Want to feel old—or should we say "Golden"? This fall the sitcom The Golden Girls turns 40 years old. Focusing on the friendships and experiences of four older women, the show was an unlikely hit, and has had an unlikely afterlife, drawing new fans and devotees over years of syndicated reruns, TikTok clips, and Instagram memes. As Peter C. Kunze writes in Made by History, one reason for the show's long-lasting impact is the woman who created it. Susan Harris was integral to bringing a feminist sensibility to primetime television, on shows like Maude and Soap—and in bringing us the "found family" unit of the four Golden roommates: Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia.
The Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world (and a sponsor of Made by History), annually awards $300,000 each to nine early and mid-career scholars and practitioners in historical disciplines, acknowledging their outstanding achievements to date and to support future work. Anyone can nominate a practitioner in the relevant disciplines, and nominations for the 2026 Prize are open until Sept. 24. For more information visit dandavidprize.org/nominate.
"Hope was funny, treating hordes of soldiers to roars of laughter. He was friendly—ate with servicemen, drank with them, read their doggerel, listened to their songs. He was indefatigable, running himself ragged with five, six, seven shows a day. He was figurative—the straight link with home, the radio voice that for years had filled the living room and that in foreign parts called up its image. Hence boys whom Hope might entertain for an hour awaited him for weeks. And when he came, anonymous guys who had had no other recognition felt personally remembered…Probably the first entertainer to work with the armed forces, Hope has also been the most frequent."
"Rowling insists that she never consciously set out to write for children, but that working on Harry Potter taught her how easily she could tap into her childhood memories. 'I really can, with no difficulty at all, think myself back to 11 years old [Harry's age when the series opens]. You're very powerless, and kids have this whole underworld that to adults is always going to be impenetrable.' That's a good description of the social setup she portrays at Hogwarts, where the students have stretches of time with little or no adult supervision. Rowling believes young people enjoy reading about peers who have a real control over their destiny. 'Harry has to make his choices. He has limited access to really caring adults.'"
"She was about to become the second female vice-presidential candidate in history–and the first ever for the Republican Party. That began one of the most unlikely and remarkable entrances onto the national stage in memory–more flash mob than debutante ball, culminating in her Sept. 3 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention…[T]he strangest rumors about this unknown governor and the people who elected her were cascading across the lower 48. Does everyone up there really eat moose? Did Palin fake the pregnancy of her son Trig? Do Alaskans even want to be a part of the U.S.?"
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