Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 91

War Within a War (A Don’t Know Much About® Minute)

 

The worst frontier massacre in American history took place 200 years ago on  August 30, 1813, when a group of Creek Indians, led by a half-Creek, half-Scot warrior named William Weatherford, or Red Eagle, attacked an outpost known as Fort Mims north of Mobile, Alabama.

Like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, it was an event that shocked the nation. Soon, Red Eagle and his Creek warriors were at war with Andrew Jackson, the Nashville lawyer turned politician, who had no love for the British or Native Americans. You know the name of  Andrew Jackson, the future hero of the Battle of New Orleans and future 7th president of the United States., But you don’t know the name William Weatherford. You should. He was a charismatic leader of his people who wanted freedom and to protect his land. Just like “Braveheart,” or William Wallace of Mel Gibson fame.

Only William Weatherford, also known as Red Eagle, wasn’t fighting a cruel King. He was at war with the United States government. And Andrew Jackson.

A NATION RISING (Smithsonian/Harper Collins and Random House Audio)

This video offers a quick overview of Weatherford’s war with Jackson that ultimately led the demise of the Creek nation. You can read more about William Weatherford, Andrew Jackson, and Jackson’s role in American history in A NATION RISING

Andrew Jackson’s life and presidency are also covered in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents.

Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents (2012)
(From Hyperion and Random House Audio)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PBS also offers a good look at the different sides of Andrew Jackson.

Don’t Know Much About® Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson (March 1964)
(Photo: Arnold Newman, White House Press Office)

 

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

Lyndon B. Johnson, in his first address as President to a joint session of Congress (November 27, 1963)

The 36th President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was born on August 27, 1908, in a small farmhouse near Stonewall, Texas on the Pedernales River. Coincidentally, it is also the date on which LBJ accepted the 1964 Democratic nomination for President. (Senator Hubert H. Humphrey was his Vice Presidential nominee.)

In some respects, history and time have been kinder to Lyndon B. Johnson than his tortured Presidency –and certainly the critics of his day—would have possibly suggested. A power broker extraordinaire during his days in Congress, especially during his twelve years in the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson challenged John F. Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 primaries, and then accepted Kennedy’s offer to become his Vice Presidential running mate. Johnson was credited with helping Kennedy win Southern votes and ultimately the election. 

On November 22, 1963, history and America changed with Kennedy’s assassination. Johnson became President, taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy, the dead President’s widow standing beside him. 

Driven by a rousing sense of social justice, born out of his youth and upbringing in hardscrabble Texas and Depression-era experiences, he had become one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most loyal New Dealers. First in a federal job, then in Congress and later as “Master of the Senate.” As President, Johnson set the country on a quest for what he called the “Great Society,” looking for ways to end the great economic injustice and bitter racial disparity that existed in America in 1963. But his vision for a “Great Society” was counterbalanced, and ultimately overshadowed by his doomed course in pursuing the war in Vietnam.

In the midst of the war, recently released White House tapes reveal  Johnson confided–

I can’t win and I can’t get out.

Fast Facts-

•Johnson was the first Congressman to enlist for duty after Pearl Harbor.

•Johnson was the fourth president to come into office upon the death of a president by assassination. (The others were Andrew Johnson after Lincoln, Chester A. Arthur after Garfield, and Theodore Roosevelt after McKinley.)

•Johnson appointed the first black Supreme Curt Justice, Thurgood Marshall.

The Johnson Library and Museum is in Austin, Texas.  Lyndon B. Johnson died at the age of 67 on January 22, 1973. His New York Times obituary.

Read more about Lyndon B. Johnson, his presidency and the Vietnam War and civil rights movement in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® History.

Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)

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Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents
(September 18, 2012-Hyperion Books)

J.D. Salinger: Art Director

Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America by Kenneth C. Davis (1984, Houghton Mifflin (Photo© 2013 Kenneth C. Davis)

 

Readers of a new biography of J.D. Salinger may find the new book’s plain, all-type cover somewhat recognizable. It is certainly designed with a nod to the Bantam Books’ mass market paperback edition of Salinger’s famous novel – a cover that was familiar to a generation of readers.

But that all-type cover was not Salinger’s first paperback cover. And therein lies a fascinating piece of publishing history: J.D. Salinger as Art Director.

This is a story I recounted in my book Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America, a history of the American paperback business and especially the “Paperback Revolution” of the Fifties and Sixties. The book was published in 1984 by Houghton Mifflin.

[The following excerpt is from Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America, Houghton Mifflin, 1984, pages 202-204]

J. D. Salinger was born in New York City in 1919, attended public schools, a military academy and three colleges; he served in the army from 1942 to 1946. Salinger had been writing stories since he was fifteen and was already familiar to New Yorker readers when The Catcher in the Rye was published by Little, Brown in 1951 and became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. After winning wide –not unanimous— critical acclaim, the novel made it to the best-seller list in The Publishers’ Weekly and stayed there for five months, although not selling well enough to make it as one of the year’s ten top-selling novels. (On the best-seller list along with Salinger’s novel were Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, Nicholas Monserrat’s The Cruel Sea, James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, and William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness.) New American Library had purchased paperback rights in advance of publication, as Victor Weybright later recounted:

“One Friday afternoon I had received an advanced copy of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I read it that evening and went into a cold sweat lest the reprint rights should be seized by a competitor if I waited until Monday morning. I tracked (Little, Brown publisher} Arthur Thornhill down on the telephone, made a deal and discovered later that we had beaten the field, most of whom did not receive their advance copies until (the) Monday or Tuesday following.” [1]

Having propelled Weybright into such a fevered paroxysm, the slim volume about sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield and his 48-hour quixotic revolt against “phoniness” appeared in a 25-cent Signet edition with a first printing of 350,000 copies in April of 1953. A box on the cover read, “This unusual book may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart—but you will never forget it.”  For Signet and thirty years of readers to come,[2] that statement was largely true.

Few people were disappointed or unhappy about the book. Save one: J.D. Salinger.

Marc Jaffe (still an NAL editor at this point), who had been in communication with Salinger, recalled that the writer came to NAL’s offices to discuss the book prior to its paperback appearance.

“He said he would be much happier if the book had no illustrated cover at all. In fact, he would be happier if the book was distributed in mimeographed form. Of course, he had no control over the cover.”

Kurt Enoch, who was then responsible for covers, assigned NAL’s star artist, James Avati, to paint the cover for The Catcher in the Rye. Avati produced a simple but effective illustration that showed Holden, wearing his famous red hunting hat turned backward and carrying his Gladstone bag, walking along a city street. He was passing in front of a nightclub that had some posters of semidressed women out front and Avati was asked to dress them up a bit, even though they were in the background. It was a most inoffensive cover, yet Salinger was dismayed by it. As Jaffe explained,

“The book went on to tremendous success, but even knowing that Salinger was unhappy, NAL never changed that cover. When the license came up for renewal, I was at Bantam and it became known he was unhappy.”

Oscar Dystel, by then the head of Bantam, recalled that Little, Brown’s Arthur Thornhill (who was on the Bantam board of directors) called to tell him of Salinger’s difficulties with NAL.

“He asked me if I might be interested in discussing Salinger. I said, ‘I’ll be on the next airplane.’ I dropped everything, went to Boston, and asked Arthur what he wanted. We shook hands on a two-cent-per-book royalty and Arthur then told me that Salinger had to approve the cover. I said, ‘Anything he wants. We’ll do it on plain brown paper.’ Salinger actually sent us a swatch to show us the color he wanted.  He even selected the typeface. The J and the D were set in different types. Bantam still uses that cover.”

(Note: When I quoted Oscar Dystel, Bantam still held the paperback rights to The Catcher in the Rye. They have since reverted to Little, Brown, the original hardcover publisher, which now publishes the paperback edition of the book with its original 1951 hardcover jacket art.)

And by the way, more than 60 years after it appeared in print, The Catcher in the Rye remains among the “Most Banned and Challenged Books,” according to the American Library Association , which tracks attempts to remove books from school and public libraries.

[1] Victor Weybright, The Making of a Publisher (New York: Reynal & Company, 1966, p. 242.

[2] This was written in 1983, a little more than 30 years after the original publication of The Catcher in the Rye.

Who Said It? (8/26/2013)

Theodore Roosevelt: Looking northeast on Main street, Osawatomie, from the Missouri Pacific railroad depot. (Source Kansas Historical Society/ Photo courtesy Dike Dickerson.)

 

Theodore Roosevelt “New Nationalism Speech”  (August 31, 1912)

“There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.”

(Source: “Fifty Core Documents” TeachingAmericanHistory.org

Theodore Roosevelt was the former president when he delivered this speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. It came during during the boisterous 1912 presidential campaign in which he challenged incumbent William Howard Taft, his hand-picked successor as president, and Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate. Roosevelt had bolted the Republican Party after Taft was nominated and ran as third-party candidate of the Progressive Party, popularly known as the Bull Moose Party.

The speech was labeled “socialistic,” “communistic,” and “anarchistic,” but was also hailed by progressives throughout the country. In addition to Roosevelt’s sharp attacks on the influence of corporate power on government, he outlined a raft of social reforms including:

•suffrage for women

•an eight-hour-work day

•a securities commission to regulate Wall Street

•a social insurance program (which would eventually become Social Security passed during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt)

•primary elections and the direct election of Senators

•a Constitutional amendment that would permit a federal income tax.

Wilson won the election, with Roosevelt finishing second and Taft in third– the two men split the Republican vote and ensuring Wilson’s victory.

Osawatomie was most famous as the site of a battle in August 1856 between anti-slavery forces led by John Brown and pro-slavery raiders during the period of a bloody war to determine the future of slavery in the Kansas territory.

President Obama also delivered an address at Osawatomie on December 6, 2011 in which he repeated  a call for reform based on some of Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas.

“Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. ‘The market will take care of everything,’ they tell us.”

Read more about Roosevelt, his presidency and the election of 1912 in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® History.

What You Don’t Know Can Be Thrilling!

[image error] [image error] BRING KENNETH C. DAVIS and the DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT® QUIZ

TO YOUR SCHOOL OR OTHER EVENT

Treat your audience to a

Don’t Know Much About® Quiz

with New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis

The Don’t Know Much About® Quiz is an audience participation game modeled on TV quiz shows, with wide appeal to students, parents and teachers. Bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis sets the tone for the event by briefly introducing himself and describing the Don’t Know Much About® series of books and audios, which is aimed at making learning fun. Then Davis chooses “contestants” using a variety of easy questions thrown out to the audience. (Example: Name the first 13 states.)

The contestants are then divided into two teams of 3 or 4 players, who stand at tables on which there are lights and buzzers. Like a game-show MC, Davis asks a question and the players must buzz first for the chance to answer the question. The first team to reach five correct answers is the winner. (That number can be adjusted, but works well in order to accommodate as many players as possible.)

The questions are usually drawn from all of Davis’s books and audios. However, they can be tailored to a specific event, holiday, or location.. Some of the questions are straightforward (Who was the first president born in the United States?). But Davis also uses riddles, jokes and puns. Following a correct response, Davis elaborates on the answers to turn the contest into a real teaching session as well as a lively, fast-paced and entertaining game.

Davis has presented this game at the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum and the New-York Historical Society. He has performed in bookstores, science centers, classrooms, school gyms and teacher and librarian meetings. He has done it with groups as small as ten and as large as 200, and he has worked with students from elementary grades through middle school and high school. The reaction is always the same, as excited kids clamor for a chance to be a game show contestant. Adults also love to play and Davis has brought the game show to groups of teachers and parents and book festivals in Boston and Chicago.

The simplicity of the setup and the range of questions that can be drawn from Davis’s many books and audios make this a flexible event suitable for many audiences and venues. For more information, please contact us.

Because what you don’t know can be thrilling!

Game What You Don’t Know Can Be Thrilling!

[image error] [image error] BRING KENNETH C. DAVIS and the DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT® QUIZ

TO YOUR SCHOOL OR OTHER EVENT

Treat your audience to a

Don’t Know Much About® Quiz

with New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis

The Don’t Know Much About® Quiz is an interactive game modeled on TV quiz shows, with wide appeal to students, parents and teachers. Bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis sets the tone for the event by briefly introducing himself and describing the Don’t Know Much About® series, which is aimed at making learning fun. Then Davis chooses “contestants” using a variety of easy questions thrown out to the audience. (Example: Name the first 13 states.)

The contestants are then divided into two teams of 3 or 4 players, who stand at tables on which there are lights and buzzers. In game-show style, Davis asks a question and the players must buzz first for the chance to answer the question. The first team to reach five correct answers is the winner. (That number can be adjusted, but works well in order to accommodate as many players as possible.)

The questions are usually drawn from all of Davis’s books; however, they can be tailored to a specific event. Some of the questions are straightforward (Who was the first president born in the United States?). But Davis also uses riddles, jokes and puns. Following a correct response, Davis then elaborates on the answers to turn this game into a real teaching session as well as a lively, fast-paced game.

Davis has taken this game to the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum and the New-York Historical Society. He has performed in bookstores, science centers, classrooms, school gymnasiums and teacher and librarian meetings. He has done it with groups as small as ten or fifteen and as large as 200, and he has worked with students from elementary grades through middle school and high school. The reaction is always extremely exciting, as the kids clamor for a chance to be a game show contestant. Adults also love to play and Davis has brought the game show to groups of teachers and parents and book festivals in Boston and Chicago.

The simplicity of the setup and the range of questions that can be drawn from Davis’s many books make this a very flexible event suitable for many audiences and venues. For more information, please contact us.

Don’t Know Much About® Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin Harrison (c1896)– 23rd President of the United States (Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Div.)

 

Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third President of the United States, was born in North Bend, Hamilton County, Ohio, on Aug. 20, 1833. His father, John Scott Harrison, was the third son of William Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States and the grandson of Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

You may know him as the answer to a presidential trivia question about the only president who was the grandson of a president.  “Little Ben” Harrison is one of those somewhat faceless Ohio-born Republican presidents of the late 19th century. A Civil War veteran –almost a requisite for the office at the time– he was the beneficiary of the controversial 1888 election tainted by accusations of fraud and ballot box stuffing. Harrison lost the popular vote to the incumbent Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote.

Fast Facts:

-More states were admitted under Harrison than any president since Washington:  North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming.

-Electric lights were installed in the White House during Harrison’s term. The Harrisons, like many people of the time, did not trust electricity as early wiring often led to shocks.

-First Lady Caroline Harrison died of tuberculosis on October 25, just weeks before Harrison lost the 1892 election to Cleveland.

-Among Harrison’s appointments was a young Theodore Roosevelt as civil service commissioner.

-During Harrison’s terms, the Oklahoma Land Rush opened nearly two million acres of land once ceded to Indians to white settlers in 1889. And in 1890, the massacre at Wounded Knee took place.

-The period also saw some of the most violent labor strife at such places as the Homestead steel plant in Pennsylvania and the Coeur d’Alene silver mine in Idaho, where federal troops were used to break a strike.

-Following the overthrow of Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, Harrison sent Marines to Hawaii in January 1893 to protect the new government established under Sanford Dole.

-During the 1892 campaign, the Populist, or People’s Party, sprang up. Its candidate, running on the slogan that “Wall Street owns the country,” was James B. Weaver. In a surprising show of strength, he won more than one million votes and twenty-two electoral votes.

Benjamin Harrison died on March 13, 1901. (New York Times obituary.)

Read more about Benjamin Harrison’s life and presidency in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® History.

Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents (2012)
(From Hyperion and Random House Audio)

 

Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)

Don’t Know Much About® President Clinton

President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton-October 22, 1999 (Source: Clinton Library & Museum)

Born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas, William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton, 42nd President of the United States.

The first Democratic president to be elected to two terms in office in his own right since Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Clinton had a story that was as compelling as it was sometimes tawdry. In the face of private controversies and partisan infighting of blowtorch intensity, he was able to rebound repeatedly –the self-styled “Comeback Kid”– to win the presidency in 1992 and a second term in 1996.

He then survived the second impeachment of a president in American history. That proceeding was prompted by his denial of a sexual relationship with a White House intern during a legal deposition related to a suit by a woman who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment while he was governor of Arkansas. Clinton was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial on February 12, 1999.

Fast Facts:

*Clinton is the only president who was a Rhodes Scholar.

*Inaugurated at age forty-six, Clinton was the third youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) and the first “baby boomer” president.

*His wife, Hillary Clinton, was the first First Lady to ever run for public office, becoming a U.S. Senator from New York. After campaigning for president in 2008, she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, who then selected Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state.

 

President Clinton’s attempt to introduce a major health care reform, with his wife Hillary leading the task force that created the legislation, was a political disaster. His campaign promise to end discrimination against homosexuals in the military led to creation of the much-criticized “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. That was followed in 1996 by the passage of the “Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)” which denied federal recognition of same sex marriages or civil unions.

But with 22 million jobs created, a balanced budget and budget surplus when he left office, and a brief but largely successful military intervention in Serbia, Clinton’s popularity, based on approval polls, was high when he departed the White House. In spite of the impeachment proceedings, the American public seemed willing to separate his private life from his public performance.

The Clinton Library & Museum offers resources and information on Clinton’s life, his presidency and his unique partnership with his wife — a story that is not yet complete.

Read more about the Clinton years in Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About History.

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Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents (Hyperion Books and Random House Audio)

Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition-Harper Collins and Random House Audio)

Who Said It? (8-19-2013)

President Bill Clinton. “Address on Health Care Reform” (September 22, 1993)

So tonight I want to talk to you about the principles that I believe must embody our efforts to reform America’s health care system: security, simplicity, savings, choice, quality, and responsibility.

When I launched our Nation on this journey to reform the health care system I knew we needed a talented navigator, someone with a rigorous mind, a steady compass, a caring heart. Luckily for me and for our Nation, I didn’t have to look very far.

Over the last 8 months, Hillary and those working with her have talked to literally thousands of Americans to understand the strengths and the frailties of this system of ours.

Source: University of Virginia-Miller Center

President Clinton had campaigned on 1992 on pushing through a comprehensive health care reform package and placed his wife, First Lady Hillary Clinton, at the head of the task force that was supposed to produce the legislation. It was a political  and legislative disaster. The final package  was complicated and prompted criticism that it was created in secret without public input.

Clinton’s September 1993 speech on national health care made the case for for reform, But Republican opponents lashed out at the plan and a series of sophisticated, negative TV ads featuring “Harry and Louise,”  and created by a consortium of health care companies, effectively killed public support for the program and the legislation was doomed.

William Jefferson Clinton was born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas.

Read more about Clinton’s presidency in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® History

Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents (Hyperion and Random House Audio)

Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition-Harper Collins and Random House Audio )

 

 

Who Said It (8/12-2013)

President Franklin D. Roosevellt-1933 (Courtesy Library of Congress)

 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENT SIGNING THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT” (August 14, 1935)

 

Today a hope of many years’ standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.

If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.

(Source: Social Security Administration)

The Social Security Act [H. R. 7260] was signed into law by FDR  on August 14, 1935. It read:

“An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,”

(Source: Social Security Administration)