
Author: Bill Burton


The Amazing Output of Cobb Shinn
Bill Burton
The Amazing Output of
Cobb Shinn
As World War I loomed, a varied group of talented Indiana illustrators, comic artists, and cartoonists were beginning their careers. While none of these Hoosiers are household names today, Cobb Shinn of Indianapolis became the most prolific and collectible postcard artist of

Balanced Rocks and Other Improbable Formations
Bill Burton
Balanced Rocks
and Other Impossible Formations
It never seemed to me logical that rock formations that looked too good to be true — were. Sometime, somehow, an enthusiast, an artist, or a Neolithic people had gone to a lot of effort to build them.
In North Salem, New


The Civil Rights Movement and Its Anti-Communist Opponents
Bill Burton
The Civil Rights Movement
and Its Anti-Communist Opponents
The organized fervor that developed into the American civil rights movement that emerged following the U. S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision (1954) can be traced back to at least the American labor movement. Opposition

The Maud Adams You Don’t Know
Bill Burton
The Maud Adams You Don’t Know

The Maud Adams you do know was born in Sweden in 1945 and became famous as the title star of Octopussy, the 1983 James Bond movie with Roger Moore. She had previous been the villain’s doomed mistress in The Man with

They Were Champion Boxers Once, and Restauranteurs Too
Bill Burton
They Were Champion Boxers Once,
and Restauranteurs Too
James Montgomery Flagg’s painting reproduced on a postcard that was handed out at Dempsey’s restaurant. The original hung in Jack Dempsey’s restaurant until the restaurant closed, when it was donated to the Smithsonian.
Jack Dempsey rose to fame after World

“I Like Ike!”
Bill Burton
“I Like Ike”
David Dwight Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas. His mother later reversed his given names to avoid confusion with his father David. In 1892 the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, which Eisenhower always considered his home town. The family’s circumstances made

It’s Old Home Week!
Bill Burton
It’s Old Home Week!
The twin pulls of urban industrialization and westward migration that overtook America after the Civil War was devastating to many small towns in New England and the Middle Atlantic States. In the four decades ending in 1900, despite massive European immigration, the population of

Inside Sing Sing Prison and The Mutual Welfare League
Bill Burton
Inside Sing Sing Prison and
The Mutual Welfare League

Thirty miles north of New York City, on the east bank of the Hudson River, stands one of the most famous, or notorious, prisons in America, Sing Sing Prison.
Sing Sing at first consisted of a single cell block