Well-Read Life™

Shave and a Haircut—Two Books

Alvin with a young Barbershop Books reader.
Photo by Andy Kropa.

One of the many rewards of sitting on the board of the National Book Foundation (NBF) is having the Levenger Foundation underwrite the NBF’s annual Innovations in Reading prize. It’s a call to action to the many individuals and organizations around the country who are engaged in creative ways of promoting reading to share their programs with the NBF. The NBF has the difficult job of picking the best of these innovators as the recipient of the $10,000 prize.

This year’s winner is a program that Alvin Irby conceived, prototyped and is now scaling. Writer and editor Mim Harrison spoke with him and relays his inspiring story.

                                                                    —Steve

While he was getting a haircut one late afternoon in the barbershop across from P.S. 69 in the Bronx that he frequented, Alvin Irby noticed the fidgety first-grader. He knew the little boy: he was in the class that Alvin taught at the school across the street. It was clear to Alvin that, while he waited with his mom to get his hair cut, the youngster was bored.

If he wasn’t a teacher and the boy wasn’t his student, Alvin says he might not have come to the conclusion that he did: the little guy needed to be reading.

Alvin, who has a master’s in childhood education (one of two—he also has an M.P.A.), had an idea for how to make that happen. It was one of those stunningly simple ideas that seem so obvious in retrospect: equip barbershops with fun books for young boys to read while they wait for a haircut.

From deficit to desire

 “Girls read at significantly higher levels of proficiency,” Alvin says. “They read more, more often, and better. This is true across all ethnic groups.”

By contrast, the U.S. Department of Education has found that 85 percent of African American fourth-grade boys are not proficient in reading. Alvin believes that the deficit framework used in early literacy, focusing on what kids can’t do rather than what they are able to, has contributed to poor reading outcomes among black boys.

Additionally, he says, when the books that boys encounter in school and at home are not culturally relevant, age-appropriate, or gender responsive, many boys conclude that reading isn’t fun. (How many of us, whether as children or adults, want to read boring books?)

“I wanted to combat these deficit ways of thinking,” Alvin says, “by providing social cues and environmental factors that would help young boys of color identify as readers.”

Go see Denny Moe, a friend advised him.

“Would you like to read some books?”

Dennis Mitchell is the owner of Denny Moe’s Superstar Barbershop, located on Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 133^rd and 134^th in Manhattan. The shop became the first to be part of Alvin’s nonprofit program called Barbershop Books.

“Barbershops are one of the few places left in many black communities where people from all walks of life come together and interact on a regular basis,” Alvin says. As an undergraduate at Grinnell College in Iowa majoring in sociology, Alvin spent four years considering how people and institutions intersect in society. He sees the barbershop as an ideal place to support early literacy for young black boys.

Between his background in sociology and his second job as a stand-up comedian, Alvin appreciates the value of knowing your audience. So he took a stack of books, geared for young readers through adults, to Denny Moe’s. He sat and observed for hours. Would children and adults read books in a barbershop? Alvin didn’t know but was determined to find out. 

“I’d spend eight to 10 hours just watching to see what would happen with the books,” he said. “I’d ask the kids, ‘Would you like to read some books?’ It’s how I found out if Barbershop Books was a viable idea that had value.”

The boys in the 4 to 8 age range were most likely to interact with the books. The next challenge was to figure out what books boys really wanted to read.

Captain Underpants, meet Gross Greg

Another stunningly simple solution: Alvin asked them. The responses he received echoed the results of Scholastic’s children’s survey, which revealed that the number-one thing children look for when choosing a book is one that makes them laugh—like Captain Underpants does.

Alvin further validated the results by writing a rhyming picture book of his own, Gross Greg. He sent the manuscript to a few kindergarten and first-grade teachers and asked them to read it to their students. Once he heard that it scored high on the laugh meter and had students “rolling on the floor,” he published it independently.

Barbers as early literacy advocates

Barbershop Books now outfits its partner barbershops with a small, colorful bookcase filled with carefully curated softcover books that the boys and girls can read while they wait. Some wait for a haircut; others wait for their dad, or brother, or uncle. Barbers at participating barbershops encourage the children and their family members to read. They also talk to the boys about reading. The barbers become male reading models who create early positive reading experiences for young black boys.

“Sometimes the family members that the children come with read to them,” says Alvin, “but for the most part, the boys read the books by themselves.”

Currently about 87 barbershops across 26 cities in 15 states and the District of Columbia participate in the Barbershop Books program, which has a goal of reaching 800 barbershops in 20 target cities over the next three years. The mayor of Minneapolis recently funded the implementation of Barbershop Books programs in 10 Minneapolis barbershops. Chicago, Oakland, Baltimore and Philadelphia are just a few of the target cities in which the program plans to expand.

Barbershops wishing to participate need only have space for the little bookcase, at least 40 young boys who come into the shop every month, and a willing owner. (If you would like to connect with Barbershop Books, visit barbershophooks.org or email info@barbershopbooks.org.)

Cheerio

Barbershop Books’ current headquarters “is my living room,” says Alvin with a laugh. “There are literally hundreds of children’s books and packing boxes everywhere.”

He buys the books from Scholastic and welcomes participation by other publishers. NFL defensive end Jarvis Jenkins led a read-aloud at Harlem barbershops in 2016. The support of individual donors in combination with local funders such as school districts, churches and local municipalities help keep the venture growing, with one dollar equating to 27 minutes of reading—an ROI that Warren Buffett might love.

Alvin would like to attract a national sponsor. “Cheerios would be perfect,” he says.

The entrepreneurial reader

As a young child growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, Alvin didn’t like reading and didn’t identify as a reader. It just wasn’t something he or his friends did.  But his mom, an elementary-school teacher, gave him reading lessons and ensured that he learned to read proficiently.

It was as a teenager that Alvin’s passion for reading was ignited. As the student council president at his high school, Alvin developed a keen interest in reading that inspired him to create a reading incentive program, for which he acquired an $810 grant from the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Little Rock.

Barbershop Books is, he feels, a doable idea that can make a difference. “But ideas just stay ideas until someone executes,” he says. “There’s always farther to go when you have a vision.”

And a love of books.

                                                                                        —Mim

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Mother’s Day gift—for mother and daughter

 

As recently as 20 years ago, moms in America worried that their young children would not learn English—even though they themselves spoke it. Jeane Deligero Forrest, who is from the Philippines, was one. Although she spoke to her daughter, Amber, in English, she also talked to her in her native Tagalog when Amber was little.

Jeane’s story on how she immigrated to the “wrong” America first, and eventually to the actual United States, is filled with the kinds of setbacks, serendipities and unwavering determination typical of so many who come here.

The Tagalog that she spoke to her daughter was one of the few things Jeane brought with her to the U.S. from the Philippines. It is the common language Filipinos speak “to understand each other,” Jeane says. “There are three hundred sixty dialects in the Philippines.” Jeane’s family spoke Ilonggo as well as Tagalog.

But once in the “real” America, Jeane soon stopped talking in Tagalog to Amber. “I got scared,” she says. “I was afraid she wouldn’t learn English.” Much later—too late, actually—a pediatrician told her that young children are perfectly capable of learning two languages at the same time.

“Missing a part of my history”

When Amber was 14, Jeane took her to the Philippines for the first time to meet her family members. Jeane’s childhood home there was a marked contrast to Amber’s comfortable home in Florida—a bucket of cold water for a shower, a cot for a bed, an open window for air conditioning.

None of this bothered Amber. What did trouble her was not being able to converse with her family. She knew some rudimentary Tagalog phrases, but they were not enough.

“It felt like I was missing a part of my history,” Amber says. She and her relatives had only the breezes wafting from the window to fill “those long, awkward silences.”

A mother-and-daughter gift

It’s not all that surprising, then, that today, Amber (who appears to have inherited her mother’s determination) is learning Tagalog. And it’s Jeane who’s inspiring her—by learning another language herself. “Spanish is an important language to have,” she says.

For this Mother’s Day, Amber has a simple gift she is giving her mom. You can hear it here, in Episode 4 of America the Bilingual. 

Some of my favorite reading on the languages they carried

If Jeane had known about the 1986 book, The Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism, she might not have agonized over whether to speak to her young daughter in Tagalog. Kenji Hakuta, an emeritus professor at Stanford, explains in his clear, gentle prose how half-baked science misinformed generations of Americans about the supposed disadvantages of bilingualism.  

Another Stanford professor, David M. Kennedy, shared with me over a glass of wine a few of his favorite books on American immigration: The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People, by Oscar Handlin, and Becoming American: An Ethnic History, by Thomas J. Archdeacon.

David’s own article from 1996 article in the Atlantic Monthly, “Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?,” is 21 years old and as fresh as ever.

For a delightful little book on American immigration, I recommend American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction, by David Gerber, in which he leads us through the three great waves of American immigration. I learned how what seems new in today’s immigration debates isn’t. All in just 160 pages, in a book that fits handily in your pocket and your mind.

 

 

The Google Guys Use Paper

Is paper dead? Not at Google, as reported here by Levenger Press founding editor Mim Harrison. And I'm as delighted as anyone. Here at Levenger, I call paper and pens heritage technology, and they have their advantages that are only becoming more clear as digital improves. The high-quality paper products we sell at Levenger are affordable luxury.

Paper is taking up its destiny as one of those things we don’t absolutely have to have, but deeply want. Some others on my list of such luxuries include Colombian coffee, French butter, British leather, wooden boats, bicycles, and candles. We don't need any of these things, but they are part of what makes our house our home.

                                                                                                                                                                        —Steve

If you’ve read the book Sprint, you know the title of this blog to be true. The Google guys use paper! Not all the time, of course, and not everyone at Google is so inclined. Even so, the revelation is telling.

Google Ventures’ Jake Knapp created the sprint process that provides the title of the book, which he co-authored with Google Ventures’ John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz. The sprint is a method, as the book’s subtitle promises, to help “solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days.”

To do that, a small group of a company’s key players devotes one full work week to prototyping and testing a new idea. But how do you get these busy people to focus on solutions for just one issue? And for five days?

Ban all electronic devices from the work sessions.

And, as Knapp said in a recent interview, “Start on paper.”  

The slow food of thought

Do the Google guys know something we don’t? It wouldn’t be the first time. Or maybe we did know this, but forgot it in our haste while multitasking. After all, by one account (Google’s), we now get impatient if we have to wait two-fifths of a second for an online search to deliver the goods.

But Knapp and his co-authors make their position on paper clear when it comes to sprinting: “Even though we’re total tech nerds,” they write, “we’re believers in the importance of starting on paper.”

The reason for it may surprise you: “It’s a great equalizer,” the authors maintain. “Everyone can write words, draw boxes, and express his or her ideas with the same clarity.”

In its long and complex history, paper hasn’t always been so democratic, but inventors like Gutenberg made it so. Today paper bears a certain resemblance to vinyl records, which have become sought after because of their superior sound delivery. As with music, so with thought: when you want clarity, you seek out paper.

Paper is the slow food of thought. It invites introspection. Even the unnerving blank page can be freeing, in that it prods you to cogitate and ponder. As we once said at Levenger: rethink paper, because paper helps you think.

And it’s what enables an astonishingly quick, five-day turnaround from idea to tested prototype.

To be clear, the Google guys’ sprint methodology does not call for reams of 8 ½ x 11 paper. Much of it involves a more abbreviated kind of (paper) tablet: sticky notes, and lots of them. But certain exercises call for a larger paper landscape so that there’s space for every kind of idea capture, from doodling to diagramming.

As the authors observe about a certain phase of the sprint, “As long as everyone is thinking and writing stuff on paper, you’re on the golden path.”

‘Digital fatigue’

Two other recent books celebrate paper in more comprehensive ways—The Paper Trail, by Alexander Monro, and Paper: Paging through History, by Mark Kurlansky.  The timing, as timing often is, is propitious. Because just a few months ago, the trade magazine Publishers Weekly reported on a survey that the Codex Group conducted on the state of the printed book.

Remember how, just a few years ago, e-books were crushing print books in the numbers sold? We would all be migrating to e-books, went the wisdom of the day.

Apparently not all readers got that memo.

What Codex’s president, Peter Hildick-Smith, reported as part of the survey results was the appearance of what he describes as “digital fatigue”: consumers are beginning to tire of e-reading. They like the stuff on paper.

Where once such books would be referred to (and sometimes dismissed as) old-fashioned print, they’ve now become newfangled again. Especially for the new demographic of digital natives who are drawn to them. In the Codex survey, the 18- to 24-year olds surveyed were the ones opting the most for print books.

Does all this mean that paper is the wave of the future? No. But nor must it necessarily be some quaint artifact of the past. As a society, it may just be that we’re learning how to respect what paper can do for us, even as we embrace the electronic.

What a futurist sees

“New media never fully displace old media,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster in Silicon Valley and a consulting professor at Stanford. He points out that concerts and movies are still alive, despite the appearance of radio and TV. So don’t look for digital books to supplant their physical forebears. “Books as a medium took four centuries to mature,” says Paul. “Digital won’t out-book the book at what books do best.” He does offer this prognostication on e-books: “They began by trying to copy traditional print, but will quickly mature into a medium with its own unique qualities.”

Turning a page

The August 7 (print) edition of The New York Times included a stand-alone segment devoted exclusively to an excerpt from Colson Whitehead’s new novel, The Underground Railroad. It fills 10 newspaper-size pages. Don’t look for this particular excerpt online; you won’t find it (even if you wait longer than two-fifths of a second).

In its editorial note preceding the excerpt, the Times observed, “Though we are excited by innovations like virtual reality and digital storytelling, we also recognize the lasting power of the broadsheet.”

Most of us use far less paper in our lives now, both at work and at home. That can be a good thing: we don’t get bogged down in it and buried under it. Instead, we’re learning now how to use paper just enough for it to be uplifting. 

                                                                                                            —Mim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Man Who Hoarded Shakespeare (and made America the place to find him)

Dear Readers,

For 17 years we’ve published books to be given, books to be cherished, books to be left on tables where they are admired and lifted up to one’s lap and opened slowly, reverently. This, I’m proud to say, is another fine example, and our first by that most cherished of writers in English, Shakespeare himself. Here to tell you about its origin is Levenger Press founding editor Mim Harrison.

—Steve

 

If Reality TV had been around at the turn of the twentieth century, Henry Folger might have made the short list for “Hoarding.” His stockpile? The original works of William Shakespeare.

Okay, you might say, but who’s Henry Folger? It’s probably not a question you would ask if the name were J.P. Morgan or Henry Clay Frick, especially if you’re a New Yorker, or Henry Huntington, particularly if you’re a Californian.

Henry Clay Folger was of their time and their ilk, considered a part of the first Gilded Age by virtue of his being chairman of the board of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New York. And like Morgan and Frick and Huntington, he was a collector of rare, expensive objects: old books that had, in some cases, moldered for centuries in the drafty manor houses of England.

Unlike his contemporaries, though, Folger had a singular focus: William Shakespeare—in particular, copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio. He was inspired in part by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the lecture Emerson had composed for Shakespeare’s three-hundredth birthday.

Folger also diverged from his contemporaries in that he was wealthy, but not wildly so. And he started collecting well before he was a man of impressive means.

His first purchase was not of a First Folio but a lesser Fourth Folio, for $107.50, which he successfully bid on at an auction in 1889. A few years later, he tried to persuade his boss to buy a cache of Shakespeare volumes that had come up for sale in London and start a library with them. Rockefeller passed.

Henry persisted, but on his own.

By 1897, he owned the most First Folios of anyone in America. By the end of his life, in 1930, Folger owned more Shakespeare than the British Library. More Shakespeare, in fact, than could be found in all of Britain.

A public private library

But unlike Morgan, Frick and Huntington, Henry Folger possessed no mansion with a private library enshrining his treasures. Rather, he and his wife, Emily, lived most of the time in rented digs in Brooklyn. (This was well before real estate prices there eclipsed Manhattan’s.) And the books? They were lovingly held and then meticulously logged…before being sent into storage in various warehouses around Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Folger’s books never served as the booty of a successful businessman. He refrained from trumpeting his valuable haul. In fact, Folger preferred that no one knew he was buying them; it kept their prices from being inflated.

But he loved his Shakespeare books. And he loved them enough to finally let them go.

Folger spent his retirement working on, at long last, a library to hold his treasures. But not in his house. (He and Emily did eventually buy one, on Long Island.) Rather, he picked one of the most public places there is: around the corner from the Library of Congress and down the street from the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C. That’s where you’ll find the Folger Shakespeare Library. (Once again, the ever-frugal Folger bypassed Manhattan because the real estate was so much dearer.)

As Andrea Mays tells us in her book, The Millionaire and the Bard, “Folger’s ultimate goal was not the ownership of priceless books as vulgar trophies to impress his friends. To Folger, the First Folio was a magical text, ‘one from which we draw our faith and hope’.” As Andrea also tells us, Emily said of her husband, “ ‘He did not feel that he had been sent into this world merely to live and prosper to himself alone’.”

A Shakespearean gem

Happily for Levenger customers, Henry Folger collected other Shakespeare books along with those coveted First Folios. Among them was a limited edition of one, published in the 1920s, of some of Shakespeare’s songs and sonnets. What made the book so compelling was its over-the-top design, including a leather cover in which nestled four brilliant sapphires.

The artist Alberto Sangorski created it, and it is probably the only time that Shakespeare has been presented in an Art Deco-inspired illuminated manuscript.
We’re happy to report that the Folger entrusted this treasure to Levenger Press, to produce a facsimile edition that’s nearly as beautiful as the original. (We had to forgo the sapphires.)

If Henry Folger were around today, he would no doubt be pleased with the success of what had begun as, in his words, “a modest library.” He was someone who did well and did good, giving the country a magnificent library of Shakespeare, preserving for the world a treasure trove of books rare and wonderful.

—Mim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Emerson, Muir and Thoreau Got Things Done

Several years ago some Levenger folks, myself among them, took David Allen’s lively course on his trademark productivity techniques, Getting Things Done. Although my e-mailbox still isn’t empty at the end of a day, I often recall David’s discussion of the various elevations involved in Getting Things Done.

In essence, ideas start up high and lofty. As you execute them, by necessity the elevation drops as you descend into the to-do’s. But both high and low are integral to the result.

From up in the clouds to boots on the ground

Now along comes our new Levenger Press book, Emerson, Muir, Thoreau: A Photographic Trilogy of American Wildness. In their own way, these three pioneers of America’s conservation movement present comparable levels of thought.

Emerson, with his “Nature,” is highly philosophical and up in the clouds. Thoreau, “Walking,” is more grounded and down to earth. And Muir, in his fevered quest to save “The American Forests,” is the boots-on-the-ground activist.

Our book represents the first time these three fellows have come together. The connector is Scot Miller, an equally passionate conservationist who tells his, and their, story through his exceptional photography. (You can frequently catch Scot’s videos on the CBS Sunday Morning “Moment in Nature” segment.)

Judging from the images in the book, Scot worked at elevations both high and low to get the shots he wanted. Enjoy our 10-question interview with Scot on how and why he was inspired to do this beautiful book.

—Steve

 1.   Why was it important to you to do a book that connected these three conservationists?

For me, it was a natural evolution. I have admired and studied the works of Thoreau and Muir for years, illustrating several of their books with my photography. Over time, it became apparent to me that Thoreau’s writings influenced Muir, but, I often wondered, how much? I started on a personal journey to “build a bridge” between these two men who were so important to the early American conservation movement. Thoreau died far too young and never had knowledge of Muir. The more I read, the more it became clear to me that Emerson was the bridge. Emerson had interactions with each man, and both Thoreau and Muir were greatly influenced by him. The book emphasizes the interconnectedness of these three writers/philosophers/activists and the role that their intertwined orbits played in America’s environmental coming of age.

 2.   What was the most difficult photo (in the book) that you took, and why?

The photograph of the river on a beautiful autumn morning in the Yosemite wilderness that appears on page 59 was physically the most challenging photograph to create, not from the standpoint of being there that particular morning, but rather, how hard it was to get to the general vicinity a week earlier. It required a strenuous two-day hike of more than twenty miles deep into the Yosemite wilderness to a remote part of the park that is rarely seen by anyone. Ironically, this was taken on September 11, 2001.

3. What would you like people to know about the photographs?

Photographically speaking, the book covers wide-ranging subject matter, more so than any of my previous books. It is about experiences, journeys, and places visited over a seventeen-year period, from 1997 to 2014, and my artistic interpretations of those places and experiences. Each image captures the spirit of a particular moment (some longer than others), a feeling, or a sense of place. All but three of the sixty-nine photographs were captured with medium-format film cameras, including a large panorama camera. Seventy percent of them were captured in national or state parks, or forests.

4.    What was the most serendipitous image you shot?

In the fall of 2014 I traveled to southwest Colorado specifically in search of beautiful fall foliage images, especially those featuring aspens at peak color. The photographs that appear on pages 4 and 84 of the book were both created on this trip.

As fate and good fortune would have it, I hit fall foliage just right. Not only was I able to experience fall foliage at its peak, but I was also greeted with the first major snowfall of the year. It is rare to have photographs that show both peak fall foliage and fresh snow. To get one or the other—peak fall foliage colors or a beautiful blanket of snow in the mountains—is wonderful, but to get both at the same time is pure serendipity!

5. You start with a slew of photographs that you spread out on your dining room table. How do you winnow them down—what do you look for?

Selecting the sixty-nine photographs and accompanying quotations at first seemed like a daunting task. In the end, it was easier than anticipated, and amazing how certain passages and images in essence self-selected themselves. It is a testament to the wonderfully descriptive writings of Emerson, Muir, and Thoreau.

The sequencing of images and accompanying quotations was driven by the photographs (light, color, form, shape), so the text unfolds from page to page in a somewhat random manner. But there are definite connections between the passages and images that I hope the reader will notice.

6.  Do you have a favorite?

I like all of the photographs, each for different reasons. However, the image of the impressionistic reflections on a town pond in Maine near Acadia National Park that appears across from the title page is a favorite. I love the strong, primary colors in the image. This particular image has a painterly look to it, by design. Slow movement of the water helped achieve the desired look, and it was captured straight to film as it appears. It's wonderful when a photograph turns out like you envisioned it!

 7. How did you pick the three essays that you did? Was it for their content, or because they lent themselves to beautiful imagery?

 The essays were selected more for content and their importance to the early American conservation movement, but an added bonus was that they also lent themselves to pairing well with my photographs.

 8.   John Muir was clearly captivated with Yosemite. From your many photographs of it, so are you. Given that you’ve photographed so many breathtaking places, what gives Yosemite its special allure?

Yosemite was the place that really spurred my interest in nature and wilderness photography. It has a storied history in our national parks system and in photography, for good reason. It is a place of incredible grandeur, with beautiful waterfalls, wild rivers, mountains, valleys, and wide open wilderness spaces. There’s a reason John Muir called the Sierra Nevada Mountains the Range of Light, and why the great Ansel Adams photographed there for his lifetime. Yosemite is a place I’ll never tire of. There’s always something new around the next bend. Attempting to create photographs that do it justice will be a never-ending endeavor.

9. What’s another story behind the lens of one of the photographs?

I was photographing a prickly pear cactus in bloom in the Texas Hill Country one morning. I had set up my camera on a tripod for a nice closeup composition with two yellow flowers and noticed that there was a bright green bug slowly crawling up the stem of one of the flowers. I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice if this bright green bug would crawl up the stem and into the flower?” I waited for several minutes, my patience paid off, and the bug did just that. I nicknamed this particular photo, which is on pages 108-109 of the book, “Bug Butt” for obvious reasons. Serendipity times two! 

10.    What do you want this book to do for those who own it? 

I like that a person can approach the authors’ writings, and this book, in a variety of ways—from purely literary to philosophical, and more. Interspersing quotations from each man’s essay and pairing them with photographic images combine to present a fresh body of work, one that honors the prescience of the authors and, I hope, inspires readers to celebrate America’s legacy of wild and open spaces. 

Old maps tell a new story of Lewis and Clark

I’m delighted to tell you that a review of our new Levenger Press book Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark in the Winter 2015 edition of the professional journal Portolan described it as “accessible to a wide audience, ranging from the generally educated reader to those with more specialized interests in the Corps of Discovery and its landmark expedition. Although thousands of books and papers have been written about the expedition, this one fills a unique niche.”

I’m proud of the modest contribution we’ve been able to make to bring you some of America’s history as it really was. I hope you’ll have a chance to read for yourself why this book matters. In the meantime, enjoy this conversation with author Ralph Ehrenberg of the Library of Congress.

—     Steve

_______________

 

It was the stuff of Undaunted Courage, the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06 into the American West. President Thomas Jefferson was the impetus behind it, and even he had certain assumptions about what the rest of the country looked like. Surely any mountains to the west would be no higher than those on the East Coast…

But Jefferson was happy to be proved wrong, and he trusted the expedition’s captains—Meriwether Lewis and William Clark—to paint a picture of the American West, not with a brush but with compasses, octants and sextants.  

In Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark, two experts on the Lewis and Clark track show us how Lewis and Clark changed our history through the maps that they produced. Clark's final 1814 map was far from perfect (for starters, Pike’s Peak was higher and not quite where he placed it), but it was thanks to this map that Americans could for the first time grasp the scale of the country they lived in.

Ralph Ehrenberg, the chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, got hooked on the maps of Lewis and Clark when he was working on a biography of the first surveyor of the city of Washington, who had prepared some of the expedition’s major planning maps.

Then his colleague at the Smithsonian, Herman Viola, a curator emeritus and leading expert on American Indians in the West, convinced Ralph to join him as a study leader on his annual Lewis and Clark Horseback Trip over the Lolo Trail in Idaho. This despite the fact that Herman is deathly allergic to horses. (“How many days are you on horseback?” his allergist asked him. Four. “I can keep you alive for a week.” Which he did—every week for the 16 years Herman led the trek.) In his work, Herman has met descendants of the Nez Perce Indians who befriended Lewis and Clark.

As so often in history, there’s a story behind what we know, what we think we know, and what we’ve heard about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Here are excerpts from one of many conversations that Levenger Press founding editor Mim Harrison had with Ralph:

 

Levenger Press: We tend to think that Lewis and Clark were going into a completely unknown wilderness when they set off from St. Louis. Were they? 

Ralph Ehrenberg: The Far West was unknown when Jefferson and Lewis first discussed the expedition, and no maps accompanied the Louisiana Purchase Treaty. But Spanish, British, and French trappers and traders had reached the Mandan Villages on the Missouri River near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, by the 1790s. Additionally, there were maps sketched on the ground by Blackfeet hunters for Hudson’s Bay Company surveyors that provided information about rivers, routes, and Indian villages for large swaths of the Far West.

LP: Jefferson wrote a rather cagey letter to Congress in early 1803 where he asked for $2500 to “send a few soldiers up the Missouri River,” as you wrote, to see about trading with the western Indian tribes. What was his real agenda for the Lewis and Clark expedition?

Ralph: In addition to locating a possible Northwest Passage that could link the west and east coasts of North America, he wished to learn more about the region’s vegetation, weather conditions, and wildlife—especially animals believed to be rare or thought to be extinct.

LP: What about trading with the western tribes?

Ralph: Jefferson wanted to know the strength, militancy, and life ways of American Indians. Above all, he wanted to map the interior of the continent so others could follow in Lewis and Clark’s path.

LP: The American Indians played a critical role in mapping the American West. How was their view of a map different from European Americans’?

Ralph: Indian maps were designed to supplement or remind their intended users of what they already knew or may have forgotten. Networks of rivers and trails served as the basis for the structural framework rather than latitude and longitude, and they did not distinguish between the two. Distance and scale were based on the time required to travel between campsites or landscape features.

LP: How did Lewis and Clark capture the Indians’ information, since it wasn’t written on paper?

Ralph: Indian mapmakers recorded and transmitted concepts of their landscapes—cultural, physical, and sacred—using a variety of transitory cartographic devices. These included inscribed maps sketched with charcoal on animal skins, or scratched in the ground or snow; raised-relief maps modeled with sand, dirt, or snow; and “mental maps” illustrated through hand signals or sign language, the universal means of communicating among American Indians.

LP: What was involved in Lewis or Clark asking an American Indian a question, given that the two would not have spoken the same language?

Ralph: Exchanges between them often involved dialogue with several intermediaries. Such “translation chains” would normally include one of the expedition’s French-speaking voyageurs as well as one or more Indians from different tribes. One of the expedition members, George Drouillard, was of French-Canadian and Shawnee heritage. He was a proficient sign-talker and also spoke seven Indian languages.

 LP: How long might it take to get a reply that everyone was happy with? 

Ralph: In one instance Lewis and Clark posed a question about a map that had to be translated eight times through four languages—French, Minitari (modern Hidatsa), Shoshone and Nez Perce. The exchange required five to six hours.

LP: What were the steps involved for Lewis and Clark in creating a map?

Ralph: Clark was the mapmaker, and he created two types of maps—field maps and regional maps. Field maps were plotted from daily measurements for directions and distances that were taken during each change of the course of travel along the expedition route. Clark compiled the regional maps from the field notes during their winter camps at Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop. He also added information from Indian maps and from Indian hunting and war parties.

LP: What instruments did they use?

Ralph: Directions were determined by compass readings, using either a plain surveyor’s compass or a brass boat compass. Distances between compass bearings were determined by the log-line (a wooden float) on water, and on land by estimates, or pacing. These daily “courses and distances” were written in the field notes or on scraps of paper, and then plotted at the end of the day on grid paper at various scales, using a small compass that Clark attached to his gold watch chain. Lewis then used celestial observations to correct the compass errors that accumulated. Lewis and Clark also carried a chronometer to determine longitude. It was the first high-precision clock to be carried on a long inland expedition, but it proved unreliable.

LP: What were some of the more colorful notations that Clark made on the hand-drawn maps?

Ralph: One of the most interesting is “The place called by the Indians Hill of little Devils,” which appears on Clark’s route map of August 21-26, 1804. It’s a reference to the “Little People” or “Little Spirits,” leprechaun-like healers and pranksters believed by the Indians to live in the hills and mountains of many Northern Plains’ tribes. This notation was transformed to “Spirit Lake” on Lewis and Clark’s 1814 map. On the opposite side of “Little Devils,” Clark’s 1805 Fort Mandan regional map includes a reference to “Big Devils,” a name he associated with a band of Assiniboine. This linkage may be a corruption of the band’s original name. More likely, it reflected the antipathy that Lewis and Clark developed toward the Assiniboine because of their trade association with the British and their nomadic, war-like nature.

LP: Have the names been preserved on modern maps?

Ralph: Yes. You’ll see “Spirit Lake” listed in South Dakota and “Devils Lake” in North Dakota.

LP: Can you describe the American Meridian that Jefferson wanted for Lewis and Clark’s maps?

Ralph: The American Meridian was to be America’s Greenwich meridian, the imaginary north-south line from which mapmakers and astronomers indicate zero-degree longitude. Jefferson saw it as a symbol of U. S. independence from Britain and believed it should serve as the base line for all of Lewis and Clark’s maps. Two American meridian lines were surveyed, one through the President’s House—now the White House—and one through the Capitol Building. It is unclear which was used for Lewis and Clark’s 1814 map.

LP: Does anyone today use it?

Ralph: American map publishers used the American meridian into the early nineteenth century. In 1884 the International Meridian Conference, held in Washington, D. C., established the Greenwich, England, meridian as the international standard for zero-degree longitude.

LP: Would it be fair to call Lewis and Clark expert synthesizers of data, in that there were maps made in Europe of North America that they used in their planning phase, and maps that European traders in America used as well? 

Ralph: I would say that one of their great strengths is that they were good at using data that others had synthesized. They were adept at comparing and adjusting such data with first-hand field observations and what they obtained from Indian sources. During the expedition, they constantly adjusted their preconceived notions and did not hesitate to add Indian information when it was appropriate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of the Introduction

You’ve seen her name in these pages as the interviewer of Levenger Press collaborators. What you probably don’t know is that Mim Harrison has made a specialty of introducing authors. In fact, she has raised author introductions to an art form.

Authors have been known to be so stunned with what they hear from Mim that they are momentarily speechless. When they can talk again, they ask for copies—“to show my mother” (and, I’m guessing, to read to themselves in moments of doubt).  Madeleine Albright just wanted a copy for herself; might she have one? Indeed she might.

I’ve come to asking Mim for copies of her intros so I can put them inside the dust jackets of my copies of the book. Her passion for author intros is akin to a great chef’s passion for appetizers.

The Great Introductress is what I call her.

From the heart–and from memory

What makes Mim’s intros an art form is not just the writing, a curious mix of mini-storytelling and wit, but also that she recites them. This passionista of the written word dispenses with the written page when introducing writers.

She credits years of memorizing in Catholic grade school for this inclination, and ignores the puzzled looks of fellow drivers as she rehearses in her car. (This being South Florida, a woman talking to herself behind the wheel is one of the tamer sights.)

So imagine how distraught she was when her back acted up on the eve of the Miami Book Fair last month and she was forced to retreat to her bed. The day before she was to introduce that sagacious sibling act known as Steven Pinker and Susan Pinker,  she phoned me, the pain evident in her voice, and said, “Will you stand in for me?”

After a pause I said, “Yes—but don’t expect me to memorize your introductions.”

And so I read them, word for word. Well, except for one slip-up that caused me to blush.

And I never blush.

Read Mim’s introductions below and then I’ll divulge my mistake:

 Some of you might remember the TV show from a few years ago called “Brothers & Sisters.” Well, this is the Canadian version of it. Susan Pinker and Steven Pinker are brother and sister. They just don’t have all the drama that those other siblings did. They’re Canadian. They’re far too well-adjusted.

 Susan Pinker is a leading developmental psychologist who has practiced psychology, taught it at McGill University (her alma mater), written about it for longtime newspaper and radio columns, and had her ideas talked about in some of the most talked-about venues—everything from the Today Show and Oprah’s magazine, to The Economist and the BBC.

 All this, in addition to being a best-selling author. Her first book, The Sexual Paradox, was published in 17 countries and won the William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association. Her new book, The Village Effect, puts forth a radical premise for our digital age: that nothing trumps face-to-face communication. (Kind of like coming to a book fair...to meet authors face to face.)

 The New York Times calls Susan’s book “surprising, entertaining and persuasive.” Publishers Weekly calls it “a hopeful, warm guide to living more intimately in a disconnected era.”

We might call it…reassuring.

 Steven Pinker is considered a world authority on language and the mind. When he’s not teaching at Harvard, which he currently is, you’ll most likely find him at M-I-T, where he has also taught.  His new book, The Sense of Style, might be called a mindful assessment of the English language. It’s already made a very good writer of the English language jealous. This is what Charles McGrath wrote in the New York Times a few weeks ago:

  “Steven Pinker is one of that new breed of top-flight scientists and teachers who also write uncommonly well. To those of us who try to write for a living and couldn’t pass a science course, let alone teach one, such people…are a little annoying.”

 This “annoying” book is Steven’s sixth. He has twice been a finalist for a Pulitzer, once for his book How the Mind Works and again for The Blank Slate. And—sorry, Charles McGrath—but in 2012, Steven was named one of the Fifty Best Science Writers of All Time.

 John McWhorter calls The Sense of Style “a graceful and clear smackdown to the notion that English is going to the proverbial dogs.”

 Please welcome…Steven Pinker and Susan Pinker.

So what was my mistake? Instead of saying “Her first book, The Sexual Paradox,” I said, “Her first book, The Sexual Paradise...”

My embarrassment was evident to the audience of 150, all the more so after I clumsily backed up and said her book title correctly. This made it a double laugh.

Fortunately, Mim is making a fine recovery, so we all hope (and no one more than me) that I won’t have to stand in for The Great Introductress again.

For those of you who didn’t make it to this year’s Miami Book Fair, enjoy some highlights here: http://miamibookfair.com/. And plan to do the real thing next year. It’s a Paradise for book lovers.

Steve  

Old Family Recipe for a Thanksgiving of Books

 

 

Being no cook, I offer no recipes for oyster stuffing or pumpkin tarts, but I am going to share my recipe for cooking up a thanksgiving of books, and you’re welcome to it.

 I like my books most any way: electronic, audio and print, spiced with a few interviews with Jon Stewart. Tastes vary, of course, but the important thing in this recipe is how you get stirred.

 Follow your inner hunger

For starters, take some suggestions from family members and friends. I gave in after my son Cal and my wife, Lori, both nagged me to read Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Harvard professor Edward Glaeser. If you’re in real estate or love/hate your city, you’ll eat up this read (I listened).

Some people gobble the news, others devour classic literature. I get cravings for the middle ground, somewhere between headlines and history—new social trends that may point to very different futures. For example, what will longer life spans really mean for us?

Two yummy books that challenge traditional thinking about retirement are The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife by Marc Freedman and A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity by Laura Carstensen.

A new kind of brain food

You can’t swing a ladle around the kitchen without hitting a magazine article on brain science. But make it a more satisfying meal with books, starting with these two: Wallace Nichols, with his Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do, and Ray Kurzweil, with his How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.

Blue Mind, in addition to winning my Longest Subtitle Award for 2014, also won my Brilliant Marketing Award, for the author’s blue marble gift idea. (I bought a box of his blue marbles to give to my friends to encourage their blue minds.)

Please talk while eating

My main course this year (surprising to me) is language. Since I find myself on a journey searching out a multilingual America, I did a deep dive into some of the juiciest books on language, including:

Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, which takes tough meat and pounds it into tender prose (except maybe for the Noam Chomsky parts).

John McWhorter’s Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, and his delightful audio lecture series available on Audible. McWhorter wins my Carl Sagan Award for making the cosmos of linguists both understandable and fascinating. (Here’s a taste: Languages are like lava lamps, except when they have sex.)

David Bellos, Is that a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. I pity the folks who pass up this dish thinking translation too obscure a subject. Truth is, this is a delicious book written by a wise and worldly Princeton professor whom you will wish would come to dinner at your house.

Kim Potowski’s Language Diversity in the USA is a salmagundi of top scholars who write a chapter each on the 12 most commonly spoken Languages Other Than English (LOTEs). (Who knew No. 3 is Tagalog?) If I can’t tempt you into the book, don’t miss Kim’s tart TEDex video, “No Child Left Monolingual.”

And just take one bite of The Story of Spanish—what the authors, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, describe as a biography of the Spanish language. “We treat Spanish like a character, explaining how it grew up and who and what influenced it over the course of its long life.” What a savory biography it is.

 Yes, you can eat dessert first; just don’t call it dessert

 Call it what you may, I ate up a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. Last thing I wanted was another war book—or so I thought, until I read the first page and couldn’t stop. It’s as American as apple pie—the kind made with Crisco.

Then came a perfectly poached pear by master chef Ian McEwan, The Children Act.

I have my ten-year-old, all-male book group, The Mules, to thank for keeping me in fiction. (I hold aloft my glass of merlot to you gentlemen this Thanksgiving.)

The cognacs of books

For an after-dinner drink, let’s not forget the books so favored we keep them in the living room and name them after a piece of furniture you’re not supposed to put your feet on.

These books have staved off the steam engine of digital technology because their physical presence is just too luscious to resist. For this Thanksgiving, I relish (begin shameless plug) Christopher Columbus Book of Privileges 1502: The Claiming of the New World, published by Levenger Press and the Library of Congress. A heady cognac it is, my friends (end shameless plug).

So when the house fills with delicious smells of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, celebrate the taste of books, too, savoring quietly on your own, and sharing riotously around the table.

In the honeyed voices of narrators, in the glowing embers of tablets, in the rich papery pages turning ever so sweetly in our fingers, books are foods that feed our minds and nourish our souls.

We are ever thankful.

A hidden chapter of America’s history comes to light—but can we read it?

Imagine a set of documents so valuable that if they move from one room to the next, they go under armed guard.

Then consider that these documents are the reason why there is a place called the United States, even though only a handful of people who live in the U.S. have any knowledge that these documents exist.

And of those who do know about the documents, few can read them.

Welcome to American History—The Untold Story.

A multilingual blueprint

The documents are called the Book of Privileges. The creator? Christopher Columbus. The Book is the collection of legal agreements that formed the blueprint for how Columbus, the Spanish Crown and the Church would divide up a new world.

Columbus had brought some of these documents with him on his first voyage to the New World, but then kept them behind, for safekeeping, during the course of his next three voyages. He also had copies made.

The Library of Congress owns one of four copies of the Book of Privileges, and one intended for Columbus’s heirs. The Book does, indeed, move under armed guard within the Library, as this      

video attests. (Scroll down to Number 4 on the playlist, "Columbus's Most Prized Possession.")

It’s likely that few of us will ever get to see this nearly priceless book. Even if we did, most of us would struggle to read it. It’s written in Spanish (except for the parts that are in Latin). Plus, this is Spanish from centuries ago and a world away. Even our Argentinean friends scratched their heads at some of the writing.

But this is our history—the first written chapter of it. That’s why Levenger decided to publish an exacting facsimile of the Book of Privileges in partnership with the Library.

Calligraphy and context

Physically, the Book is beautiful, the handwork of scribes who lettered each folio with precision and flourish. But what makes our facsimile edition even more meaningful is the narrative that three Library of Congress scholars provide—John Hessler, Chet Van Duzer and Daniel De Simone.

Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison worked with the three of them during the course of publishing the Book. They had many talks about this mysterious hidden chapter of America’s history. Here are some of those conversations.

Levenger Press: Why would such a history-changing collection of documents not be part of most history books?

John Hessler: The amazing thing about studying the history of the early modern period, and especially the earliest exploration of the New World, is that it is still an unsettled history, one that is living and full of surprises. Many of the documents are buried in difficult–to-reach archives in Central and South America, and in a whole range of understudied collections in the U.S. and Europe. It is not surprising that the Book of Privileges is not part of the Columbus mythology.

Levenger Press: Can you recount the story of how the Library acquired this treasure? It has elements of the unbelievable.

Daniel De Simone: The copy in the collections at the Library of Congress was lost for more than 300 years. It didn’t resurface until 1818, in Florence. An American named Edward Everett purchased it and kept it in his personal library. No one really knew about it, until 65 years later a biographer of Columbus tracked it down. By then, Edward Everett was deceased, and his son said he knew nothing about such a manuscript. But a few years later the son’s secretary stumbled upon it. The manuscript had been tucked away in a locked bookcase.

Levenger Press: So the son was sitting on this incredible treasure and didn’t know it?

Dan: Right. But in his defense, the leather binding it was in had no lettering. The son then took the manuscript to England in 1898 for authentication, and actually allowed it to be returned to him through the mail. The manuscript survived the journey, but that’s not the end of its story. Three years later, in 1901, there was a fire in Everett’s son’s house, and much of what was in his library was lost. But the Columbus manuscript, still in its wrapping from England, was rescued. Later that year it was sold to the Library of Congress—where much better safety controls are in place.

LP:  How did geography influence Columbus’s legal negotiations?

Chet Van Duzer: The influence was both subtle and hugely significant. Columbus thought he was in Asia, while he in fact was in the Caribbean and South America, and as reluctant as Columbus was to admit it, there was a large difference between what he found and what he had been hoping to find. If the New World had not stood in the way of his voyage to the east, and if Columbus had really reached Asia as he had hoped to, and had been able to trade with the rich societies there, the contents of the Book of Privileges would have been very different.

LP: For example?

Chet: The Book would have been filled with negotiations relating to trade in spices and precious metals, the procurement of interpreters, requests for more arms, and the establishment of diplomatic relations with powerful Asian potentates. There would not be any agreements about settling Spanish prisoners in the lands he reached, as there are in the Book of Privileges, and Asian societies would not have allowed Columbus to claim their lands and assign them to settlers.

LP:  Why was Columbus so convinced he had reached Asia?

Chet: There was no previous knowledge of the Americas, and no reason to believe beforehand that there would be a landmass between Europe and Asia. Columbus was ardently hoping and expecting to reach Asia, the success of his plans depended on reaching Asia, and he let his hopes and expectations influence his interpretations of what he saw.

LP: Is this why he thought he’d found something akin to Eden—what he called the Terrestrial Paradise?

Chet: Columbus gave great weight to any piece of evidence that seemed to confirm that he was in Asia, and minimized anything that seemed to suggest otherwise. It was this same disposition that led him to believe that he had approached the Terrestrial Paradise on his Third Voyage. He had reached what was clearly a continental landmass (South America) where he expected to find continental Asia, and the rivers of that landmass were enormous, turning the sea to fresh water for miles in each direction. Eden, or the Terrestrial Paradise, was supposed to be located in eastern Asia, and was supposed to have a fountain that was the source of the four largest rivers in the world. So to Columbus, the deduction that he was near the Terrestrial Paradise was a natural one.

LP: Would Columbus, who was Italian, have dictated the documents in the Book of Privileges to Ferdinand and Isabella’s scribes in Spanish, or was there an intermediary who was translating?

John: Except for the Papal Bulls, which are written in Latin, the documents are in the courtly and legal language of the 15^th-century Spanish court. But Columbus would not have dictated any of the documents. Much like legal documents today, these have a particular form and jargon. The copies we find in the Book of Privileges would have been made by a notary and exactly reproduced from the original written and certified copies in Columbus’s possession.

LP: Speaking of law—is there any aspect of American law that was influenced by the Book of Privileges?

John: Certainly it profoundly influenced early law and provided the basis for the settlement of the first Spanish colonial outposts set up by Columbus in his early voyages. In this sense it provided the “legal” foundations for the conversion and domination of the Spanish over the Taino people that Columbus first encountered. Later, after the conquests of 1520, the book provided much material for argument on whether the Spanish claims of dominion could be justified under the traditional forms of Roman law.

LP: What about later in our history, when the United States was coming into its own?

John: Thomas Jefferson actually wrote a letter, in 1787, in which he states that all Americans should learn Spanish so they can read the original history of the New World and the legal foundations found in Spanish law.

 I’m glad to know this Book exists, and is being so carefully watched over by America’s Librarians. Since it is owned by the Library of Congress, it is owned by you and me. I’m so proud of the team at Levenger and at our nation’s library who brought this magnificent facsimile to life so that you and I can hold it in our hands and savor its beauty. It’s a history that everyone who lives in the New World has a right to know. In any language, our knowledge is the richer for it.

 

On this Father’s Day, remembering Churchill’s daughter

The story I remember is that Churchill didn’t want any statue of himself because he didn’t want pigeons mucking up his head. But there is a statue near Parliament in London, and I heard that the head is electrified to keep the birds off. I have no idea whether any of this is true, and it hardly matters. What does matter is that his memory stay alive, and stories can do that. 

And we will need these stories more now, as the man Winston Churchill really was slips inevitably out of living memory.

The recent celebration of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing showed the Greatest Generation dying off at a fast clip. One soldier who didn’t land on the beach also just died: the Lady Soames, a Dame of the British Empire and Ladies Companion of the Garter, Britain’s highest chivalric order. She was also known as Mary, Churchill’s daughter. 

She did what others could not to keep the memory of Churchill alive well into the future. A tiny part of her efforts was realized at Levenger, in the form of books written by and about Churchill, and lovingly published by our small publishing arm.

Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison recounts her meeting with this last living family member of the man who, as Kennedy said, “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

                                                                                                                                     Steve

Lady Soames was busy writing her memoir that would be published, in 2012, as A Daughter’s Tale, when I met her on March 15, 2005. Levenger had published an illustrated edition of Winston Churchill’s essay, Painting as a Pastime, in 2002, and Lady Soames had graciously agreed to write the foreword to it, even though she barely knew who Levenger was.

Faxes were still popular then, and Lady Soames’s neatly typed manuscript had sprung forth from the Levenger fax machine one day. She had not only written a loving tribute to her father as a painter; she had also signed the piece at the end, deliberately and boldly: Mary Soames, with an inked flourish beneath it. It meant that we could reproduce her signature in our book. That was Christmas enough for me that year.

 We followed our first Levenger Press book on Churchill with another, much larger one: the edition by Minnie Churchill  and David Coombs that showcases all of his paintings, which number over 500. Minnie, for whom Lady Soames was Aunt Mary, had been instrumental in Levenger’s being the publisher of both books, and it was she who had generously arranged that I meet Lady Soames. Aunt Mary thought I should see some of the paintings contained in Levenger’s books.

 The daughter who went to war

Her home near London’s Embassy Row had the feel of a charming cottage. As Minnie, Simon and I walked past the black wrought-iron gate that had been left open, I looked up to a second-floor window and saw a room filled with bookcases. It was where Lady Soames was writing her memoir, taking care to corroborate stories for fear of, as she put it, “colliding” facts.

Lady Soames was 82 at the time but looked much younger, and anything but frail. Some of that was her voice—low and deliberate, lacking the lisp of her father’s, but a strong and distinctive voice nonetheless.

“Come sit by the fire and have some Champagne,” she said in greeting. As we walked through the foyer, I spied a big red leather box tucked casually beneath a small table. Scuffed and ripped and faded, it might have been any family catchall box, but of course it wasn’t. It was Winston Churchill’s dispatch box that he had used during World War II, his name lettered on top in gold foil.

In the living room Lady Soames’s scoop-me-up-size dog, Trish, was trying to hide on the loveseat near a pillow that spelled out the home’s pecking order: My dog isn’t spoilt. She has me well trained.

Never mind that Trish’s mistress had enlisted in the British army as soon as women were allowed to, at age 19, and had shot down enemy bombs during the war. It was Mary, the youngest of Winston and Clementine Churchill’s children, who accompanied her father to North Africa for his meeting with FDR, and to Quebec when he helped to plan Operation Overlord—what became known to the world as D-Day.

Papa’s paintings

Not surprisingly, the walls of Lady Soames’s home were a canvas for many of the oils her father had painted. “Papa painted snow so well, even though he hated it,” she remarked, stressing the second syllable of Papa.  

Churchill didn’t begin to paint until he was 40, and he approached it with something akin to ebullience, describing it in Painting as a Pastime as a “joy ride in a paint-box,” for which “audacity is the only ticket.”

But there was a certain humility as well. Churchill seldom signed his paintings and when he submitted them to juried shows, he kept his identity secret. His paintings showed well.

There were more of her father’s paintings upstairs, and so Lady Soames took us up into her bedroom, where among the oils was the first one her father had given her. It hung above her bed, as if her father were watching over her.

 (Later, Minnie told me how rare it was that anyone saw what I just had. “There are family members who’ve never seen Aunt Mary’s bedroom,” she said.)

Up we went again, to the third story of Lady Soames’s house, to see more of her father’s artwork. Then it was off to an Italian restaurant, a neighborhood place where they knew Lady Soames well.

The War Rooms

I was too excited about the evening to recall what I ate, or even if I did, but I do remember the conversation about how good the Queen looked when she had come to the opening of the new wing adjacent to the Churchill War Rooms just a week or so prior. Churchill was Prime Minister when a young Elizabeth assumed the throne in 1952.

“Have you seen the new museum?” Lady Soames asked me. I told her I hadn’t yet but hoped to during my stay in London.

The opening had focused some of the media attention on Lady Soames. She described it with a wry wit that made it clear she was her father’s daughter. “I’m old, you know,” she said with a mischievous smile, “practically extinct, like the dodo bird.” Reporters were figuring this might be their last chance to interview Churchill’s last surviving child. It wasn’t, fortunately, but they were wise to seize the opportunity. Even though, as Lady Soames said to much laughter, not all the interviews were “worth getting your hair done for.”

The next morning, early, I got a call from Minnie. If I could be at the Churchill War Rooms for ten o’clock that morning, the director would give me a private tour. I assured Minnie that she didn’t have to make such a special arrangement for me. She laughed and said, “Oh yes I do. Aunt Mary said so.”

 The dream

Before we left Lady Soames’s house for the restaurant, she asked me about the book that Levenger was about to publish, The Dream. A brief essay that Churchill wrote in 1947, shortly after the Allied victory that Churchill had been so instrumental in, the story recounts a dream Churchill had of his long-dead father, Randolph Churchill, returning to see him.  

Winston had spent the early part of his life seeking but never winning his father’s approval. Randolph died in 1895 when Winston was 20, well before he would make his indelible mark on history.

Lady Soames told me she had once asked her father, when he was in his late eighties, what he regretted, if anything. “I thought it would be not receiving the VC,” she said, referring to the Victoria Cross medal for valor. But that wasn’t it at all. 

What her father regretted most was that his own father had not lived long enough to see him make something of himself.

Unlike his father, Winston Churchill was a loving and doting parent to his children. His daughter Mary made her own mark on history, honoring her father in death as she adored him in life. The way only a devoted daughter can.

Mim

P.S. Another statue of Churchill stands in Paris, and on a trip there last month, I saw schoolchildren run over to it with their sheets of paper and pencils, on assignment, writing at his feet.

Steve