Search results for ""Author Lynn Hamilton""

They say that behind every great man is a hard-working woman. Behind the titanic that was Florence Nightingale, there was a lesser-known sister, Frances Parthenope. While Florence achieved iconic fame for her work with wounded soldiers in the Crimea, Parthenope spent her days gathering supplies for those same soldiers, especially the ever-needed dry socks, and sending them overseas. With hands badly damaged by rheumatic fever, Parthenope tirelessly penned letters to Florence's supporters and tactfully requested donations. Eventually, Parthenope married and turned her writing talents to fiction and non-fiction that exposed Victorian injustices toward the poor and women. Florence Nightingale's older sister never achieved the fame that came to the "Lady of the Lamp." However, in her own right, Frances Parthenope Verney was a great Victorian. A novelist, journalist, and activist, she supported her sister's reform of the medical profession while being a thought influencer on the subject of the urban poor and the British peasantry.

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Why do Americans go to the grocery store to buy wine from California, Italy, or New Zealand, when many of us can find an independent winery thirty minutes down the road? Why are locally grown and produced wines so often disdained when locally grown food is upheld as the gold standard? The U.S. wine industry has lagged behind Europe’s for far too long for reasons that have little to do with taste or quality, and Prohibition’s disruption of domestic wine production provides only part of the explanation. In Chasing Cynthiana Lynn Hamilton reveals that Americans have far more wine options than they realize. One of those options, made from Norton grapes, has a rich but mostly forgotten history, entwined with the pioneering of America’s western states. But Norton (also known as Cynthiana) is often pushed aside to make way for wine varietals from France and Italy. Is the wine drinker’s preference for certain grapes rooted in necessity or

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Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist exposed a brutal but commonplace system of child exploitation to Victorian readers. Conditions in workhouses, factories, and child criminal gangs posed lethal and daily hazards to children born to poverty. Several much-needed reforms took place in the aftermath of Oliver Twist's publication. But what were the circumstances of childhood poverty in Victorian London and other English cities? And who were the real Oliver Twists?This book explores how nineteenth century laws and social institutions entirely failed to protect children born to poor and unstable families. Despite a horrible labyrinth of ten-hour workdays, illegal indentures, and forced emigration, however, many children overcame terrible prospects and thrived. Some of these remarkable stories of childhood resilience, innovation, and enterprise have been lost to the general reader. This book brings those stories back to light.

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