Writing
Fear of the Shallows
Looking back over the year just ended, I am struck by the proliferation of door-stopper books. This phenomenon — which afflicted both fiction and non-fiction — emerged in many of the most celebrated books which logged impressive sales numbers. To cite just a few: Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, a novel checking in at 784 pages. In biography, The…
Read More"The Lincoln Deception" on Audible.com
Audible.com has finally listed the audiobook version of The Lincoln Deception, narrated by L.J. Ganser. I’m a huge fan of audiobooks, and listen to them all the time in the car, even on very short trips to the market or the gym. Right now I’m near the end of the audio version of Bernard Cornwell’s 1356, a chronicle of…
Read MoreKilling Them Softly
Death plays a big role in most history books, and definitely in biographies. The death of a central feature often concludes a book. Even if the book’s story ends before the main characters shuffle off this mortal coil, readers want to know how it all ended for the people they have spent several hours reading…
Read MoreWashington Navy Yard: Some Tough History
For someone writing a book about James Madison (that’s me), yesterday’s mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard has powerful echoes. While the new national capital was being hacked out of forest and swamp in the 1790s, Congress arranged to buy land for a naval support facility. Soon the navy yard at Washington City was…
Read MoreJohn Bingham: American Founding Son
Today marks the launch of a new biography of Congressman John Bingham of Cadiz, Ohio, American Founding Son, by Gerard Magliocca of University of Indiana School of Law. It’s great to have this fresh and excellent examination of Bingham, a key force in helping to shape the America that emerged from the Civil War: Bingham…
Read MoreAaron Burr on Staten Island
Aaron Burr’s final days on Staten Island are the subject of a delightful new volume by Martha Smith Kakuk and Ray Swick: Aunt Abby and Aaron Burr’s Last Days: Staten Island, the Summer of 1836, and the Death of America’s Most Notorious Man. Brought out in a limited addition by the Printing Press, Ltd. of Charleston,…
Read MoreLooking for America in World War I
On a recent trip to France, as part of research for a novel I hope to write next year, my long-suffering wife endured several days in northeastern France looking for traces of America’s role in World War I. The weather was just right for imagining nasty, soggy trench warfare, where half the casualties were from illness,…
Read More"The Lincoln Deception": One step closer!
I just received a few “advanced reader copies” (i.e., copies for reviewers) of my forthcoming novel, The Lincoln Deception. It’s a great pleasure to see them, though the book doesn’t go on sale until August 27. You can reserve a copy by pre-0rder from Amazon. I dedicated this one — a historical mystery that tries to unravel the secrets of the…
Read MoreBurr's Corsets . . .
Aaron Burr’s devotion to the charms of the fair sex is the apparent justification for a new exhibition at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Upper Manhattan, where Burr lived for a few months during his short-lived second marriage at age 77. The show is titled “The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry and Binding.” I did…
Read MorePirates Ahoy!
I don’t think these pirates look much like Captain Jack Sparrow, though it might be more entertaining if they did. Nah, it wouldn’t. I was blown away by a recent notice from Simon & Schuster, publisher of my three books to date, reporting the number of pirated e-copies of my books that they have bullied off the Internet. What’s…
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