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America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

- Karen Abbott
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Karen Abbott
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America
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In 2001, I moved from Philly to Atlanta, where I lived for six years. I had never lived anywhere but Philly, and you can imagine the culture shock; the Civil War seeps into daily life and conversation down South in a way it never does up North.

Vaudeville was characterized by sunny optimism, acts that were uplifting, cheerful, and clean. It provided a fanciful, magical escape, but after Black Friday, the tone of American entertainment changed almost overnight.

I think the most important thing journalism taught me is to mine for details. The details are key. You can't try to be funny or strange or poignant; you have to let the details be funny or strange or poignant for you.

Before the Great Chicago Fire, no one took notice of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, two Irish immigrants who lived with their five children on the city's West Side.

In the sudden absence of husbands, fathers, brothers and beaus, white Southern women discovered a newfound freedom - one that simultaneously granted them more power in relationships and increased their likelihood of heartbreak.

I don't consider 'American Rose' to be a biography so much as a microcosm of 20th-century America, told through Gypsy's tumultuous life - it's 'Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton.'

By 1865, all Southern women - the happily and regrettably single, the perpetually engaged, the wives and widows - had tired of the war. The Confederacy was shrinking, and the morale of its remaining men shrinking with it.

The ideas and practices of Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th-century Australian healer, had spread to the United States and, by the 1840s, held the country in thrall. Mesmer proposed that everything in the universe, including the human body, was governed by a 'magnetic fluid' that could become imbalanced, causing illness.

By 1865, all Southern women - the happily and regrettably single, the perpetually engaged, the wives and widows - had tired of the war. The Confederacy was shrinking, and the morale of its remaining men shrinking with it.

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America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.

America's first Olympics may have been its worst, or at least its most bizarre.