I’m a writer and historian based in Madison, Wisconsin. My writings on history, nature, and folklore explore the ways that ideas have moved through time and space.

My most recent book, Bringing Freud to America, tells the stories of the editors, publishers, translators, and journalists who first put Freud’s ideas in front of American readers. In 1900 almost no one in the U.S. had heard of Freud, but by 1920 nearly everyone had. How did that happen? How did the basic assumptions about human nature that we take for granted today first enter our grandparents’ minds?

I’ve also written three other books and edited or contributed to several more, as well as publishing many journal articles, newspaper columns, and book reviews.

Books       (click cover image for more information)

     

            

I’ve always been fascinated by eccentric, unusual, and atypical people or events that mainstream culture has overlooked. For more than a decade I wrote the syndicated weekly newspaper column, “Odd Wisconsin” highlighting bizarre and little-known stories from the state’s past.

I joined the staff of the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1982 and retired at the end of 2018. I also taught part-time at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1986 to 2019. I hold degrees from Harvard University (BA 1976) and Simmons College (MS 1981), and my work has won awards from the American Folklore Society, the American Association for State and Local History, and the American Library Association. At the Wisconsin Historical Society I led the teams that digitized and put online hundreds of thousands of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, and other historical documents. I also curated several traveling displays and exhibits shown in venues around the nation. Between 2015 and 2018 I oversaw the Society’s education, publishing, and outreach programs.

Selected Articles and Essays (more information)

Online Collections (more information)

Other Books:

Women’s History Resources at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (co-author, Mary E. Fiorenza; Madison, Wisconsin Historical Society, 1997).
Leonard Woolf: A Bibliography (co-author, Leila Luedeking; Winchester, Eng., St. Paul’s, 1992).
Lytton Strachey: A Bibliography (N.Y., Garland, 1981).