William Blake and My Close Friend Rob Adams

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When I woke up this last morning of the long Thanksgiving weekend, I looked at Twitter on my iPhone and saw that this date November 28 is the birthday of the timeless artist William Blake (1757-1843). Immediately, I thought I would share an image of the precious work I have by him, an engraving from his hand, given to me years ago by my close friend, Robert Henry Adams (1955-2001).

After I shared a social media post seen here, on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, I realized I could also do a fuller post that links to earlier blog essays I’ve shared on this website (here, here, and here) about Rob, our meaningful friendship, and a third Franconia College friend pal with whom we constituted a troika, Karl Petrovich.

The Blake gift doesn’t exhaust the fine art that Rob gave me, or occasionally, that I bought from him. There are no less than a dozen such pieces in my Manhattan apartment, such as a print I bought of a circus aerialist by British artist Dame Laura Knight. Another is the framed Lincoln portrait by Civil War-era photographer Alexander Gardner shown here. Sometime in the late 1980s Rob spotted it at an auction, and bought it relatively cheaply due to the unfortunate crease in the middle. Always one to see the bright side, despite the defect, Rob had also spotted the signature, “Your Obt Servt A. Lincoln“, seeming to him in pencil or faded ink, and not a mechanical or mass-reproduced autograph. This made it all but certain it was from Lincoln and Gardner’s time, done in the sixteenth president’s own hand. FYI, the printing near the bottom of the picture reads, from left to right,

A. Gardner, Photographer.         Published by Philip & Solomons, Washington D.C.               Washington

Rob didn’t want to try re-selling it because of the imperfection, and so gave it to me, a (probably) autographed Lincoln photograph. Pretty amazing, right?!

There was some sweet symmetry to the Lincoln gift, because earlier, in the 1970s, for Rob’s wedding to Chicago fashion historian Sandra Adams, I had given him the oversized photography book The Face of Lincoln (Viking, 1979, 15″ x 11 1/2 inches), collecting every known photograph of Lincoln, which at my family’s bookstore in Cleveland, Undercover Books, we were then stocking and selling.  

 

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Listing Notable Current Affairs Titles I’ve Worked On

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For an editorial assignment on a current affairs title with a major publisher that I’m being considered for—in what amounts to a competitive situation among other candidates—I listed a dozen notable titles I’ve acquired, edited, published, and/or agented over my years in publishing. Below is a screenshot of that list for readers of this blog who may be curious about some of the titles I’ve chosen to work on and be involved with over the years. I should add there are many such titles beyond this dozen. Please let me know if the editorial and publishing services provided by me and my business partner Ewan Turner might be of interest to you.

*So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq by Greg Mitchell, w/a Preface by Bruce Springsteen; The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bizants Raymond, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year; and Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq by Michael Goldfarb, a NY Times Notable Book.

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Publishing November 15, “Richard Tregaskis: Reporting Under Fire From Guadalcanal To Vietnam”

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As mentioned on this blog, I’m a lifelong fan of reading biographies, and it’s a delight to work on so many good ones, like Ray E. Boomhower’s new portrait of the life and career of Richard Tregaskis, one of the most accomplished combat correspondents of the twentieth century. Here’s how the catalog copy for University of New Mexico Press’s High Road imprint describes the book:

In the late summer of 1942, more than ten thousand members of the First Marine Division held a tenuous toehold on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. As American marines battled Japanese forces for control of the island, they were joined by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis…one of only two civilian reporters to land and stay with the marines, and in his notebook he captured the daily and nightly terrors faced by American forces in one of World War II’s most legendary battles–and it served as the premise for his bestselling book, Guadalcanal Diary.

One of the most distinguished combat reporters to cover World War II, Tregaskis later reported on Cold War conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. In 1964 the Overseas Press Club recognized his first-person reporting under hazardous circumstances by awarding him its George Polk Award for his book Vietnam Diary. Boomhower’s riveting book is the first to tell Tregaskis’s gripping life story, concentrating on his intrepid reporting experiences during World War II and his fascination with war and its effect on the men who fought it.

 

Richard B. Frank, author of Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle, says of the new biography:

“Alongside Ernie Pyle, Tregaskis was perhaps the most outstanding American war correspondent of WWII. [He’s] best know for…Guadalcanal Diary, but that book covered only one small chapter of his reporting from the front lines. Ray Boohmoer’s excellent new biography finally does justice to Tregaskis in this deeply researched, thoughtful portrait of the man and his times.”

 

The book’s official pub date will be November 15, and I’m getting an early start on congratulating the author, for whom I’ve already sold a second biography of an important journalist to UNMP, The Ultimate Protest: Malcolm W Browne, Vietnam, and the Photo that Stunned the World. Congrats, Ray!

 

 

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