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RIP for Sam Schulman, the Last US Sailor from the Exodus 1947

July 11, 2019 /0 Comments/in , /by

My longtime author, humanitarian and photojournalist Ruth Gruber (1911-2016) has been gone a few years, but I still have a Google an alert for her name. I was glad via the alert to get a heads-up about the passing of Sam Schulman, the last surviving US crewman to have sailed on the ship Exodus 1947, the fate of whose human cargo Ruth chronicled for American and international newspapers in the fateful summer of 1947. The obit I first linked to on Facebook, and again here was written by his son Mark Schulman.

Here’s a moving video with Mr Schulman:

“The Mueller Report,” a Published Book Now Landing in Bookstores

April 26, 2019 /0 Comments/in , /by

A fascinating report by PW’s editor Jim Milliot from booksellers in the field on the editions of The Mueller Report now coming out. Scribner, Melville House, and Skyhorse had each announced print/ebook versions during the many months leading up to the report’s intensely anticipated release. Because they were only finally able to get their hands on the manuscript last Thursday—when corrupt Attorney General Barr finally deigned to let it be published—it’s been very challenging for them to get the book in to stores. Of the three I’ve only seen Scribner’s in a store so far. I found it it in a B&N yesterday, a big fat trade paperback printed on not-great paper with a white cover. I intend to buy the one coming from Melville House, which according to the article should be in stores Monday. It will be close to a mass-market size paperback. I’ve been following a multi-day thread live-tweeting the design, typesetting, and production of the Melville House edition by co-publisher Dennis Johnson (a great follow on Twitter, @mobylives), which he began writing last week as he and colleagues received the text in PDF and embarked on making it in to their distinctive rendition of of this vital document, an imperative book, indeed.

The Skyhorse edition may have begun landing in stores, but I haven’t seen it yet. That edition displays a questionable choice for Introducer: the odious Alan Dershowitz, frequent Trump partisan and FOX News regular. An ill-advised choice when you consider that FOX News viewers, even ones fervently appreciative of Dershowitz’s rhetorical support of the dangerous prez are not apt to buy a copy of The Mueller Report at all. They tell themselves and each other that the Trump-Russia connections are all made up anyway. Those FOX people would buy a report on Hillary Clinton, but that’s definitely not what we have here.

OTOH, the great majority of people buying the Mueller Report in book form are going to be critics of Trump who’ve been following #TrumpRussia avidly for more than two years; folks who detest Trump and want to see the end of his presidency will be apt to want either the Scribner edition, with commentary by Post reporters, or an edition that has nothing but the text of Mueller’s report, intelligently designed and typeset for an optimal reading experience, the Melville House edition. Why would they want to buy an edition with Dershowitz’s questionable gloss on it—a very-likely-to-be-tendentious view of events apt to let Trump off the hook despite his egregious misdeeds and transgressions? Indeed, there’s a funny line in the penultimate graf of Milliot’s story:

James Fugate, co-owner of Eso Wan Books in Los Angeles, also believes the report will sell very well. “There is huge demand for this book, and I have at least 10 preorders for this,” he said. “We ordered 50 each of the Scribner edition and the Melville House. I won’t touch the Skyhorse edition with the Dershowitz introduction.”

 

Visiting Britain, Feb 19-April 1—Books, Brexit, and Beyond

February 17, 2019 /0 Comments/in , , , /by

As I recently posted on Facebook, I’m excited that my wife, Kyle Gallup, a painter, has been invited to do an artist’s residency in London for the month of March. The sponsor is the long-established British paint company Winsor & Newton. They’ve selected a British painter, and an American, Kyle, and are providing them with art materials and studios in the same building as where their paint chemists work. They want the two sides, chemists and artists, to interact with each other, and thus improve the formulation of their new line of cadmium-free watercolors. A lovely idea, really.

I am taking the opportunity to travel with Kyle, which will also allow me to attend the London Book Fair March 12-14, for which I’ve made appointments to meet with British publishers and literary agents. We are flying to Scotland tomorrow where we’ll visit friends for a few days, then begin journeying through the North of England till we reach London on March 1. I plan to write for this blog and in my social networks about being in Britain as Brexit looms. My reading material will include Underland: A Deep Time Journey by a favorite British author Robert Macfarlane, being published in the US in June by W.W. Norton. I’ve loved earlier books by Macfarlane, including The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot and Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination. I’m confident that reading Underland while touring Britain and staying a month in London will be a tonic regardless of the news in the UK and from the US.