Civil War books and authors

I spent a big chunk of this afternoon working on the library project. Here’s what’s gone on so far….

All of the fiction books were moved out of the main library and were relocated to a bookcase in our living room. It’s true. W.E.B. Griffin has been banished. The baseball books were also moved to the same bookcase. That opened up a 7 foot tall x 3 foot wide bookcase that had been completely full with fiction books.

I moved two bookcases that had been in my office home and put them in front of the closet in the library (the closet really doesn’t get used for much of anything, so it’s not a big loss), and moved all of the non-Civil War nonfiction books into them and into the bookcase previously occupied by the fiction books. Those three bookcases are pretty much completely full.

The rest of the room consists of a single, free-standing 7 foot tall x 3 foot wide bookcase and 24 linear feet of built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases that pretty much fill up two walls of the room. Because the ceiling in that room is 7 feet and not 8, spacing has always been a little funky in the built-in’s. In addition, oversize books have always taken up a lot of space in those bookcases. Susan, who really has an engineer’s eye, figured out that if she re-drilled some of the holes in the built-in’s, she could gain a number of additional shelves for me to use. By doing that, she has gained five shelves worth of space for me.

Since Susan has finished that portion of the project, I started working the new books in today. I actually made pretty good progress today–I worked in all of the new biographies and all of the new campaign books, all of which filled the four additional shelves on the left side of the built-in’s. I have plenty of room left to work in the rest of the new stuff, which consists of four categories: cavalry books, unit histories, non-cavalry soldier letters and reminiscences, and miscellaneous. There are probably more new cavalry books and unit histories than anything else, so working them in will take the most space. However, these four categories will take the least time, but I am sure that they will fill up whatever’s left in the way of open shelf space, and I’m really not sure what I’m going to do with the oversize books. So, the upshot is that while there is enough shelf space to accommodate everything THIS time, there definitely will not be next time. And that’s when we’re really going to have a problem.

Once the shelving project is complete, I will take a couple of photos of the room and will post them here so you can get a sense of what I’m talking about.

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Not far from our house is one of my favorite destinations–a Half Price Books store. One never knows what one will find there, and sometimes, you can get some really excellent buys there. I’ve seen a few of my books there in the past, typically when they’ve been remaindered by my publishers. That never excites me, but I understand the business of bookselling, and I understand that publishers will remainder my books whether I want them to or not.

Today, though, was a first for me.

I wandered over by where they keep the valuable books–often rare, or antique books, that they keep under lock and key–and was stunned to find one of my books in that case, locked up, and with a $60 price tag on it. I actually didn’t even notice it at first–Susan did. I was trying to understand why an H.E. Howard book on the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain right next to it had a $250 price tag on it.

Susan noticed that they had a signed first edition copy of the hardcover version of Glory Enough for All: Sheridan’s Second Raid and the Battle of Trevilian Station. The book isn’t even ten years old, although the hardcover edition definitely is out of print, so I was genuinely surprised to see that sort of price on it; it’s really not all that rare or hard to find even though the hardcover edition has been out of print for several years.

Susan asked the fellow at the checkout desk–who clearly was not accustomed to the idea of an author seeing one of his own books in the store–to unlock the cabinet, which he did. She took the photo that appears with this post, and then handed the book to me, as I was curious to see for whom I had signed it; it was entirely possible that it was one of the 2200 copies that had been purchased by CWPT as a fundraiser for the Trevilian Station battlefield. I opened the book and was flabbergasted to see that it was a copy that I signed and then gave as a gift to some of Susan’s cousins, who obviously thought so much of my gift that they sold it to Half Price Books. I have to admit that I was offended by that, and I have told Susan that I will never give those relatives another one of my books again.

The whole thing was just a very strange and surreal experience. It still weirds me out a little to find myself on the shelves of book stores, but this one was by far the strangest incident where I have found myself on the bookshelves of a book store. Weird. Very weird.

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I’m horrified to find myself in agreement with Microsoft on anything, but I actually find myself completely aligned with Microsoft on the issue of the Google Books settlement. Below is the reason why:

The Proposed Google Book Search Settlement: Fact vs. Fiction

FICTION: The proposed settlement agreement merely resolves private litigation between private parties, which is a good thing.

FACT: The deal far exceeds the bounds of a typical legal settlement. It would tread directly on Congress’ jurisdiction, privatizing important copyright and public policy decisions historically made by Congress. It abuses class action procedure to create an exclusive joint venture between Google, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Authors’ Guild, strengthening Google’s dominance in search and creating a cartel for the sale of digitized books. It would bind nearly every copyright owner of every book published before 2009 throughout the world, and thus create, as the U.S. Register of Copyrights said, “a compulsory license for the benefit of one company.”1

FICTION: Google is paying copyright owners an enormous sum of $125 million for the use of their books.

FACT: In fact, the deal would give a handful of lawyers involved $45 million, the same amount that will be spread in small amounts to the millions of copyright owners whose books were copied by Google. Authors and publishers would get only 1/3 of Google’s outlay, paid at $60 per book only if Google has already scanned the book into its database. Google would pay nothing under the settlement for any scanning done after January 2009.

FICTION: The proposed settlement is “non-exclusive” and would create a Books Rights Registry (BRR) to license books to Google’s competitors.

FACT: The deal would create a de facto exclusive license for Google because the deal grants no rights to the BRR to license books to competitors — copyright owners will have to license Google’s competitors voluntarily, while Google gets an involuntary, virtual compulsory license through class action process. As a result, only Google receives a license to “orphan books”, whose owners won’t show up to license competitors and which comprise an estimated 70% of books. In short, the settlement all but guarantees that Google would have permanent competitive advantages around comprehensiveness and cost. This is one reason why the Department of Justice is investigating the proposed deal and numerous non-profit organizations, academics and other stakeholders have condemned it.

FICTION: Google Books is about finding old books and making them available – it’s not about web search.

FACT: Google’s copying activities were initially focused on feeding its search engine. That continues to be its primary motivation. The proposed settlement would provide Google enormous benefits by using books to improve the artificial intelligence (AI) behind all of its services, including its dominant web search and advertising, via valuable “non-display” uses. Under the proposed settlement, authors and publishers would get paid nothing for any of these uses. As one Google engineer explained, “We’re not scanning all those books to be read by people. We’re scanning them to be read by *our+ AI.”2

FICTION: Congress can fix any problems with the proposed settlement by passing orphan works legislation.

FACT: The deal would usurp the role of Congress and grant special rules for Google – and only Google – to use orphan works that are very different and much more advantageous to Google than the rules contained in the orphan works bills considered last term in Congress. Orphan works reform can only be enacted through legislation, not class action fiat, and must be made available to all potential users – educational, non-profit and commercial institutions alike.

FICTION: Authors and publishers can tell Google not to use their books in Google Books, so their copyright rights are preserved.

FACT: An author’s right to remove her book from Google’s database expires in 2011. Given the millions of absent and orphan rights holders, and the fact that the commercial service may not even launch by then, many rights holders will be unaware of this irrevocable loss of control over their copyrights. Finally, if Google does not comply with an author’s instructions, she is limited to bringing arbitration over Google’s “best efforts” and will have forfeited the ability to file a copyright infringement lawsuit.

FICTION: Copyright owners who don’t like the settlement can simply opt-out of the class action and preserve their rights against Google.

FACT: The deal would establish Google as the new superpower in the online book marketplace, leaving those authors who opt-out at a substantial commercial disadvantage.

FICTION: The proposed settlement is limited to the United States and doesn’t affect foreign authors, publishers and other stakeholders.

FACT: The deal would dramatically impact copyright owners around the world, as it would give Google a license to use nearly every foreign book ever published, even books that have never been published in the United States. While Google could only sell and display those books to U.S. customers, many foreign owners are unaware of how their rights are being involuntarily licensed in the important U.S. market. Moreover, the deal would license Google to use the foreign book data to improve its dominant web search and advertising services that can and will be offered worldwide.

The PDF where this information came from can be found here. The Open Book Alliance consists of Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, and a bunch of library associations. For more on this issue, click here.

This is why I have opted out of the settlement and oppose it actively. I encourage any of my readers who are authors to join me in opposing it.

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I got three cases of my biography of Ulric Dahlgren, Like a Meteor Blazing Brightly: The Short but Controversial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, today. I have actually held a copy in my hand and can confirm that the book exists. 🙂

To those who helped me along the way, your copies will follow in the next week or so. For those waiting to buy it, just be patient a bit longer and your Amazon orders will be filled.

Finally!

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The following article appeared in today’s edition of the New York Times:

Civil War Fires Up Literary Shootout

By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: July 29, 2009
LOS ANGELES — History repeats itself. But sometimes it needs a little polishing up from Hollywood.

Over the last few weeks, the writers of a pair of Civil War-era histories about the anti-Confederate inhabitants of Jones County, Miss., have been trading barbs in an unusual public spat. It began when the author of one book, rights to which had been sold to Universal Pictures and the filmmaker Gary Ross, discovered that Mr. Ross had spurred the publication of a new and somewhat sexier work on the same subject.

The encounter has created unexpected bad blood over incidents that occurred — or not — more than 100 years ago. And it offers a glimpse of the way that show business and its values have become entwined with the academic book world and its decision-making process.

On June 23 Doubleday published “The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded From the Confederacy,” a narrative history by the Harvard scholar John Stauffer and the Washington Post writer Sally Jenkins. The book, which on Monday was ranked No. 83 on Amazon’s best-seller list, presented Newton Knight, the leader of the renegade county, as a morally driven hero in the mold of John Brown — but whose appeal was enhanced by his romance with an ex-slave who, in the book’s account, became the love of his life as relations with his white wife cooled.

In the book’s acknowledgments, the authors thanked Mr. Ross, who they said had brought the idea to their editor, Phyllis Grann at Doubleday, and whose screenplay had served as “our impetus and our inspiration.”

This all came as a surprise to Victoria Bynum, a history professor at Texas State University, San Marcos. Her own book on the subject —“The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War” — had been published eight years earlier by the University of North Carolina Press, which sold the film rights to Universal as material for Mr. Ross’s project in 2007.

On June 27 Ms. Bynum got a copy of the new book. The next day, in an e-mail message to academic friends and colleagues at universities across the country, she wrote: “I am appalled at the manner in which these authors have written what is touted as a scholarly work. I am also deeply hurt by the manner in which they have appropriated, then denigrated, my work.”

In a three-part review posted on the Renegade South blog, renegadesouth.wordpress.com, Ms. Bynum lit into the Doubleday book. She particularly objected to what she saw as the new book’s tendency to romanticize Mr. Knight and his love life, its insistence on the idea that Jones County actually seceded and its attempt to place Mr. Knight at the Battle of Vicksburg — touches that do not hurt the story’s cinematic potential.

“If they had said this was a historical novel, I could understand it,” Ms. Bynum said in a telephone interview this week, referring specifically to the portrayal of Mr. Knight’s relationship with his mistress, Rachel Knight. Ms. Bynum, in her review, pointed to evidence that what she called Mr. Knight’s “philandering” also led him to father four or more children by Rachel’s own daughter.

Mr. Stauffer and Ms. Jenkins struck back. In a detailed defense of their research, also posted on Renegade South, they concluded that “Bynum sees scholarship as a form of turf warfare, with only one valid interpretation of the past, which effectively renders history useless.”

Speaking by phone this week, Ms. Jenkins strongly challenged any notion that she and Mr. Stauffer had written their narrative to match the beats of a screenplay that was already written by Mr. Ross, based on extensive research by himself, Mr. Stauffer and others.

“That the genesis of the book was a Gary Ross movie project shouldn’t disqualify it as history,” Ms. Jenkins said.

Speaking separately, Mr. Stauffer said his job from the beginning had been to keep the screenplay as real as possible. “Gary wanted the story for the screenplay to be grounded in the past,” said Mr. Stauffer, who has also written books on abolitionists and a twin biography of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. “Even though the screenplay is fiction, does it ring true to the past?” he said of his mission.

Ms. Bynum did not claim plagiarism, as her work was openly cited in the book by Ms. Jenkins and Mr. Stauffer, but criticized only the way that it had been used. Still, the new history’s origins were unconventional, even in an era when Hollywood producers and screenwriters routinely gin up a graphic novel or write a piece of fiction as bait for a planned script. (The producer Lionel Wigram joined with the artist John Watkiss in creating a Sherlock Holmes comic that laid groundwork for the “Sherlock Holmes” film due from Warner Brothers on Christmas Day, with Robert Downey Jr. in the lead.)

David Paletz, a professor of political science at Duke University, pointed out that run-ins between Hollywood and the academy are nothing new. In “The Bad and the Beautiful,” a melodrama about the film world released in 1953, one of the lead characters, played by Dick Powell, was a college professor who found trouble when he tried to adapt his own hit book for the screen.

What has changed, Mr. Paletz said, is that the Internet has made the current dispute instantly public. “Without the Internet, where does she go?” Mr. Paletz said of Ms. Bynum and her objections. “Maybe she writes a letter to a historical journal.”

According to Mr. Ross, who spoke by phone this week, “The State of Jones” was actually born from lunch-time table talk between Ms. Grann, the editor, and Kathleen Kennedy, a producer with whom Mr. Ross had worked on “Seabiscuit,” which he wrote, directed and helped to produce in 2003.

By Mr. Ross’s account, Ms. Kennedy told Ms. Grann of his plans for Newton Knight, around whom he was trying to build a movie even before he acquired Ms. Bynum’s book in a deal with two less-seasoned producers, Bruce Nachbar and T. G. Herrington, who had already optioned it for film.

Ms. Grann saw potential for a more popular book in all the work that had already been done for the script. So Mr. Stauffer, one of several scholars with whom Mr. Ross had been in touch, wrote the proposal and offered to add Mr. Ross’s name to the project as a co-author, Mr. Ross said.

Mr. Ross declined. Ms. Grann then recruited Ms. Jenkins, a writer with whom she had worked in the past — and whose book about Lance Armstrong, “It’s Not About the Bike,” is being adapted for the screen by Ms. Kennedy and her producing partner Frank Marshall, with script work by Mr. Ross.

So “The State of Jones” was born with a near-perfect Hollywood pedigree — though no one is prepared to shoot the movie. Hollywood has been wary of period dramas since pictures like Universal’s “Frost/Nixon” and the Paramount film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” did better on the awards circuit than at the box office last year.

(Oddly enough, Universal has already made a version of this story: Its “Tap Roots,” released in 1948, included a fictionalized account of the events in Jones County.)

A Doubleday spokesman, Todd Doughty, said Ms. Grann was on vacation and not available for an interview.

“Why wouldn’t I want another book written about Newt Knight, especially a potentially popular one?” Mr. Ross, who holds film rights to the new book, said of the go-round. “Why would I discourage that?”

At the moment, Mr. Ross is working on the script for “Spider-Man 4.” But he would like to get back to Mr. Knight.

“I hope and I pray the time comes again when people can make serious period movies in Hollywood,” he said.

Prof. Bynum’s review of the new book may be found here. Prof. Stauffer and Ms. Jenkins responded on Kevin Levin’s blog.

This is an ugly, ugly spat. We have enough competition and unpleasantness in the world of Civil War history that we don’t need to be at each other’s throats. I understand both sides of this situation, and deeply regret that this had to happen, because we certainly don’t need to be airing our collective dirty laundry in public. Now that it’s hit the New York Times, there’s no turning back.

I can only hope that Profs. Bynum and Stauffer, and Ms. Jenkins can find a way to make peace amongst themselves.

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Dan Hoisington of Edinborough Publishing, the publisher of my Ulric Dahlgren bio, informed me today that the books have arrived at the distributor’s warehouse and will ship to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. this week, so for those of you who have been awaiting its release as impatiently as I have, your patience is about to be rewarded. They should have books to sell by the end of the week.

I am also advised that I should have my copies by the end of the week, too. This, much like my history of Rush’s Lancers, was a real labor of love for me, and I have a lot of my heart and soul invested in it, just as I did with the Lancers. Consequently, I really can’t wait to see what the final product looks like.

Thank you for being patient, waiting for this book to be released.

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Dan Hoisington, the owner of Edinborough Press , which is the publisher of my Dahlgren bio, informed me today that the books finally shipped from the printer yesterday. That means that some time next week, I will FINALLY have books in hand. The printer’s screw-up means that the book is being released a month later than it was supposed to. But, it’s all good now that it’s finally out.

Stay tuned.

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I first met Dr. Clark Donlin at a Civil War cavalry conference convened in Winchester, VA in 1996. Pretty much anybody who was a cav guy was there, and Clark was no exception. At the time, I had no idea who Henry Sawyer was, but Clark knew everything there was to know about Henry Sawyer. He told me that he portrayed Sawyer, and also told me that he was hoping to write a book on Sawyer.

Clark and I were in infrequent contact. He would call me once or twice a year to ask me a question, or run something by me, or look for advice, and we would e-mail. He was always very pleasant to talk to, and I always enjoyed our conversations. I continued to look forward to the end result of his research on Henry Sawyer.

When I decided to profile Sawyer on this blog, I figured I would get in touch with Clark to get some information and to run my write-up by him. As my regular readers know, I had a catastrophic hard drive failure in early June, and lost my address book, which was one of the two things not backed up on this computer. Without his contact information, I Googled Clark and was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Clark had passed away last October, after finally losing a long battle with heart disease and diabetes. The illness had forced him to give up portraying Henry Sawyer, and had forced him into an assisted living facility.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the passing of a dedicated student of Civil War cavalry operations. Born in Pennsylvania, Dr. Donlin moved to New Jersey in 1953. He taught U.S. history, civics before becoming first a principal and later a school superintendent. His career in education spanned 31 years. He and his wife Mary Ann were married for 52 years.

Clark was a member of the Cape May County Civil War Roundtable, The Lincoln Forum, the U.S. Cavalry Association, and the Brandy Station Foundation. He often portrayed Henry Sawyer and was devoted to telling Sawyer’s life story. As an obituary in the Cape May Star and Wave newspaper put it, “He was passionately devoted to preserving Sawyer’s legacy here. In doing so Donlin also established his own. He was devoted to Cape May, in his words, ‘getting the Sawyer story right.’ His research modified the mixture of historical truth and urban legend about Sawyer into a fact-based story.”

I don’t know what the status of Clark’s research on Henry Sawyer was, or whether he ever finished his book manuscript. I am going to reach out to his widow and see if there is anything I can do to help fulfill Clark’s dream and try to help her to get Henry Sawyer’s story published in book-length form.

Rest in peace, Clark. I will miss our chats about cavalry.

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Winston Groom is a johnny-come-lately to the world of Civil War history. Best known as the author of Forrest Gump, he’s a novelist who has apparently decided that it is his responsibility to pick up Shelby Foote’s cudgel. I wish he hadn’t.

His first effort on the Civil War addressed John Bell Hood’s 1864 invasion of Tennessee. The book is titled Shrouds of Glory: From Atlanta to Nashville: The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War. It contains few maps, little detail and no footnotes. While a pleasant enough read, the lack of footnoting allows him to be lazy about his research, since there is no way to hold him accountable.

Not content to let well enough alone, he’s now tackled the Vicksburg Campaign. Titled Vicksburg, 1863, this book dumbs down the history of the most important campaign of the war. There are few maps, and once again, no significant detail, and not a single footnote. I suppose that it would be an acceptable introduction to the campaign, but it’s certainly not as good as Michael Ballard’s fine Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi or Terry Winschel’s excellent Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, both of which are outstanding single-volume treatments of the campaign. Once again, Groom cannot be held responsible for his lack of scholarship, since he again fails to include any footnotes to tell where he got his material.

I guess this sort of book has a place for those who are casual readers and not serious students of the Civil War. However, I, for one, choose not to spend money on them because I refuse to buy any book that does not provide references for its historical interpretations. I just won’t do it. So, I won’t be buying Mr. Groom’s book.

Please go back to doing what you do best, Mr. Groom. Give us wonderful, whimsical fiction that has history as a backdrop like Forrest Gump and, unless you’re willing to act like a real historian, please stop trying to write stuff that tries to pass itself off as legitimate history.

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Since yesterday’s post has been so well received, and because reader Don Hallstrom asked for it, here’s a list of biographies that are needed. Again, these are in no particular order, and I hope that you will all pitch in as you did yesterday.

1. David M. Gregg
2. A fair and balanced bio of Judson Kilpatrick (the existing one certainly is not either fair or balanced)
3. Thomas T. Munford
4. David F. Day
5. George G. Meade
6. Thomas L. Rosser
7. Richard Taylor
8. D. H. Hill (in fairness, my friend Chris Hartley told me last week that he’s researching one)
9. Abner Doubleday (a thoroughly dislikable guy, but scoundrels can be fun)
10. William Mahone
11. Richard H. Anderson
12. John Bell Hood (again, a fair and balanced treatment is needed)
13. Jubal A. Early (Whatever happened to Gary Gallagher’s Early bio project?)
14. Fitz-John Porter
15. John Gibbon
16. Alfred Pleasonton

Those are the ones that come to my mind. Have at it. Perhaps we will inspire someone to take on one of these projects.

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