Bored with blogging? Sick of the Sims? Got a little extra time at work?
Then check out some of these fine sites.

Medicine and Madison Avenue

A wonderful online display from the National Humanities Center and Duke University presenting "images and database information for approximately 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines," circa the 1910s to the 1950s. Terrific.

From Domesticity to Modernity: What Was Home Economics?

An online exhibit presenting the history of home economics as a discipline at Cornell University. Though the exhibit concentrates on that institution's contributions in particular, it also presents a fascinating general look at the roots of home ec.

Miss Abigail's Time Warp Advice

Like me, Miss Abigail appreciates a good outdated advice book. Unlike me, she will help you solve your problems with gems of wisdom culled from her library of 650 advice tomes, dating from 1822-1978. Her list of links to full-text advice and etiquette books online is sure to make connoisseurs of prescriptive literature squeal with delight. Fab, Miss Ab!

The Nineteeth Century in Print: Self Help and Self-Improvement

This one comes to us from the Library of Congress via Miss Abigail's links page (see above). A list of full-text online 19th-century advice books, including titles such as Manliness. For Young Men and Their Well-Wishers (1864) and How To Be a Lady: A Book for Girls, Containing Useful Hints on the Formation of Character (1850). Can you hear my delighted squealing?

Archives Center at the National Museum of American History

A research guide to the archives at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. While the materials aren't online, the curators have provided very helpful background information on all sorts of interesting American pop-culture-related subjects (Breck Girls, Maidenform Bras, and Brownie Wise/Tupperware, to name but a few) in this tantalizing look into the museum collections.

Ira Lunan Ferguson

Artist/writer/cartoonist/medical illustrator Phoebe Gloeckner (a fascinating person in her own right) describes her meeting with the one-of-a-kind author and self-publisher in this short appreciation. (By the way, shortly after I found a copy of Ferguson's 25 Good Reasons Why Men Should Marry in a Bay Area thrift store, I wrote to him at the address listed in the book. Alas, my letter went unanswered, and I fear he has long since passed away.)