Tag Archives: Casa Mata

January 22, 2016

Researching and Stolen Documents

Why do people steal documents in order to add them to their private collections?            Several years ago, I was doing research at the Archivo Municipal de Matamoros. The room is dungeon-like, deep in the bowels of Casa Mata, a 200 year-old fort. The chairs are hard wood, the table worn oak, polished from years […]

Historical
December 15, 2015

B.B. Country Mouse and Footnotes

Footnotes are the bane of an academic’s existence but writing any good book requires research. For the last twenty-five years, I have crouched like a Gringot’s gnome over ancient archives, leafing through four-inch thick tomes, or hauling out Hollinger boxes full of hundred year-old dusty manuscripts. I emerged with hands blackened by equally old dirt […]

General, Historical