Emancipation
One hundred and fifty years ago, on July 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln discussed with his cabinet for the first time the possibility of an emancipation proclamation. Lincoln read out to his colleagues a draft declaring that the slaves in the states (if any) still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would become and remain free. …
Read MoreTop 10
Publishers Weekly has designated my Seward book as one of its “top ten” history and military history books for the fall season. In the short review on June 25, PW says that the book is a “fresh contribution to the Civil War-era bookshelf” which “brings out from Lincoln’s shadow the formidable William Seward, an antislavery…
Read MoreImpeachment of Lincoln
I have another book review up today on the Washington Independent Review of Books: this time of Stephen Carter’s novel about the impeachment of Abraham Lincoln. Wait, you say, Abraham Lincoln was never impeached, was he? No, he was not, but Carter imagines that Lincoln survived the assassin’s bullet, that Andrew Johnson was felled instead,…
Read MoreSorting Books
We are moving this summer: moving our summer house from Virginia to California. We want to be closer to my parents, who live in southern California, and closer to my wife’s family, in Japan. We also want to be OUT of the oppressive heat of northern Virginia: we had no power for four days this…
Read MorePost Partum
I am in our northern Virginia home, sorting and packing books, and dipping into books from time to time, this morning. The introduction to the one-volume abridgement of Douglas Southall Freeman’s four-volume life of Robert E. Lee has a wonderful little story. After sending off the last pages of his manuscript to the publisher, Freeman…
Read MoreEnd of Term, Part 2
We are now in our last few days of school here at Exeter: tomorrow most of the students other than the seniors will depart; graduation is Sunday; I am leaving for Virginia early Tuesday. Yesterday I had the privilege of sitting in my wife’s math class as the students presented their projects. This was multivariable…
Read MoreExeter Excellence
It is an amazing time of year here at Phillips Exeter, not only because it is finally warm and sunny, but because of the end-of-year displays of student excellence. I have been privileged, over the past week, to see excellence from many students in many forms. Evan Soltas, the most brilliant 18-year-old economist in America,…
Read MoreThird Pass
My friend Nick Trefethen, in his book Trefethen’s Index Cards, says that “before computers articles and books went through one or two or three drafts before publication. Authors had to be skilled at envisioning how copy would look in print that was splattered with corrections and reorderings and insertions. Nowadays, if the author is finicky,…
Read MoreABQ memories
On a happier note, let me try to post a photo of mock trial nationals in Albequerque. A week has passed since we were there, but I am still thinking about what we did well and what we could do better next year. This photo shows half a dozen of the Exeter team at dinner…
Read MoreIndex Anguish
A wise man, John Kaminski, once told me that the index is the most important part of the book. “The index is where most researchers will begin,” he said. “If they are looking for material on paper money, for example, and find no entry for paper money in your index, they will put your book…
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