf that I’m really excited about. My boyfriend, Dary, recently gave me Christine Corton’s book, London Fog: The Biography. She explores the role London’s famous fogs have played in art, history, literature, and pop culture and I’ve heard wonderful things about the book. I’ve also heard that Paul Thomas Murphy’s book, Shooting Victoria, is supposed to be really suspenseful and fun. The book investigates the eight unsuccessful attempts by various people/organizations to kill Queen Victoria. Murphy thinks these assassination attempts could actually be responsible for the monarchy’s enduring popularity today, so I’m intrigued to see how that argument plays out.

If British history isn’t really your cup of tea (was that too corny?), ignore all of these suggestions, but don’t discount keeping an eye out for books that deal with cultural history. The story of ordinary people doing ordinary things can actually be a lot more exciting than you’d imagine. 



​More information about Danielle: My dissertation, “Minding the Gap: Uncovering the Underground’s Role in the Formation of Modern London, 1855-1945” argues that the world’s first subway redefined how Londoner’s moved through, understood, and imaged their city. How we move through a city determines a lot about how we see ourselves, and I use the Tube’s history to show how spatial behavior (like “minding the gap”) can become connected to one’s identity. I also demonstrate how Londoners used public transportation to bridge other gaps - like those between rich and poor, men and women, and what seemed respectable and dangerous in the city. 

When I was a child, I swooned over the love stories that I read and saw in books and films. Anne and Gilbert of Anne of Green Gables. Jo and Laurie from Little Women (because they should have always been the couple.) Female teenager and male teenager from Beethoven II.
 
As I grew older, the love stories that I sought out blessedly became more mature. Wuthering Heights. Ten Things I Hate about You. Romance novels. Pride and Prejudice. Music videos (does anyone else remember sitting down to watch countdowns?). 

Then I met my husband, and I was (very) pleased to discover that falling in love was even better than anything that I had read or seen before.
 
I met my husband, Daniel, at the end of 2003. We had a couple of exchanges when out with our groups of friends which were very notable to me and absolutely forgettable to him.
 
At the beginning of 2004, I started trying to converse with him in parties, seeking him out in his fraternity house room since he did not typically venture into the dance party. I sat on one of his couches and tried to ignore the large pile of beer cans which were thrown into the corner of a room for the purpose of making a “beer fort.”
 
I brought out my best conversation, surprisingly not daunted when on one occasion my future-husband answered my dazzling question with a one-word response and turned back around to talk to his friend.
 
I stayed in his room too late on at least one visit, hoping that he would offer to walk me across campus. He did not get the hint and I left alone, wondering what I was doing.

To be brief: I did a lot of sitting in his room.
 
Now that I’m typing this, I’m kind of surprised by my crush’s resilience.

​I wasn't exactly assertive in the romantic department, and I also had a keen imagination which allowed me to entertain crushes on people quite quickly. I could have given up and no one--except my best friends, who were subject to detailed analyses of my interactions with Daniel--would have been the wiser. 
 
But there was (and is) something special about him. He was handsome and enjoyable to talk to, and I just liked being around him.
 
So I did what any responsible, mature young woman would do. I asked a friend (my Big Sis in my sorority) to ask him to go to a sorority crush with me.
 
She called me shortly thereafter to say that he had said yes.
 
See? This does sound like an auspicious beginning to a true-love match.
 
The crush’s theme was Greek toga, so I bought Daniel a swath of Cubs fabric and a fifth of Captain Morgan’s. I bought myself a luminous white fabric dotted with gold stars. My best friends helped me dress and then delivered me to his room where we took pictures before meeting up with his friends to drink libations.

I remember what it felt like dancing with him in the Warehouse and watching him re-adjust the shoulder of his toga. It was the first time I had really danced with a man—besides the awkward side-to-side sway at high school dances—and according to what a couple of people told me, it was the first time they had seen Daniel dance. He paid me lovely compliments and I got the butterflies. Those romantic, happy butterflies.
 
Shakespeare said that "the course of true love never did run smooth."
 
Well. When you’re as awkward as I am, that turns out to be the case. Daniel and I had a great time at crush and a great time at our St. Patrick’s date later, but I persisted in awkwardly telling our mutual friends that I didn’t think he liked me. I also persisted in doing cutely (that's debatable) awkward things like not seeking him out at parties unless I had someone go with me.
 
In the culminating moment of my awkward streak, there was the moment when, depending on whom you ask, I respectfully asked Daniel if we were dating/I cornered Daniel in the stairwell and made him call me his girlfriend.
 
But we liked each other. And luckily for me/us, I went to college with phenomenal people, and they are the reason that my husband and I coupled up. I’m forever grateful to a long list of people who liked both of us enough to ignore our eccentricities. We had a serious village of matchmakers. 
 
After my Dad died that summer, Daniel was there for me in the solid way that I needed. No cards or lengthy speeches, but just a quiet presence and strength that was enough.

The night that we first said we loved each other that fall, I knew that something was different. He kept holding my hand up and looking at it, as if I was special and even my hand was deserving of that kind of attention.
 
Daniel and I married in 2009, and we brought our son, Samuel, into the world in June of 2015. And I love him even more now. It turns out that there’s something incredibly beautiful about experiencing the mundane with someone: making coffee for each other, walking in the park, giving the other a back rub. There’s also something wondrous about experiencing the bigger moments together too. My son’s birth and everything he’s done since. My postpartum anxiety and depression. The moves. The losses. The job changes.
 
We have a very strong relationship, but there have been moments when things have gotten more complicated. But I’m so grateful for the relationship I have with my best friend and the fact that we can laugh at things that happen in our lives and things that have happened over the course of the thirteen years we’ve been together.
 
Like our disagreement about whether or not we were friends before we started dating.
 
I’ll let you guess which side of the disagreement this chronic romantic falls on ;).
 
 
 

My romance novel, Finally You, is currently available for $.99 in ebook format on Amazon (until April 5, 2017). While the plot isn’t based on my relationship with Daniel, that has given me my greatest inspiration for writing about people who fall in love.
 
If you’d like to share your love story on this blog, let me know. I’d love to celebrate your story and share some happiness.

This essential reading list. Memoirs and autobiographies are some of the most powerful texts out there. Bookriot's list of "100 Must-Read Biographies and Memoirs of Remarkable Women" is worth exploring.

These Toms Sneakers. I'm all about cute sneakers, and these Pale Pink Suede Women's Lenox Sneakers are truly sweet. If you'd like a pair of shoes more appropriate for "going out"--a phrase which sounds decidedly foreign to me at this stage of my life--check out these beauties. 
 
This Jellycat Bunny. This weekend I went to Bliss in Knoxville's Market Square and saw this adorable, soft bunny. Although I wanted to buy it immediately, I resisted because I knew it would only end up in my dog's jaws. 
 
This spring and summer dress. Sophisticated, fun, and sold at Anthropologie. Yes, please!

Tic Toc Ice Cream Parlor. This is a local favorite located in Loudon, Tennessee (map it!) that's made it into Southern Living magazine (2004). This ice cream is so, so good and made in the store. It's worth the drive. I don't care where you have to drive from.

Beauty and the Beast film. My little sis, Madison, was officially adopted into our family last Wednesday. It was a beautiful and exciting occasion, and we capped the afternoon off with a girls' viewing of Beauty and the Beast. Emma Watson is marvelous and she's marvelous in this film. P.S. She's also such a good singer! And if you watched the film, you should check out this article on its set design.

The Kindle version of my book, on sale. You can download the Kindle book version of Finally You, a rom-com, from Amazon for $.99 (99 cents) STARTING TOMORROW (03/29/17)! If you haven't gotten it yet, tomorrow is your (inexpensive) opportunity to check it out!
 

This article on an ancient-Egypt find. A 3,000-year-old statue of Pharaoh Ramses II (they suspect) has been discovered in Egypt. So cool, and also, at times, troubling, to think about the history that we walk over every day.
 

These earrings from Baublebar. Moonrock Drops in Green aren’t subtle and they are gorgeous.
 

This article on how an immensely talented woman finally gets her due. For almost two hundred years, most people assumed that Felix Mendelssohn wrote "The Easter Sonata." Well, thanks to the work of researchers, we know now that it was actually his sister, Fanny, who created it.  
 

This dress from Loft. Loft says the color of the month is Marigold. I'll take it! The silhouette of this dress is simple, but the color is magnificent. 
 

This article featuring what John Legend has to say about loving and "be[ing] compassionate" to his wife, Chrissy Teigen, during her struggles with postpartum depression. He offers an excellent example for us all. Grateful to both Teigen & Legend for spreading the word about postpartum depression!

Costco Frozen Yogurt. I don’t know how many of you are Costco-goers, but if you are, you have to try the Frozen Yogurt they sell at the concession area. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law introduced us, and they changed our lives forever. Go for the swirl!

**I'm a member of the Stitch Fix Influencer Program (see this webpage's footer). My styling fee was complimentary on this Fix. This post contains affiliate links; however, all opinions  are my own.


When you introduce yourself to something that you love, it’s an occasion to celebrate—but it’s not without its consequences. After all, since I introduced myself to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Twix as a young girl I can barely pass by either now without shoveling it into my mouth.
 
This weekend I introduced myself to Stitch Fix and the package that I received was full of clothes and a bag that I really, really like. Seriously. Add to that the fun of receiving a package full of SURPRISE items selected for me by a stylist, plus the convenience of trying them on at home and not having to wrestle my son to keep him in the changing room, and it feels like a retail miracle.
 
But there’s the teensiest of downsides: now that I know how great it was, I’ll definitely order another Fix in the future.
 
If you’re not familiar with how Stitch Fix works, the deets are as follows: Stitch Fix carries clothes for women and men, including petite, pregnant, and plus size. After you sign up for a Fix, you complete a Style Profile with questions ranging from some of your measurements, to telling the stylist how much you are drawn to certain styles, to specifying how much you'd like to spend. I was pretty specific about what I’m not looking for because I’m a stay-at-home-work-from-home mom, and I knew that certain styles would not be relevant to my lifestyle.
 
It costs $20 to have a stylist pick out items for you. (If you purchase an item from the box, that $20 goes toward the purchase. If not, Stitch Fix keeps your $20 as a styling fee.) I selected a date to have my Fix delivered, and my box with my five items (four items of clothing and one handbag) arrived promptly. Then, I had three business days to decide what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to send back in the handy prepaid return envelope included in my Stitch Fix box. If you decide to keep all five items, you’ll get a 25% discount.
 
Got it?
 
I was super excited to see what my stylist had picked for me, and I also halfheartedly hoped that I wouldn’t like some of the items so that it would be easier to decide what to keep and what to send back. But, with the exception of a pair of jeans that were never, ever, ever going to fit (although they were the size that I had indicated on my Style Profile), I liked everything that my stylist Meg picked out. I really liked them, if I’m honest. Without exception they would be clothes/a handbag that I would take second and third looks at in a store, and at least of couple of them would be going home with me that day.
 
In my style quiz, I described my style as feminine, laid-back, and mostly classic. I chose the lowest budget for many of the items but $50-100 on dresses, bags, and jewelry. I like my accessories.
 
Here’s what Meg sent me.*
 
Kut from the Kloth Dayna Skinny Jean: Not pictured and will never be pictured on me. These jeans felt so good going up my calves, but not so great when they wouldn’t close at my waist. They are very soft, and I loved how they were shorter than my other pairs. I was kind of relieved that these cuties weren’t for me because at $88.00 they were the most expensive item in the box (and also much more than I usually spend on jeans).
 
Octavia London Mixed Material Satchel: I’ve been casually looking for a new bag for a little while and as soon as I saw that this was blush, my heart went pitter-patter. The contrasting fabrics provide visual interest and also make the bag unique. I can fit so much stuff in this bag, and I’m so excited to switch my stuff over to it pronto. It was priced at $68. Keeping!
 
 
Brixon Ivy James Laser Cut Dress: This dress was gorgeous and would be perfect for a dressier event like a wedding, Derby, etc. The color is a bright, vivid blue and the cut-outs make the dress stand-out from others I’ve seen in the same price range ($78). There are some awkwardly-placed darts on the bust, but I could work around those. I debated for a minute or two about keeping this one, but there is literally nothing on my calendar this year that I would need it for (that I can think of), so it’s going back.
 
41Hawthorn Dawney Scallop Trim Blouse. This is a classic shirt that’s saved from being boring by the neckline and the scalloped sleeves. The shirt is forgiving, which I appreciate, and it could easily be dressed up or down according to the jewelry I wear. But while I loved the thoughtful details of the garment, I didn’t feel like it was special enough for me to purchase at this moment in time. It's priced at $54.
 
Le Lis Alante 3/4 Woven Back Knit Top. I’m a sucker for a super soft, fitted sweater, and I love how the v-neck shows off the collar-bone and flatters the bust. The back is flowy, as opposed to fitted, and features a beautiful floral design. It’s also cool that this shirt was made in the USA. This shirt is a keeper. Priced at $54.
 
Ordering a shipment from Stitch Fix was so much fun, and I love that I can do it as frequently or infrequently as I want. If you do decide to do it, please consider using my referral link. 
 
*As is obvious, I took the photos of me wearing the clothes, and they could be better. It’s amazing how many times I was surprised by how the expression in the picture didn’t match the one I thought I had on my face. But in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, “make it work.”  #momlife #myhusbandannoyedmewheniaskedhimtotakethephotossoitookthesespitefully 

This Teespring, “Nevertheless, She Persisted” T-Shirt. Last week one of my amazing friends sent this t-shirt to me and an encouraging letter. I’m so grateful for her friendship and for the encouragement that she passed my way. This shirt is a good reminder to stay involved and active, for ourselves, our kids, our spouses, and our friends. 
 

TV time. Since I’ve started writing fiction and blogging, I haven’t had as much time for tv-watching. This week I’ve started using my treadmill more (this is a bit misleading since any amount of time on my treadmill would be more than the 0 minutes per day I was doing before), and I’m using that time to unplug a bit from reading and writing by watching new shows. So far, I’ve dipped into The People v. OJ Simpson and The Great British Bake-Off. And oh yeah, Sam has discovered that he has a thing for The Voice; we have watched a couple of episodes together and he occasionally claps after the performances.
 
Any and all sightings of the Obamas. I loved them before Donald Trump became president, but my, do they shine even brighter and more beautiful now.

This article on exhibiting human remains and ethics. NPR ran a story yesterday on Charles Byrne, an 18th-century man who had a pituitary tumor which made him grow to be approximately seven feet, seven inches. Charles died at 22, and his body was stolen against his wishes and put into a museum, where it is on exhibit today. Read this article for more fascinating discussion of Byrne, the museum where his body is housed, and musings on the ethicality of exhibiting human remains.
 
These shoes. Last Thursday I went on a shopping trip with one of my sisters-in-law, and I came home with two pairs of shoes from Target. This has happened before. Their shoes are cheap (at least, compared to others), adorable, and in my experience, they are similarly comfortable as any other pair of flats or sandals I would likely buy. Can I get an amen for Target shoes?

​Amy Krouse Rosenthal's “You May Want to Marry My Husband” essay. I’m sure that many of you have read this essay Amy Krouse Rosenthal wrote about her husband, but if you haven’t, you need to. Rosenthal was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2015. She writes lovingly, humorously, and gracefully about her husband of 26 years, and how she is seeking a new wife for him after she passes. Tragically, Rosenthal passed away today. Her essay moved me to tears and reminded me anew to appreciate my own amazing husband and love story. I’m so grateful for Rosenthal for writing and sharing this essay and wish her family peace and comfort in the face of their tremendous loss.