New blogging policy = old policy

After good some experiences with a blog comments function (at my other blog), I've decided to keep Civil War Bookshelf comment free.

The comments become lost and they tend towards Usenet-like or email-like interactions which makes for dissonance. I've noticed this on my fellow bloggers' sites, where I have left the occasional comment myself recently.

Having decided on no comments for this blog, it seems right to abstain from leaving comments on other people's blogs, which I will henceforth do.

I enjoy the comments on the other blog but if I don't highlight them in a post of their own, they constitute a sort of disturbing murmur. One odd thing I noticed - and these are generally artists, not readers - people there are more likely to leave comments on an old post than a fresh one. That, of course, makes it doubly invisible, because one does not re-read the old posts every time one checks in with the blog.

I really enjoy the yin-yang of co-blogging over there but that is something I wouldn't do here either.

The right way to blog seems to me to put your own views across - and to maintain a community dynamic by playing off the best ideas of other bloggers. On this last point I have been sadly remiss since August '05. My work life changed and I would like to do more of that when I can find just the right routine.

Thanks for reading, by the way.

This is the season for listening to the world's greatest piece of Civil War music yet composed: go hear Hindemith's Requiem for those we Love: "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". I'll post on it soon.

Book sales in 2005 - Battle Cry of Freedom

James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is an important barometer in booksales on two levels.

On the first, its commercial success as a midlist title tells publishers what their best outcome might be in backing a promising ACW manuscript. It sets the financial stakes for this kind of publishing. It also tells publishers what the successful form of a Civil War title should be: narrative, single volume, high levels of generalization, and recapitulations. TV tie in is a big plus too.

The second indication Battle Cry gives us is about the content of Civil War history. The mighty opinion-making machine built by Allan Nevins lost steam in the early 1980s. His magazine, American Heritage, had in two decades rolled off the plinth of a national readership of hundreds of thousands to the cliff edge of fiscal insolvency. The stream of successful companion military books it issued had also come to a halt. Its painstaking and strict editorial policies on the Civil War's historical questions could no longer be enforced from a strong platform that dominated Civil War publishing.

Into this early eighties scenario blundered an obscure race relations professor with very little knowledge of or interest in the Civil War. He clutched a commission from Oxford University Press - in a series edited by his former professor / sponsor/advisor - to plug the gap in a popular American history publishing series. He executed his commission by aggregating material millions of Americans had already read in American Heritage and in popular books by American Heritage's top article writers. His name was James McPherson, of course, and his book succeeded in aggregating Centennial output into a single tome, thus presenting one kind of compact retelling of the war to those working in other media:

James McPherson refers to a few of his many heavyweight predecessors in his Preface: Allan Nevins’s dual tetralogies, Bruce Catton’s three volumes on the Army of the Potomac and three-volume general history, Douglas Freeman’s four-volume biography of Robert E. Lee, and of course Shelby Foote’s classic three-volume, three-thousand-page narrative.

It was this compactness with its level of generalization that attracted Ken Burns to Battle Cry. Another attraction was that it formulated information "people already knew" - a big asset in TV. Anyone reading Battle Cry when it first appeared had enough memory of popular Civil Warreading to experience a pandering effect, that warm sense of genius that comes from knowing everything the author intends to say to you before he says it.

Those watching the Burns ACW documentary likewise would be struck by their own immense knowledgeability, since everything presented was (to paraphrase John Y. Simon) the same bedtime story they had been reading for decades... a bedtime story that permeated nonfiction culture through the tremendous Centennial-era success of writers who came together in the pages of American Heritage.

The triumph of Burns' Civil War television series propelled the sales of Battle Cry - they were both complementary artifacts of the Nevins/Catton/Williams belief system - and they freshened the fading editorial lines that had held sway since about 1959.

From a position of publishing success, McPherson was able to review new thinking in Civil War history from the pages of the very best journals and newspapers; he could recommend like-minded reviewers to the lesser organs. He could recommend editors in scholarly publishing houses; he could blurb books meeting his approval; he could help projects with agreeable views; and as he came to head the AHA, he could name and influence prize committees. He had influence; he used it; and he was not open to revision of the work of 1960-1965.

Watching Battle Cry sales, then, tells us how much mileage is left in the idea tank of the Centennialmobile. Now that McPherson has given up Princeton University and a position of even greater influence - the AHA presidency - his ideas must move on their own merits, not through politics and influence. What that means for us is that when his book sales fall to a level that are no longer interesting to publishers, the magic fades and we are (at long last) on to the next thing.

I needn't tell you how eager I am for the next thing.

I go into this background at length because younger readers of this blog are like fish in the water - they lack a sense of the water itself and its peculiar qualities. In fact we have all been submerged in the "natural" sea of Centennial doctrine for so long it is difficult for the casual reader to distinguish between Civil War history and American Heritage editorial policy. This is the key historiographic problem addressed by this blog.

On to the numbers.

In 2003, The paper version of Battle Cry sold 548 copies through Ingram. Using the industry's rule of sixes, that translates into something like 3,300 copies through all channels (except libraries). At the end of that year, the odd project of an Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom was released with the full fanfare of a new book - reviews, tours, ads, etc. The effect was odd. The old paperback version picked up sales (1813 books through Ingram in 2004; 1,777 last year) while the public showed little interest in the new picture book (77 copies through Ingram in 2003, 361 in 2004, 117 last year).

Illustrated Battle Cry was a commercial failure that did not make it to softcover (not as of this writing). It involved the safe exploitation of a name brand author and did poorly.

The same effect is found in new writing like the Gettysburg guide Hallowed Ground. We see a hardback but no softcover edition. Issued in May of '03, it sold 856 copies via Ingram that year and by last year Ingram sales declined to 348. These are healthy figures for university presses but seriously substandard for commercial imprints.

It is now unlikely James McPherson can get a publishing contract from a trade house - with the possible exception of his autobiography. (Witness his shaking down Gary Gallagher for a job with University of North Carolina Press.)

An additional difficulty for McPherson has involved the appearance of new media - suddenly book buyers could "talk back" to the professor and some of that talkback took the form of cruel mockery about McPherson's Gettysburg mistakes. (An author once confided in me about how down his publishers were on him because of the reviews left on the book's Amazon site. Are authors of McP's stature immune from that?)

At currentl levels, the Battle Cry is hard to figure. It was intented to be a textbook and is currently assigned reading across the land: can that account for much of the current 5,000 copy sales level? The performance of this author's ancillary output tells us yes.

The dam is breaking.

(Next: Stephen Sears in 2005. Backgound and industry info here.)

The latest thing...

... relic hunting safaris. No kidding.

Ending the war in 1862

A friend recently said to me, "I don't think the war could have ended in 1862." He said that shyly, expecting harrumphs but he was preaching to the choir. As Jay Winik has pointed out, its ending as early as 1865 was quite the fluke - one to be grateful for.

Tim Reese was good enough to pass on this paper to me today by MG JBA Bailey: “Over By Christmas”: Campaigning, Delusions and Force Requirements.

... over the past hundred years military establishments, encouraged and directed by their political masters, have persistently underestimated the length and costs of their campaigns and have frequently had little idea of the actual nature of their undertakings.

It's a sucker's game: the civilians ask for a military estimate and get one. They then enter into war - Politik conducted by other means - making a hash of the military estimate.

Politically-tainted overoptimism has often led to fundamental misappreciation of the nature of a military undertaking. This deficit in imagination and understanding is then, with some resentment, often blamed on “mission creep,” or explained away with clichés masquerading as alibis, asserting that plans “never survive the first contact” or that readily predictable consequences could not have been known in advance.

Politicians hate plans and hate strategy. They are creatures of contingency.

... the serial misbehaviour of which defense establishments and their political masters have been guilty is so apparently irrational and foolish that it may in some way be endemic to the civil-military condition, and not amenable to correction by better training, education or more assiduous staff work.”

McClellan's friend von Moltke the elder (above, right) noted: “when millions of men array themselves opposite each other, and engage in a desperate struggle for their national existence, it is difficult to assume that the question will be settled by a few victories.”

Unless you are a Civil War author.

There is a lot of George McClellan in old von Moltke, including the not entirely fair teaching offered the Prussian General Staff during his tenure that Grant's 1864 plans were simply a revival of McClellan's 1862 strategy.

I should note, by the way, that the business about no plan surviving contact with the enemy is pure von Moltke.

Meanwhile, Bailey has moments of optimism that surprise one:

The criteria for success in this complex battlespace must be headed by an awareness of the strategic environment, an understanding of the desired endstate and its clear articulation.

Good luck with that, my friend. Desired endstates and clear articulation are not exactly stock in trade of the political class. I like it better when you say,

We are after all but actors in a long-running “human comedy.”

A very dark comedy, if you are a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine.

Enjoy this essay by a British major general and understand - I am speaking as a former general staff officer myself - that no American soldier since McClellan would have dared write this piece.

Nous on the beach

The Australians have had another Gallipoli commemoration in Turkey, with 9,000 Australians present.

A respectful crowd at the Gallipoli dawn service was clearly conscious of being good on the sacred battlefields, after last year's controversy over litter, loutish behaviour and inappropriate music.

In other words, people had behaved as if it was America's Memorial Day. Says the governor general:

"We lost a campaign with 26,000 casualties, but had won for us an enduring sense of national identity based on those iconic traits of mateship, courage, compassion and nous," he said. "Let us never forget."

Nous!  How noetic!

nous. mind or reason, both human and divine; intellect; "the place where the human ground of order is in accord with the ground of being"; the intellectual self  

The governor general appears to be a reader of Eric Voegelin's metahistories.

NEWS |  Confederate memorial day commemorated *  Jefferson Davis home rebuild draws criticism *  MO tourism chief resigns to write ACW books

Psychological effects yielded physical effects

From the latest issue of Psychiatric News:

Younger soldiers who served in the U.S. Civil War and those who saw more of their comrades die were at greater risk for heart, stomach, and nervous illnesses decades after the war, reveals a study of individual and unit records of more than 15,000 veterans. [...] The medical histories and diagnoses were drawn from pension files compiled by government physicians to certify the veterans' health and disability status. Most of the other soldiers not included in the study were dead or deserters, and so lacked postwar medical records.

I wonder if they considered the effects of living outdoors from 1 - 3 years, of not washing enough, of high risk of exposure to disease, of frequent dysentery, of poor diet, and of separation from family without leave for nearly the duration of the war, and of letters from home complaining of financial hardship with no chance of meliorating family circumstances..

(Some of this research appeared in February.)

How David Eicher lost the Civil War

A few years ago, in a newspaper review, I described my high hopes for astronomer David Eicher (right).

Like many people who come into Civil War history by reading Catton, Nevins, and other authors on the old editorial board of American Heritage during the Centennial era, Eicher regarded the various untold thousands of Civil War controversies as largely settled. The work, for new Centennialists, has been either to tell the story better; or to develop some biographical or unit history that strengthens the memes of 1960-65; or to explore underdeveloped subthemes.

What made David Eicher different from other young Centennialists was his fascination with dissonant minutiae – the odd factual material that if researched and studied ruptures the current consensus. He tended to use it to liven his narrative rather than pursue its implications, but at least he noticed it and was not afraid to handle radioactive bits and pieces. Eicher, unlike the general run of storytellers, was also detail-friendly, witness the tome he authored with his father. I hoped that he would cross over into a place where he need no longer square his conclusions with ancient editorial policies, where he would let the evidence lead him.

Eicher has turned away somewhat from McPherson and Gallagher – guardians of the old AH memes – he even names them here as examples of wrong thinking about how the war was won. But he has gone off the deep end, publishing a book that is overwhelmingly polemical in structure, despite the original research done for it.

Dixie Betrayed: How the South Really Lost the Civil War reminds me of a cruel remark Ralph Luker once made about Clayton Cramer: “... you begin with what you regard as a self-evident truth [and then] you clutch scattered droppings of evidence supporting your generalization…”

It’s as if the marketing concept for Dixie came first and the research came second. The thrust of the book is that “... a calamity of political conspiracy, discord, and dysfunction … cost the South the Civil War.” – Military Ink

“... the South was undermined by its paradoxical efforts to fight a war and retain state rights.” – Publisher’s Weekly

How was a nation built primarily on the concept of states' rights ever going to create for itself sufficient unity of effort to win a war the very purpose of which, from the Union perspective, was to ensure the preservation of the Union those states had pulled out of?” - Booklist

Is that the ring of a sound bite? If you think that this is extreme condensation on my part and unfair, gaze in awe at this interview. Eicher: "Lincoln maneuvered the right people into control with a different system that included such innovations as a War Board of hand-picked people he trusted. He went through generals in chief until he got to one he trusted, U.S. Grant, who he trusted and let go.”

Good grief. On what level does this statement work? It tries to compress the whole Union war effort into the management of one A. Lincoln. And it does terrible violence even on the terms it sets itself: the War Board, which lasted all of about four months, had no Lincoln picks on it – it was Stanton’s experiment and did not interact wit AL. The idea that Lincoln let Grant “go” is something Brooks Simpson and John Y. Simon have worked hard to change in the public mind for years, without result.

The generalization is wrong; its examples are wrong; it barely functions as "Won Cause" mythology.

If Eicher had begun work intending to fairly and open mindedly study the Rebel war effort, if he came to the conclusion his current book reaches, call the book “The Crisis of War and the Southern Government” or some such. Make your discovery while studying a broader issue.

I have no doubt someone could today write the same book as this based on the hypothetical defeat of the Union in the rebellion. Mark Neely has, in fact, come very close to it in his new work, The Union Divided.

David Eicher has the ability to publish history but chooses to function as a mere nonfiction writer.

NEWS | Re-enactor does his thing in Iraq * SCV battles over legacy * Pro-casino team rolls out studies

Smithsonian: the curator as dictator

The Smithsonian has taken a big step towards the privatization of public documents and artifacts.

Documentary makers seeking access to Smithsonian holdings must submit scripts for review and approval. The Institution reserves the right to disallow production arrangements and shoot the script itself, if it’s a good one. (Say hello to your uninvited production partner.)

The Smithsonian also reserves the right to prohibit access to the materials, based on what it sees in the script – or in case you refuse to partner with it.

Ken Burns, for one, doesn't like this. He thinks this gives Showtime, the Smithsonian’s partner, a view into other people's documentary projects. That's hardly my concern.

I see it as a move towards speech and information restriction. The Smithsonian's flack proudly boasts that "since the current process went into effect, 24 out of 26 projects have been approved." Put another way, in the last six months they have killed two projects that were none of their damned business.

"Slaughter Pen" project

The collaboration between faith-based developers Tricord and Civil War Preservation Trust - of which I had been so critical and suspicious - has yielded a surprise bounty.

Tricord has purchased land associated with "The Slaughter Pen" at Fredericksburg at market prices when that land recently became available. Tricord is holding it for Civil War Preservation Trust, which has gone into overdrive to raise $12 million needed to gain title.

This is a very clean deal - the model of what preservation should be - leading to fee simple ownership and tourist boots on the ground. To donate, start at this page on CWPT's website.

• At the bottom of the page, you'll see a table with dollar amounts. Click one of them. Let's say you clicked $25. It will take you to a page called Donation Selector.
• You'll see an empty field for "Quantity." (This is confusing and why I wrote these directions.) Your quantity will be the number of donations you want to make. Enter the number 1. (This will eventually produce a result that is equal to 1 x $25.)
• After entering 1, click Continue.
• Donation Selector now displays a number of tables. The top table is labeled “Current Appeal”– look at the Total Amount column on the right – it should display (in this case) $25. Click Continue at the bottom of the page.

After this you will see a series of easily understood payment pages with clear instructions to follow. I could spend more time on explanations, but this should get you through the payment process.

Let's encourage CWPT in this kind of battlefield preservation.

"Pulitzer-worthy" defined

A member of the National Book Critics Circle points out to any potential readers that Geraldine Brooks' Civil War novel March "never suffers by comparison" to Newt Gingrich's work.

Did I read that correctly? A new standard emerges ...

NEWS | Tricord buys "Slaughter Pen" for CWPT * Maxwell narrates "Horses of Gettysburg" * Park expansion makes Kennesaw re-enactment possible

New Gettysburg movie

It cost $7 million and runs 30 minutes.

The producer, a realtor, bankrolled the movie by selling a 42 acre Gettysburg lot to the casino developers - for use in the casino development.

He supports the casino.

Second Manassas, the game ...

It's out today and "Each officer has 5 traits that affect personality, performance and tactical decision making on the battlefield."

Wonder what traits Pope got stick with.

Hat tip to Brett.

Book sales in 2005 - the Grant bubble

The array of recent major trade house Grant biographies presents a mixed sales picture. In trade terms, the books are failures. On a small press or college press scale, they all represent modest success.

Whether a non-trade house could have achieved the same sales levels for these titles without the advertising, publicity, sales force, and widespread book reviewing that trade sponsorship delivers is an interesting question.

If trade house resouces are needed to turn annual sales of under 5,000 copies per title, then the Grant vein may have been mined out. Keep in mind that all these titles were inteded to be blockbuster nonfiction breakthroughs. I don't exclude the possibility that there are 5,000 bookbuyers who will buy any and every hardback Grant title that comes out, regardless of publicity. That may be the lesson from this exercise in publishing overkill. Nor can I rule out the possibility of huge library sales, invisible to me, saving some publisher's bacon.

These Grant books, not incidentally, are bad books one and all. They add nothing to our knowledge of the man; offer no new interpretations based on old or new materials; and they content themselves with rehashing the old "Lincoln Finds A General" motif, so thoroughly exhausted by the Centennial era writers.

It's as if the major publishers noticed that Catton was out of print and decided to do something about it - other than bring Catton back.

One can hope a good Grant book would have done much better - Brooks Simpson is preparing a second volume to his biography, for instance - but this raft of reworkings and retellings has probably spoiled his chances for some time.

Josiah Bunting's Ulysses S. Grant was brought out in 2004 by Time and I would guess had a minimum print run of 15,000 copies . In 2004, Ingram sold 1,152 copies, which using our rule of sixes, translates into a total sales estimate of about 7,000 copies - under half of my guesstimated press run for this kind of book. Last year, in a fairly predictable decay rate, the sales were at half that, with the Ingram total standing at 649. Continuing on that trajectory, the print run will not be sold out.

Now Bunting was the strongest performer in this pack., followed by Edward Bonekemper (pictured top right) and his tome A Victor Not a Butcher released through the small but strong and savvy trade house Regnery.

Victor appeared in April 2004 and sold 832 copies through Ingram, which may represent 5,000 total sales. I thought it was something of a hit at the time. The print runs for Regnery are going to be smaller than for Time Books and Bonekemper was a totally unknown author when he signed this contract. My guess is that Regnery printed no more than 7,500 to 10,000 copies of the first edition. Last year Ingram sold 121 Victors, a steep drop. Regnery may sell out its first run if the sales decay slows but it seems unlikely.

Jean Smith's late 1990s Grant is still puttering along. Ingram sold 151 in 2004 and another 84 last year. Smith intrigued me by drawing our attention to Halleck's numerous efforts to replace Grant with Hitchcock and/or Buell but he irritated me by Goodwinizing sources (failing to cite or block quote many borrowed passages).

It's odd that Simon & Schuster would keep Smith's book off the remainder tables at current sales levels but Grant is of special interest to the chief editor of S&S, Michael Korda, who released his own Grant book in 2004.

A senior executive at S&S with the publishing company his to command, Korda was able to move a mere 558 of his own Grant units through Ingram that year - maybe 4,000 sales all told. Last year that figure dropped to 262 via Ingram.

One supposes that trade publishers will be revisiting the landmark years of 2004 and 2005 for a long time to come should anyone ask for a meeting about new Grant manuscripts.

On a happier note: where a Grant book deals in substance, its chances run much better.

Timothy Smith's Champion Hill, released via the small press Savas Beatie, sold 151 copies through Ingram in 2004 - the year of its release - reflecting almost 1,000 units from a brand new publisher. Last year Ingram says it sold 84 copies, reflecting about 500 hardbacks. If the press run was 2,000, this new title - on a start-up press - has a shot at running through its first edition.

I don't know what the budget is for Champion Hill, but the results look good to me. Let the wannabe retellers take notice.

(Previous post with many background links here.)

Pulitzer for Civil War novel March

Some new novelist had the awful idea of writing a sequel to Little Women - a pastiche in Alcott's style. This is the sort of idea you laugh about over drinks. or dream up in a freshman dorm party.

It won a Pulitzer for author Geraldine Brooks (right). We're talking about March.

From Amazon: "I think that if Louisa May Alcott were alive today, this is a book that she could have written, and I think she would approve of what Brooks has done."

I myself think of Alcott as being in a better place, if I can use such a tender, Pulitzer-worthy turn of phrase. I'm not sure she cares who is comandeering her reputation or spoiling the enjoyment of her novels.

At least one Amazon poster is unhappy: "I don't know how Ms. Brooks could take a high-minded chaplain, circa 1860, and turn him into an adulterer who 'married' his minister-sister's wife out in a tryst..." I know how: by following the advice of her editors and the conventions demanded of bus station literature.

Amazon also posted the inevitable: "Louisa May Alcott must be rolling in her grave."

I'm rolling in a virtual grave on her behalf.

That mystery project

The setback to this project was the loss of an editor, not the loss of data, Theodore Savas informs me.

Do sign up for some copies.

Doctorow's March

From the book pages of your local newspaper on Easter Sunday: "the clinically rational, barely human surgeon Wrede Sartorius ... in one of the novel’s most eerie moments, uses his scalpel to puncture the hymen of a nurse who is about to surrender her virginity to him."

You let a dreadful 1970s pop novelist loose in the fields of history and the results are going to be predictable. Tasteless self parody.

Art of the Confederacy

The Museum of the Confederacy is currently showing Art of the Confederacy, a lot of it naive work sketched by soldiers.