Author Archive | James Urton

An engraving depicting damage from the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes from Henry Howe's Historical Collections of the Great West (Cincinnati, 1854, p.239).
Image provided courtesy of Martitia Tuttle.

The Earth Staggers

Long ago, years before they would marry, make two children, raise them and eventually divorce, my parents shared a bizarre experience. On a Sunday morning in the early 1960s, they were at the same church service. Suddenly, everything began to move. Dad first saw something amiss with the ceiling fans. “They were dancing!” he told…

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Kurz and Allison’s 1891 representation of the Battle of Franklin (November 30, 1864) during the American Civil War. Image credit: U.S. Library of Congress.

Perpetual War

In the American Civil War, the United States fought itself in a bloody struggle that dragged on for four years. A new study out of the University of California, Santa Cruz shines light on an even longer – and seemingly endless – conflict within ourselves. This internal struggle takes place within our genome, between an…

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