About Editing and Writing

From The Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of author, historian, and narrator David McCullough, born in Pittsburgh in 1933. McCullough has won two Pulitzer Prizes, both for nonfiction books about presidents. The first was for Truman (1993); the second was for John Adams (2001).

At Yale University in the early 1950s, McCullough took a writing class with novelist Robert Penn Warren, who required his students to slip a fresh piece of original prose under his door each day at 8:30. If they didn’t, they received a zero. McCullough said, “It was a great way to learn discipline.” He also grew close to playwright Thornton Wilder, who advised him to look for stories that hadn’t been written yet, and write them.

From, a New York Times obit by Bill Friskics-Warren headlined “Charlie Daniels, Who Bridged Country and Rock, Dies at 83: He was a singer, songwriter, bandleader and a blazing fiddler on hits like ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia'”:

Mr. Daniels made his first mark as a session musician in the late 1960s and early ’70s, playing guitar, bass, fiddle and banjo on Nashville recordings by Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Leonard Cohen. He also produced albums for the Youngbloods, including the group’s 1969 folk-rock touchstone, “Elephant Mountain.”

From a Washington Post column by Richard Zoglin headlined “Why do none of Trump’s ‘jokes’ feel like jokes?”:

Trump’s famous appeal during the 2016 campaign to “Russia, if you’re listening,” to help find Hillary Clinton’s emails, we learned only later, was simply a joke. His suggestion to police officers in 2017 to “don’t be too nice” when putting suspects into the backseats of squad cars was, according to the White House, another example of Trump’s joshing. . . .

From The Writer’s Almanac:

Today is the birthday of the British author Dame Hilary Mantel, born Hilary Thompson in Derbyshire in 1952. She came from a working-class Catholic family and went to convent schools. When she went to college, she studied law, and married a geologist. She and her husband lived in Botswana for five years, and then moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where they lived for four years.

She already had several novels, a memoir, and a story collection under her belt when she published Wolf Hall in 2009, a richly detailed historical novel about the life of Thomas Cromwell, who was an advisor to Henry VIII.

The Spotlight feature in the New York Times asks for stories from readers; this note from Hillary Hastings appeared in The Times’s parenting newsletter—the subject was getting a toddler to take a bite of something new:

“When my toddler shouts requests from bed that I can’t, won’t or don’t know how to fulfill, I tell her that “I will look into it,” as if I’m acknowledging an email from work. More times than not she forgets the request and falls asleep.”

From a Times Insider column by Nancy Coleman headlined “Why We’re Capitalizing Black”:

The last time The New York Times made a sweeping call to capitalize how it referred to people of African ancestry was nearly a century ago.

W.E.B. Du Bois had started a letter-writing campaign asking publications, including The Times, to capitalize the N in Negro, a term long since eradicated from The Times’s pages. “The use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings,” he once wrote, was “a personal insult.”

Subscribers to the WSJ’s weekly Books newsletter recently shared their favorite spy novels and mystery series. The genre we were most often asked to tackle next was historical fiction, a category both capacious and hard to define. Is it simply a novel that takes place in the past? The list below is restricted to books written by an author about a period earlier than her or his own—a definition broad enough to include everything from Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” to Allison Pataki’s recent “The Accidental Empress.” . . .

From a New York Times Book Review interview with Irish novelist Roddy Doyle:

What books are on your nightstand?

“Notes From an Apocalypse,” by Mark O’Connell; with that title, I half-dreaded what I’d find but — a hundred pages in — I’m rightly anxious but laughing. “Hope in the Dark,” by Rebecca Solnit, for a bit of well thought-out optimism last thing at night. I found Nicole Flattery’s story collection, “Show Them a Good Time,” under the bed this morning but it’s back on the nightstand where it belongs. The stories are brilliant, full of surprises.

From a Washingtonian story—with lots of great photos—by Andrew Beaujon headlined “July 4, 1970, Was Politicized in DC. And Things Got Crazy”:

July 4, 1970, was ostensibly a day when America’s deep divides over the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the sexual revolution could be swept away in a massive “Honor America Day” rally on the Mall. But as William Greider and John Hanrahan reported for the Washington Post, “Against all the official intentions, the events of the day demonstrated not just the principles and faith that unite millions and millions of Americans, but also the deep differences that divide them from the dissenters.”

The New York Times of July 4, 1863, reporting on The Battle of Gettysburg:

Our Special Telegrams from the Battle Field to 10 A.M. Yesterday. Full Details of the Battle of Wednesday. No Fighting on Thursday Until Four and a Half, P.M. A Terrible Battle Then Commenced, Lasting Until Dark. The Enemy Repulsed at All Points. The Third Battle Commenced. Yesterday Morning at Daylight. THE REBELS THE ATTACKING PARTY. No Impression Made on Our Lines. The Death of Longstreet,and Barksdale of Mississippi. Other Prominent Rebel Officers Killed or Wounded. A LARGE NUMBER OF PRISONERS. Gen. Sickles’ Right Leg Shot Off. OTHER GENERAL OFFICERS WOUNDED. OFFICIAL DISPATCHES FROM GEN. MEADE. THE BATTLE OF WEDNESDAY. REPORTS FROM PHILADELPHIA. THE BATTIE OF THURSDAY. YESTERDAY’S BATTLE. Our Special Telegrams from the Battle Field. NEWS RECEIVED IN WASHINGTON. NEWS RECEIVED IN PHILADELPHIA. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DISPATCHES. REPORTS FROM HARRISBURGH. REPORTS FROM COLUMBIA, PENN. REPORTS FROM BALTIMORE. THE GREAT BATTLE. COL. CROSS, OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE, KILLED.