Monthly Archives: July 2026

The Ten-Year Gap: Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Documentary Record, the Little House Novels, and the Television Series

Abstract The age difference between Laura Elizabeth Ingalls and Almanzo James Wilder was approximately ten years — a gap that the Little House novels reduce, at their most extreme, to five. This paper establishes what the documentary record actually shows … Continue reading

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Feeding the March: Sherman’s Georgia and Carolinas Campaigns as a Recovery of Early Modern Logistics: A White Paper

Abstract The logistical arrangements of William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea (November–December 1864) and Carolinas campaign (January–April 1865) are routinely described as an innovation — the birth of modern operational war, the ancestor of the motorized deep thrust, the … Continue reading

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Walking at Speed: Walking Football as a Codified Sport, Its Global Footprint, and Its Place Among the Football Variants

Executive Summary Walking football is the youngest widely played code in the football family and the only one whose defining rule constrains the human gait rather than the pitch, the ball, or the number of players. Invented in England in … Continue reading

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Measuring Absence: Why Combat Participation Rate Requires Decomposition: Perryville, Antietam, and the Causes of Non-Engagement: A follow-up to “Battles Decided Before They Were Fought”

Abstract The preceding paper proposed combat participation rate — the share of a mustered force that actually made contact — as a diagnostic tool for identifying battles settled by pre-battle negotiation rather than tactical decision. At Bosworth and Sekigahara, a … Continue reading

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Battles Decided Before They Were Fought: Bosworth, Sekigahara, and the Neglected Historiography of Pre-Battle Alignment

Abstract Two battles occupy nearly identical positions in the national narratives of England and Japan. Bosworth Field (22 August 1485) is treated as the terminus of the Wars of the Roses and the founding moment of the Tudor century. Sekigahara … Continue reading

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A Grand Circuit of Iran: All 31 Provinces

Roughly 115 nights (about four months), one continuous counterclockwise loop from Tehran back to Tehran, with almost no backtracking. Best start: late August or early September. The loop is sequenced so the Zagros and northwest come in autumn, Khuzestan and … Continue reading

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Custody Without Guardians: Child Protection in the Entertainment Industry, Examined Against the Long History of the Performer

Abstract A short promotional video from 2009, in which a forty-year-old music executive announces to a global audience that he has been “given custody” of a fifteen-year-old singer for a weekend of activity that “we can’t really disclose,” has been … Continue reading

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The Unbounded League: Barriers to Stability in College Football Realignment and the Conditions Under Which a Durable Alignment Could Emerge: A White Paper

Executive Summary College football’s realignment cycle is routinely described as chaos, drama, or madness — language that treats instability as a pathology afflicting an otherwise sound structure. This paper argues the opposite. Realignment is not a disorder of the system; … Continue reading

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The Rake, the Gentleman, and the Rake Without a Name: Self-Command and Self-Indulgence from Austen’s Regency to the Present

Abstract Jane Austen inherited the eighteenth-century figure of the rake and stripped him of his glamour. In Willoughby, Wickham, and Henry Crawford she drew men whose charm is a working tool, whose pleasures are purchased with other people’s ruin, and … Continue reading

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The Human Toll of the Westport Campaign: An Estimate of Confederate Attrition During Price’s Missouri Expedition, September–December 1864

Executive summary Sterling Price’s Army of Missouri entered its home state in mid-September 1864 with roughly twelve thousand men, of whom perhaps a third carried no weapon. Ten weeks and some fourteen hundred miles later, the force that re-crossed into … Continue reading

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