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The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!
The cover for this book arrived from History Press this morning, and all I can think about is Steve Martin in the 1979 movie “The Jerk.” I laughed again to see the YouTube clip of him celebrating the arrival of the new phone book. “I’m somebody now!” Martin says. “Millions of people look at this…
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Reality intervenes after I mix enthusiasm and ignorance
Lesson learned last week: The arrival of page proofs doesn’t mean that publication is imminent. One of History Press’ copy editors recently completed a read-through of this manuscript and made dozens of changes. Then, within days and without warning, I found the page proofs in my inbox. At the newspaper where I worked, page proofs…
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I stand in praise of copy editors
One of History Press’ copy editors reviewed this manuscript and pronounced it fit. Well, mostly fit. The book is “very well written,” he said, but it contains errors of “grammar, style, spelling and consistency.” He made about 40 blue-type changes in the document. Most were violations of the publisher’s house style. That means, in my…
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Inserting more of me in this book
One of the first things that Dr. Wayland Marks asked when we met for coffee was, “So, what do you think? Do you think he was lynched?” I have known Marks, a Fredericksburg, Va., physician, for many years. He was among a group of 15 people who volunteered to read an early version of this…
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A fortuitous phone call
One of my goals for this book was to figure out exactly what happened to Shedrick Thompson. If I have succeeded in doing that, it’s in large part because of Tom Davenport. I was still working at the newspaper when Tom called and introduced himself as a Fauquier County, Va., filmmaker. He said he was…
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A new title, or learning to play well with the other children
Before History Press agreed to publish this story, they asked me to complete an 8-page application. One of the questions they asked was: are you capable of working with other people on a long-term project that requires a “high level of co-ordination.” In other words, do I play well with the other children? I answered…
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What am I going to do with the rest of my life?
It’s done. It’s gone. I sent my manuscript to the History Press on Friday. With that delivery, I met the second of two February deadlines. The first was for the photographs. This one was for the book itself. Actually the book is still just an email attachment, a Word document of 51 pages, 32,000 words,…
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We will begin with a few words by Claudine Ferrell
I am grateful to Claudine Ferrell for writing the introduction for this book. Claudine is a professor of history at the University of Mary Washington, where she has taught for more than 30 years. Her doctoral work at Rice University focused on lynching in the South. One of the librarians at Mary Washington told me about…
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What color would you like, sir?
The questions that my editor asked reminded me of the goofy things that Gilda Radner would say as Baba Wawa on Saturday Night Live. But I understood why he wanted to know, and I enjoyed answering him. Again, he was thinking about the cover for this book, and he wanted to know two things: What…
Author & Lecturer
Jim Hall 