General Interest
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/feature/mcvicar/
The Wisconsin Historical Society continues to create interesting and valuable online digital collections that document various aspects of local and regional history, and this collection is now exception. Angus McVicar and George Stein were two local commercial photographers who spent much of their lives taking photographs of street scenes, the built environment, businesses, and public events, in and around Madison from the 1920s through the 1960s. In 1999, Stein donated the negatives and prints from the pair's work to the Wisconsin Historical Society, which proceeded to place 2,000 of the 10,000 images into this online collection. Visitors to the site can view a list of some popular searches on the site, including browsing through areas that include "Service Stations", "Banks", Wisconsin State Capitol", and "Railroad Cars and Employees". Overall, this fine collection will be of great interest to historians and those with a penchant for local history. [KMG]
http://www.jennymiller.com/romancecomics/index.html
While many of those who read the Scout Report have probably heard of romance novels, probably a much smaller number have heard of romance comics. The genre came of age in the late 1940s, and, interestingly enough, was started by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, who had created Captain America several years before that. The genre hit its stride in 1949, when close to 120 romance comics were on the market, most of which were drawn and written by men. This site, created by Jenny Miller, offers up some of these rather intriguing titles from this period in digitized form. On the site, visitors can read issues of such series as "Rangeland Love", "Lovelorn", and "Glamorous Romances". Also, visitors should be sure to check out the May 1960 edition of "Teen-Age Love", whose cover offers the dramatic opening line: "I hate him…I hate him because I know that when he calls again for a date, I'll say yes and accept his bad manners." Overall, this is a fun site, and an interesting way to examine one way in which "romance" was portrayed through a popular and mass-marketed medium during the post-World War II period. [KMG]
http://www.complete-review.com/main/main.html
Many sites provide book reviews, but Complete Review may be one of the better ones available to the Web-browsing public. Currently, the site includes 1,443 book reviews, and visitors can browse through them at their leisure. Visitors can also view the reviews by genre, such as drama, film, philosophy, or poetry. Each review contains a bit of brief information (such as the date of publication and general availability), then continues on to include the complete review, along with a letter grade for the work, and additional links to reviews provided by other notable sources, such as the Guardian newspaper. Repeat visitors can also click on the "What's New" area to look at the latest materials added to the site. Finally, visitors can also peruse their compelling weblog, titled "The Literary Saloon". Here, users can get the latest news on such topics as Toni Morrison's honorary degree from Oxford and various translation prizes. [KMG]
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/yemen.htm
With the general assistance of a host of corporations, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution have created a probing exhibit that explores the artistic heritage of Yemen through items found in the ancient kingdoms of Qataban, Saba, and Himyar in the southern Arabian peninsula. The objects included in the exhibit include stone funerary sculpture, architectural fragments, and other such items of material culture. The accompanying online exhibit offered here is quite well-organized, as visitors are presented with six major themes that outline the history of these empires, complete with an interactive timeline that puts various cultural, historical, and trade developments into a broader context. Additionally, visitors can also learn about the in situ exhibit and read trenchant reviews from a number of sources, such as The Washington Times. [KMG]
Built as a home for John Drayton in the late 1730s, Drayton Hall is a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that tells the story of life in the American South for a host of different perspectives. Much of the place's history is interpreted through its architecture, oral history, archaeology, and historical records. For those persons who cannot make it to Charleston to see the Hall in person, its excellent website offers some fine online exhibits for the Web-browsing public. Visitors will want to peruse the exhibits, which include information about Drayton Hall during the American Revolution and a virtual tour of the grounds. For those who are interested in making the trip to South Carolina to visit the Hall, there is ample information about the public hours of the grounds, along with back copies of the in-house newsletter, Interiors. [KMG]
