Starting off a month long BLITZ of /u/chocolatepot content (she is also the next person on the podcast and has an upcoming AMA), Better Know An Historian sits down to talk about the old school American Girl dolls, messy museum storage spaces, and 200 years of fashion history myths and realities.

For those interested, this week's New Yorker had a superb article on the archaeological projects at Yenikapi in Istanbul. It does a great job of describing the environment of the site and explaining the sorts of political issues surrounding it.

I coworker of mine who knew I studied Russian history in college lended me a book I just "had to read" called "The Rescue of the Romanovs" by Guy Richards. According to Richards, the Romanovs all escaped and have lived undetected for now nearly 100 years. I keep trying to tell her the Romanovs were killed and that this book is hogwash but she keeps saying "ya, but it make you think about it right?" NO! I dosn't make me think. This book requires you to not think! Any help on trying to convince her that her precious Anastasia is buried in Peter & Paul fortress?

My questions have been doing terribly recently, so I'm just going to bald faced use this thread for my last one (although I did get some good answers in it!):

My understanding is that during the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty common for factory complexes to be surrounded by residential areas that were owned by the factory, and the workers would live in them. They are generally portrayed as the exemplars of authoritarian capitalism, but what were they really like? How did living standards compare to non-company towns? Did workers prefer to live in company towns or non-company towns?

This might have been better in yesterday's thread, but whatever.

Historical subfields are strange. The conventional wisdom, for example from review articles in journals like Environment and History, is that British environmental history is "underdeveloped." And, it's true: if you do a search for those terms, you don't get much, and virtually all of it is recent (and often done by Americans or at American universities).

But... if you dig a bit deeper, it turns out this isn't really the case. There are fairly robust bodies of literature for things like agrarian history, rural history, landscape history, and historical geography. Plus, the kind of "native ground" for American-style environmental history is forest and "wilderness" (the journal Environmental History used to be the Journal of Forest History). And even there, Britain has a fairly strong tradition. It's more Scottish thanks to both the history of the Highlands as Britain's "wilderness" and to the University of St. Andrews being to center for this kind of study, but it's there.

Other quirks of subfields and disciplinary organization like this must exist. Anyone else run into these kinds of things?

Happy Friday fellow historians! I hope this is a suitable thread to pose this question.

I just finished my master's (classics and ancient history) and I'm looking to gain teaching experience, but I'm basically starting from scratch since unfortunately I didn't have the foresight in undergrad to obtain teaching certifications and such. My long-term goal is to teach at a four-year university but of course I know I'll need a PhD first, so I'm looking to start small right now and gradually work my way toward that goal.

I'm curious as to what paths other historians and educators have taken. History teachers/professors, where did you start?

I'm watching an old documentary on the Spanish Civil war. I don't know much about it, so it's really good, got six parts and I'm half of the way through. I'm not the best reader so things like podcasts and documentaries are really useful. Also, I'm advertising /r/African_history (not my subreddit but I'm still promoting it) for African history enthusiasts.

My puppy has been taught to roll over but is now rolling over all the time for a treat. I'm impressed but unless I tell her to roll over, she's not going to get a treat. She then gives me a betrayed look, I feel evil and she tries to gnaw my jumper. She also is desperate to make friends with the big dogs- little Yorkshire terriers? Pff, she couldn't care less. Massive Rottweiler who is pulling desperately at its leash? Her new best friend. If something is four times her size or larger, she will attempt to play with them. All of the ones she's played with have been very friendly but I'm worried she's going to get squashed by accident.

Are there any books on the history of microbiology? Like how certain methods were found and mysterious outbreaks that were solved.

I don't understand why /r/history loves Graham Hancock. Is it because History Channel has been awful for so long that people have begun to accept unsubstantiated claims like Hancock's? Or are people just lacking critical thinking skills?