The Books That… Introduced me to literature (Part 5)
One book not in my library is J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Never read the thing. It was never assigned in high school or college literature classes. My education was, as a result, entirely incomplete. I see now (from Wikipedia) that there is so much I never learned about literate whining. Catcher in the Rye was widely censored when I was in high school. Father Earl La Riviére, our 9th grade English instructor did push the envelope, as far as many parents were concerned, by assigning Taylor Caldwell’s Dear and Glorious Physician. Sure, it was, appropriately for a Catholic school, a novel about St. Luke’s coming to Christianity in time to write the third Gospel, but it had the distressing feature of describing the pre-Christian Luke as somewhat less than chaste. In the words of Father Earl, parents...
Read MoreThe Books That…(Part 4)
My first adult level history book, the one that led me to buy a thousand more, and to start writing.
Read MoreHome from the 2013 Arizona-New Mexico Joint History Conference
Had a great week in New Mexico, attending the 2013 Arizona-New Mexico Joint History Conference.
Read MoreThinking about writing a history book?
THINKING OF WRITING YOUR FIRST HISTORY BOOK AND GETTING NEW YORK TO PUBLISH IT? I published my first unpaid article in 1998, my first book, published by a university press, in 2008. For the second book, I hope to land a New York publisher. I’ve not chosen the easiest path. Publishers prefer a trade-publishing record. I’ve been told, and I’ve no reason to doubt it, that a magazine article in your field yields more respect in New York than a university book. This is probably because of the earned reputation of academic historians writing inaccessible, thesis-driven history for one another, instead well-told, character-driven stories for the general public. For those budding grassroots historians looking to make the leap, it can be done. You only need a good story, the ability to tell it well, and a marketing “platform” to...
Read MoreWriting grassroots history
I think it was C.L. Sonnichsen who coined the title “grassroots historian.” Certainly, he wrote about and defined such non-academic (and often non-academically trained) historians in an article of the same name appearing in a 1970 issue of Southwestern Historical Quarterly (Vol. 73, No. 3, January, 1970, pp. 381-392). You can find the article at http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30238074?uid=3739960&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21100835322691 . I can’t speak for other fields of history, but in the niche of Old West lawmen/outlaws/gunfighters/armed & dangerous sodbusters, the grassroots historian probably has been responsible for much, if not most of the discoveries of the past 35 or more years concerning the details of the lives, acts of violence, and deaths of such men (and occasional women), and of the many men and women who were witness to or wrapped up in their stories. The Journal of the Wild West History Association...
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