Pamela D. Toler
Armed with a PhD in history, a well-thumbed deck of library cards, and a large bump of curiosity, author, speaker, and historian, Pamela D. Toler translates history for a popular audience. She goes beyond the familiar boundaries of American history to tell stories from other parts of the world as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar. Toler is the author of eight books of popular history for children and adults, including Women Warriors: An Unexpected History and the forthcoming Sigrid Schultz of the Chicago Tribune: An American Reporter in Nazi Germany. Her work has appeared in Aramco World, Calliope, History Channel Magazine, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, The Washington Post and Time.com.
Twitter: @pdtoler
Instagram: @pamelatolerauthor
What's the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
Any time I speak about Civil War nurses, the subject of my book Heroines of Mercy Street, someone asks whether I am myself a nurse. The first time someone asked me, I was flabbergasted because the person who introduced me always makes it clear that I am a historian. But I've come to take it as an enormous compliment because she (it’s almost always a woman) follows the question with "Because I'm a nurse. And you caught what it feels like."
For an author, that's hard to beat. (By the way, nurses rock!)
Favorite non-reading activity?
Cooking. It is physical. (Chopping a pile of vegetables at the end of a hard day is a great way to relieve stress.) It engages all the senses, from the glorious colors said pile of vegetables to the sound of them hitting hot oil in a wok. It is creative. It even satisfies my organization nerd tendencies. I love planning meals and grocery shopping as much as the act of cooking itself.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
All the time.
I think this is made worse by the fact that I don't stay neatly in my academic specialty, which means I often start a project learning a subject from the beginning. It's never dull, but I sometimes feel like I'm the author equivalent of the teacher in a one-room schoolhouse who studies at night to stay one day ahead of her students.
Do you collect anything? If so, what, why and for how long?
Calling it a collection is too grandiose, but I will admit to a serious reference book habit. There is something about the words “atlas,” “dictionary,” or “encyclopedia” in a title that causes me to stop and take a second look at a remainder table, second hand bookstore or library sale. I own dictionaries for languages I don’t know, historical atlases for many times and places, an encyclopedia of gods from different cultures, a dictionary of twentieth century culture that I’ve never opened, a book on the principles of statistics that has come in handy more than once, and an odd little volume by Barbara Ann Kipfer titled The Order of Things: How Everything in the World is Organized into Hierarchies, Structures and Pecking Orders that I have turned to more often than I would have thought possible. If pushed to explain, I’ll claim that they are part of my working library. Sometimes it’s even true.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
My wedding dress. When I married My Own True Love ten years ago, I knew I did not want a big white wedding. What I wanted was a party dress with a skirt that would twirl when we danced to the Cajun band we hired for the celebration dinner. After failing to find what I wanted, I found a custom dress designer who specialized in clothes for big occasions. Together we created a dress that was far more than I had originally imagined. It is a work of art that called on many pieces of my past. It is shaped like a Degas ballet dress, with Elizabethan-inspired beaded embroidery on the gold satin top and layers of tulle in shades of peach, gold, and orange in the skirt. It was a dream to dance in.
At the party, one of my guests (not from my side of the list) came up to me, sniffed, and said, "That's not a typical wedding dress." She clearly did not intend it as a compliment. I smiled and answered, "I'm not a typical bride."
