Ruthie grew up on Catalina Island where her reading rotated between her mother's Stephen King and V.C. Andrews beach-reads and her father's complete collection of Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization".  

Since then, she and her family have lived in Zambia, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia in addition to extensive and extended travel.  She believes that history is really just gossip on a large scale, and that more people should pay attention to Alexander the Great's feminism.  

Ruthie also produces history documentaries and a monthly-ish program called "History, She Wrote" which connects events in the present to those in the past.  

Ruthie's Siberian cat, Jadwiga, often makes appearances in her documentaries, while her Africanus dog Odette can sometimes be heard in the background and her Bosnian Blue cat Maggie likes to help with sound.