Stanton
Lincoln’s Death, Stanton’s Words
The one thing that people know about Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is that, right after President Abraham Lincoln died on the morning of April 15, 1865, Stanton said “now he belongs to the ages.” David Herbert Donald closed his great Lincoln biography, still my favorite, with “now he belongs to the ages.” Adam Gopnik,…
Read MoreThree Days, Three Speeches
Next week I will be giving three speeches about three different men on three successive days. On Wednesday evening I will be at the Smiley Library in Redlands, California, to talk about William Henry Seward. I spoke with this group a few months back about Stanton, for some reason I never spoke with them about…
Read MoreSeward Prize; Chase Contract
I learned yesterday that my Stanton biography has won the Seward prize for Civil War biography. This is an annual award, presented by the Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York, for the best biography of a Civil War figure. I am the first person, I am told, to win this award twice, first for…
Read MoreNovember Events
As you can see from the events page, I have a number of events coming up in November, almost two weeks on the East Coast. And these events are going to require different talks. The Lincoln Group of New York will naturally want to hear about Lincoln and Stanton. The Wheeling Public Library calls for…
Read MoreJackson, Washington, Chicago
I am back in southern California for a few days after a trip to Jackson, Mississippi, Washington, DC, and Chicago, Illinois. Mississippi was very interesting: my friend Sam arranged for me to speak at Mississippi College, to a group of faculty and friends. People were eager to hear about Stanton, and my ideas about why…
Read MoreWSJ and NYT Reviews
Harold Holzer reviewed the Stanton book for the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It is a long, detailed review, and I will not quote it all here, but send the readers of this blog to the review itself. Key quote, from my perspective: “This exhaustively researched, well-paced book should take its place as the new, standard…
Read MoreBook in Hand
I have the first printed copy of the Stanton book in my hands today. It is an exciting moment, about five years since I first thought about this topic, and here is the finished printed book. Simon & Schuster has done a great job (if I do say so) with the physical book. The paper…
Read MorePage proofs and cover quotes and book events
I am once again reading page proofs, “third pass” page proofs this time. I am not supposed to be making many changes, and I am not, but I have re-read some of the Lincoln and Stanton and McClellan quotes against the originals, and have located and corrected a few minor errors. I am also starting…
Read MoreGalley copies
I now have a few “galley copies” of the Stanton book. It is a bound paperback version of the book, not quite final, created by the publisher to excite people about what the REAL book will look like in a few weeks. But from an author’s perspective it is pretty exciting in and of itself; it…
Read MoreAugust 2017
I have learned from Simon & Schuster in the past few days that Stanton will be published in August 2017. We do not have a precise date within that month but we will fix one soon. This means that I have to give the book, in final form, to S&S by some time in early…
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