'The Life of a Book'

by Jessica Luck and Laura Lemon 

From the initial concept to the bound volume, a book’s journey is shaped by many hands.

[This article was published in W&L: The Washington and Lee Magazine v. 101, no. 1 (Spring 2025) and posted on the magazine’s website on 22 July 2025.  (W&L is the alumni magazine of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia—my undergraduate alma mater.  The university is 276 years old—older than the United States itself [249 years]—and it happens that my first semester there began 60 years ago this month.)

[Readers will note that this is not a process description of the publication of one specific book, but a collection of the profiles of six of the professionals who guide a typical book through that process from conception to delivery to bookstores. 

[Since this is the publication for W&L grads, it may not surprise ROTters to find that each of the specialists in the process is an alumna/us of the university (all of them from long after I left Lexington!).  Obviously, every book goes through different versions of the steps limned here, but they all navigate a path like this prototype.

[I’m not intending to spotlight my own college’s accomplishments—though that may be the effect.  I just thought that the system outlined below would be interesting to readers of Rick On Theater.]

Every book begins the same way: from a flash of inspiration. As it moves through the world of imagination, a team of creatives brings the final idea into existence. Once it takes shape, readers are allowed windows into other worlds that offer new perspectives – and leave an indelible mark on their lives.

THE WRITER – REBECCA MAKKAI ’99

Author of five novels [The Borrower (Penguin Books, 2011); The Hundred-Year House (Penguin Books, 2014); The Great Believers (Penguin Books, 2018); I Have Some Questions for You (Viking, 2023)] and numerous short stories [Music for Wartime: Stories (Penguin Books, 2015)]; teacher of graduate fiction at Middlebury College, Northwestern University and the Bennington College Writing Seminars; artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago.

[nb: Makkai’s published only four novels (not five), plus one collection of short stories. There are also additional stories in anthologies of the work of several artists, and Makkai stories published in magazines and other outlets.]

One of the things Rebecca Makkai ’99 enjoys most about being a fiction writer is the freedom of invention. She gets the opportunity to travel to any time and place and to experience them through her characters. And the required research is part of the fun. She recently ordered a slew of Vogue magazines from 1938 on eBay to ensure the outfits she chose for a character in her current novel are historically accurate.

“I get to live in whatever world I choose,” Makkai says. “When you write a short story, it’s a place you’re visiting for a little while. But when you write a novel, you’re going to live in this world for years.”

Five years, in Makkai’s case. The first year is spent marinating on the concept and turning over ideas in her head. That way, she’s mentally worked through things before she commits anything to paper. After she’s about one-third of the way done with the book, she’ll write an outline to make sure she has a roadmap as she finishes writing, which takes about three years total. Surprisingly, she says her favorite part of the process is editing. She spends around a year copyediting what she’s written and focusing on structure.

“As a writer, you get to ask yourself: ‘What do I want to have happen? Do I want it to be funny? Do I want it to be sad? What do I feel today?’” she says. “It’s a lot of pure freedom and invention.”

Makkai says many of her works are preoccupied with the passage — and layering — of time. Her 2018 novel, “The Great Believers,” which was named one of The New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century and was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and the 2018 National Book Award, jumps back and forth between contemporary Paris and 1980s and ’90s Chicago, portraying love and loss during the AIDS epidemic.

“I think that if I ever wrote a book that could not get you in a fight in your book club, I would have failed in some way,” she says.

One of the great things about writing is its interiority, Makkai says — the ability to understand what another person is thinking.

“We see again and again the failure of empathy in our society, in politics, in policy and in the world,” she says. “Fiction is one of the only things that can really take you at great length into the thought process of someone else.”

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THE EDITOR – PRANAB MAN SINGH ’05 

Co-founder of Quixote’s Cove bookshop and Satori Centre for the Arts [Patan, Nepal]; assistant editor and translator with La.Lit literary magazine; visiting professor at Kathmandu University Department of Art + Design [Patan].

An accounting and philosophy double major from Kathmandu, Nepal, Pranab Man Singh ’05 says his view of the United States had largely been shaped by Hollywood before he came to Washington and Lee University. He started college the same year as 9/11, and conversations in and out of the classroom after the event helped him appreciate the rich and complex history of the U.S.

“It really made me realize how much our present lives are tied to the histories and past lives of other people and generations and how important it is for these stories to be shared,” he says.

After graduating, Singh knew he wanted to return to Kathmandu to start his own business, just as the country was coming out of a decade-long civil insurgency and was in the process of writing a new constitution. He opened an independent bookstore, Quixote’s Cove, and through the store he founded a literary magazine, La.Lit, which started publishing books from the community of writers with whom the store worked.

[Known as the Maoist insurgency, the conflict between the Communist Party of Nepal and the monarchy lasted from 1996 to 2006.  It ended with the abolition of the Nepalese monarchy and the establishment of a democratic republic.] 

“We had a young population and educational levels were increasing, and there was a lot of curiosity among people to learn about the world and our role in it,” Singh says. “The bookshop was an opportunity to engage in those conversations.”

Quixote’s Cove worked with the U.S. State Department during the Barack Obama administration to bring American artists, writers and poets to Nepal to share ideas and facilitate engagement through the arts. This resulted in the establishment of the nonprofit Satori Centre for the Arts, which managed the U.S. Embassy’s Book Bus program until 2023, and ran mobile libraries across Nepal.

Safu, which means “books” in Nepal Bhasa, is the publishing imprint for Quixote’s Cove. As a small independent publisher, it works with writers, poets, illustrators, artists, editors and translators to produce books in multiple languages that capture diverse voices and experiences.

Singh works as both an editor and translator and sees them as relationship-building opportunities. He’s edited everything from reports to fiction novels to memoirs.

“Normally, as an editor, you get to know the writer through the editorial process and can build trust and familiarity with them,” he says.

“It is necessary for you to put on their shoes and see the world as they do and understand what they are trying to say. A good editor can help a writer come to clarity of thought. On the other hand, the act of translating something is to dwell in the mind of the writer — it requires empathy and an attempt to embody the writer. Since Nepal is a multilingual country — we have over 128 different languages — we have always been keen on bringing out the richness of ideas that this offers and placing them in conversation with the world.”

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THE AGENT – CHANDLER WICKERS ’18

Associate agent at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency Inc. [New York City]; works with more than 100 authors in all stages of the publishing journey; freelance copywriter and marketing content writer; former freelance film and TV critic.

By happenstance, Chandler Wickers ’18 assumed the role of literary agent during her final group simulation project for the Columbia Publishing Course [Columbia School of Journalism program to prepare students for entry-level jobs in publishing]. As a newly minted W&L grad hoping to pursue a writing career in New York City, she had enrolled in the six-week intensive course covering all aspects of book, magazine and digital media publishing. Through a random assignment in her group of 10, where each person played a different part in the industry, she found the job that captured the relationship to writing she wanted.

“In editorial, you’re reading and copyediting; you’re really deep in the material all day. I wanted to be a little bit more zoomed out,” she says.

“That’s why an agency appealed to me; it’s really the business side of publishing. You’re not only working editorially with authors and helping them get their proposals ready for submission, but you’re also handling their contracts. You’re working on their film deals and publishing deals. I wanted something that’s a little bit more business-oriented and less just editorial-minded.”

She achieved her hope of working with words in 2021 when she landed a gig at Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency Inc., after first getting a job in marketing at an advertising agency and then a financial planning startup. She immediately felt a connection to the Krichevsky agency because it represented one of her heroes, New York Times bestselling author Sebastian Junger and filmmaker, who also directed her favorite documentaries, “Restrepo” [National Geographic Entertainment, 2010] and “Korengal” [Gold Crest Films and Outpost Films, 2014].

Based in San Fransisco, Wickers works with more than 100 authors, such as Ashlee Vance — who wrote “When the Heavens Went on Sale” [Ecco, 2023] and is currently writing a book on OpenAI [no title yet; expected in 2026; UK publisher is Headline Publishing Group, but U.S. publisher has not been announced] — and Leander Schaerlaeckens, a sports reporter who’s writing a book about the history of U.S. men’s soccer [The Long Game; Viking, due on 12 May 2026]. All the authors on her long list dwell in various stages of the literary journey — from manuscripts and proposals, to drafts in editors’ hands, to published works, to screen adaptations, to new ideas haphazardly jotted down on paper. And as the life cycle of the book continues to evolve, Wickers’ role as the agent remains steadfast.

“You’re advocating for the author at every stage,” she explains, “and making sure that their work is valued. . . . I really like that — I like being the first touch point.

“Books and reading offer a powerful way to exercise our imagination and critical thinking, which I believe are precious resources for understanding and connecting with each other. These skills feel more essential than ever in an age where technology risks eroding them. I was fortunate to study under incredible professors at W&L who instilled in me a deep love for storytelling, and I’m truly grateful to work in an industry that preserves and celebrates the written word.”

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THE PUBLICIST – CRAIG BURKE ’93

Vice president and associate publisher at Berkley/Penguin Random House; oversees publicity campaigns for the entire Berkley list, including bestselling author Emily Henry [writer of books containing elements of the rom-com and chick lit genres; all Henry's adult romance books—she also writes young adult novels—have been optioned for screen adaptations], among others.

Craig Burke ’93 had a clear idea of his career path until he fell in love — with book publishing. As a journalism and French double major, he thought his next step would likely be in broadcast journalism once he moved to New York City. But after someone at W&L’s Career and Professional Development Office suggested Burke submit his resume to a job fair in New York that included book publishers, Burke realized what a perfect fit that field was. At W&L, he served as the publicity chair of the Generals Activities Board and helped bring bands like Blues Traveler to campus while also promoting events among the W&L community.

Six weeks before graduation, a recruiter from the job fair told Burke he was perfect for a publicity assistant role at Random House and that there were two openings at different imprints: one at Ballantine and the other at Knopf. He ultimately chose Knopf, which had published one of his favorite books — Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” [Alfred A. Knopf, 1992].

Burke worked his way up the publicity ladder and joined Berkley as an associate publicist after a few years at Knopf. Now serving as vice president and associate publisher at Berkley/Penguin Random House, Burke oversees publicity campaigns for the company’s entire roster, including bestselling authors Emily Henry, William Gibson, Grady Hendrix and Carley Fortune. Berkley’s expertise centers on women’s fiction, romance, science fiction/fantasy and mystery/suspense.

“What’s not to love about a job that lets me read books and then spend most of my time trying to convince other people why they should read the books that I love or discover the authors that I really admire?” Burke says.

“What makes my job so fabulous is the people I interact with, from the authors, to their agents, to the media folks that I’m pitching, to my colleagues. I work with intelligent, witty, sharp, fascinating people who are up for talking about books and pop culture and what’s going on in the world.”

Depending on the book, Burke will get involved as early as the editing stage to start planning the publicity campaign. Sometimes he can tell from the title alone what the promotional hook will be, as with Henry’s “Beach Read” [Berkley, 2020]. Beyond pitches and press releases, Burke has accompanied authors on press tours, including traveling with musician Ricky Martin for his appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

When not reading for work, Burke is often drawn to commercial fiction, whether that means romance, thrillers or fantasy.

“It’s the best escape money can buy,” he says. “I firmly believe that reading any kind of fiction, whether it’s commercial or literary, improves your ability to be empathetic and understand where people are coming from.”

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THE LAWYER – GRAY COLEMAN ’79

Partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP [headquartered in Seattle, Washington]; named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 25 Most Powerful Entertainment Lawyers in New York; represents estates and heirs of Harper Lee, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lindsay and Crouse, Thomas Meehan and Agatha Christie, among others.

Traditional artistic channels never unveiled hidden talent within Gray Coleman ’79, so, he jokes, he set his sights on law school. After double majoring in history and English at Washington and Lee University, he arrived at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1980, hoping to benefit from the field’s reputation of versatility. To his delight, he did.

“Lawyers are the ultimate chameleons,” says Coleman. “They take their color from the rocks you put them on, and I was looking for this real colorful rock to sit on.”

As a lifelong theater-lover, he moved to the artistic hotbed of New York City, and after working for Wall Street firm White & Case LLP for a couple years, Coleman found his colorful geode in entertainment law. As a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, he represents producers for theatrical productions such as “Tootsie” [2018; Broadway: 2019] “Mean Girls” [2017; Broadway: 2018] and “The Color Purple” [2004; Broadway: 2005]; he serves as outside general counsel for institutional theaters such as the Public Theater (New York), the Goodman Theatre (Chicago) and the National Theatre of Great Britain; and he works with authors and owners of literary and intellectual properties.

“We lawyers are the historical memory,” Coleman says. “We keep the agreements; we keep the history.”

For close to 10 years, he’s represented the estate of Harper Lee, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of “To Kill a Mockingbird” [Lippincott, 1960]. He has served as outside general counsel for the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate for over two decades and has worked on behalf of Agatha Christie’s heirs. He also acts as trustee for the estates of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, one of American theater’s most durable partnerships (the pair wrote the libretto for “Anything Goes” in 1934 and then “The Sound of Music” 25 years later [1959]), and Thomas Meehan, book writer for “Annie” [1976; Broadway: 1977] and co-book writer of “The Producers” [2001] and “Hairspray” [2002; Broadway: 2003]

“The star of the show in my world is the property itself,” Coleman says. “I’m acting for clients, or, if I’m the trustee, my job is to look after the property and try to maximize income and avoid tarnishment for the benefit of the beneficiaries. But, in a way, I think of ‘The Sound of Music’ as my client. I think of ‘Annie’ as my client. When I make decisions, I make them for the welfare of those children.”

From working on the legalities of turning literary works into stage productions to handling the licensing of famed properties to representing theater houses, Coleman has relished a life in the arts.

“If I had had some creative talent, maybe I would have taken a different path,” Coleman says. “But I wanted proximity to the creative arts, and I found a way into it.”

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THE TEACHER – MARSHALL BOSWELL ’88

Professor of English at Rhodes College [Memphis, Tennessee] teaching 20th- and 21st-century American literature and fiction writing; author of literary studies [Understanding David Foster Wallace (University of South Carolina Press, 2009); John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy (University of Missouri Press, 2001)], articles and two works of fiction [Trouble with Girls: Stories (Delta, 2004); Alternative Atlanta (Delacorte Press, 2005)]; 2002 winner of the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Teaching [for full-time Rhodes faculty members who have taught at least three years at the college].

When Marshall Boswell ’88 was considering colleges, his father, James M. Boswell Sr. ’57, tried to nudge him toward W&L. But the university’s all-male student body made it a no-go. Once his dad showed him a Ring-Tum Phi article that reported the W&L Board of Trustees had voted to admit women, Boswell did an about-face.

“I went to W&L and had a life-changing experience,” he says. “They are still the four years of my life I would relive if I had a time machine.”

Boswell found a litany of mentors in the English Department, but it was professor of English Jim Boatwright who made one of the earliest impacts. In Boatwright’s Introduction to Fiction Writing class, they read “A&P,” a short story by John Updike [1961, New Yorker; Pigeon Feathers, Alfred A. Knopf, 1961] about a young man working at a grocery store. Boswell’s father worked his entire career for Kroger [national supermarket and department store chain], and Boswell spent the summers delivering Pepsi to grocery stores and other shops.

[When I was in Lexington in the second half of the 1960s, Kroger was the one and only supermarket in town; I don’t know if that was still true twenty years later. ~Rick]

“The fact that a famous writer from New York would write so eloquently about the grocery store, which was a place of such significance to me, was a revelation,” Boswell says. “It felt like my brain had been hacked in a really wonderful way.”

After getting his bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in creative writing, he went on to get his master’s in English from Washington University [St. Louis, Missouri] and his Ph.D. in 20th-century American literature from Emory University [Atlanta, Georgia]. A professor of English at Rhodes since 1996, he teaches courses in 20th- and 21st-century American literature and fiction writing. He encourages his students to “get under the hood” of a story, to really understand what the writer is trying to do.

“There’s a kind of playful creativity to the way I approach teaching literature and a scholarly expertise that I bring to creative writing,” he says. Although his path ultimately led to teaching, Boswell is an author in his own right; he’s published full-length studies of Updike and David Foster Wallace, as well as short stories and a novel. And he still remembers the moment he realized he was a first-time published author — in a short story collection. He was so proud he didn’t want to put the book down and laid it on the passenger seat of his 1988 green Saab 900 and drove to the grocery store. After shopping, there was his book, waiting for him.

“Writing is the best way that we can take the mess in our brains and give it shape and form,” Boswell says. “It’s not a reflection of what we think, it’s the product of thinking. When you’re writing something down, you’re discovering what it is that was there. Writing brings it into existence.”

[Below is a list of some of the prominent and successful writers who studied at Washington and Lee University.  I’ve only included the prose writers of fiction and non-fiction, not the several poets and numerous journalists who came out of the school, and I’ve also restricted myself to students (W&L was a men’s college until 1985), not listing the faculty who had writing careers.

 •   William Alexander Caruthers (Washington College, 1817-20; did not graduate): A 19th-century novelist known for works like The Kentuckian in New York (Harper and Brothers, 1834). 

•   Harvey Fergusson (1911): An early 20th-century author, he is noted for his autobiography, Home in the West (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1945). 

•   Tom Robbins (1950-52): A novelist known for works like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Houghton Mifflin, 1976; adapted as a film in 1993), Robbins attended Washington and Lee for two years before moving to New York to pursue writing.

•   Tom Wolfe (’51): An author and journalist, Wolfe was one of the founders of the New Journalism movement.  His famous works include The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968) and The Bonfire of the Vanities (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987).

•   Philippe Labro (1954-55): A French writer, journalist, and film director who spent his freshman year at Washington and Lee.  He wrote about his year there in his novel The Foreign Student (Random House, 1988; L’Étudiant étranger [Gallimard, 1986]).  He received the Prix Interallié, an annual French literary award for a novel written by a journalist, for the autobiographical novel.  (The Foreign Student was filmed in 1994.)

•   Jerry Hopkins (’57): A journalist and author, Hopkins worked for Rolling Stone magazine and wrote biographies of figures such as Jim Morrison (No One Here Gets Out Alive [with Danny Sugerman; Warner Books, 1980]) and Elvis Presley (Elvis: A Biography [Simon and Schuster, 1971]).

•   Terry Brooks (’69 Law): A best-selling fantasy author, Brooks is known for his Shannara series (Original Shannara Trilogy: The Sword of Shannara [Random House, 1977], The Elfstones of Shannara [Ballantine Books, 1982], The Wishsong of Shannara [Ballantine Books, 1985]; there are 33 follow-up novels and 8 related books).  He attended the university's law school.

•   Mark Richard (’86): An author who won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award.

•   Rebecca Makkai (’99): The author of novels and short stories (see partial list above), Makkai's work The Great Believers was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. 

[Readers will notice that the first name on the list graduated from Washington College rather than W&LU.  The school was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy and then in 1776, changed its name to Liberty Hall Academy.  In 1796, in gratitude for the $20,000 endowment, at the time one of the largest gifts ever given to an educational institution in the United States, made by George Washington, the trustees changed the school’s name to Washington Academy, and in 1813 it was chartered as Washington College.

[After the Civil War, in the fall of 1865, Robert E. Lee accepted an offer to become president of Washington College.  Lee died in 1870 and the college’s name was again changed, to Washington and Lee University in his honor.]

Landmarks

by Kirk Woodward

[Soon after his last two contributions to Rick On Theater in March and April, my friend Kirk Woodward is back now with an article paying homage—he calls it a “valentine”—to a series of books for children which he read  . . . well, when he was one!  (In point of fact, I believe I read some of the titles Kirk mentions in “Landmarks.”  Just as his parents got them for him, mine must have gotten some of them for me—or I took them out of the school or local library.) 

[The remarkable things, at least to me, are that he held the series of histories and biographies in a special place in his memory (he reread them for this article) and that he kept the books all these years—surely going on 60 for many of them.  (I suppose it’s also remarkable that so many of them survived so long; as you’ll read, Kirk didn’t treat them all very well.)

[Nostalgia is one thing, but as you’ll learn, Kirk found some lasting lessons in his reading of the Landmark Books that have fed his adult mind.  Reacquainting himself with the books, he’s also found some points he was too young to see when he first read the books.]

This article is a valentine to a series of books.

I was fortunate to be born into a reading family. I’m not certain that my parents read all the books they bought. For example, they signed up for a book of the month club of some sort, and some of those books turned out to be instrumental for me, like In Search of Theater (1953) by Eric Bentley, an eye-opener for me if there ever was one – but I know for certain my parents never read it.

Around that same time, my parents started to buy books about history that were intended for me. How old I was when they started, I’m not sure. I also don’t know if they bought them on some sort of program or if they just picked one up whenever they saw it in a bookstore – I suspect that was the case, because my family has spent a lot of its time in bookstores. (Fairly late in her life, my mother became a librarian.)

In any event, as I said, when I was very young, in the early 1950s, I began to be given these volumes, from a series called Landmark Books, published by Random House. (Sometimes these were hand-me-downs, originally read by my cousin Bucky.)

Altogether there are 122 volumes in the Landmark Books series, which began in 1950 and published its last book in 1970. Although out of print today, books in the series can still be found on the Internet. The idea of the series was to provide works of history and biography for children, written by the best authors of the time.

What a splendid concept! The books were commercially successful, and I know they were crucial for my own education. I have twenty-nine of the books today, and my daughter has asked me to save them for her, for the time when they have a new audience. A friend urged me to buy the rest of the books and read them as part of the preparation for this article, but here I’m going to limit myself to the ones I read as a child.

I have re-read all my Landmark Books, and I’ve noticed things I hadn’t noticed before, some literary, some not. For example, an alarming number of the books have food stains on them. Many also have the corners of pages torn off. My vague memory is that I would eat the corners. I don’t do that anymore, but I do still get food stains on books sometimes, since I tend to read while eating. I know that’s not the best way to eat (or read), but there it is.

With rare exceptions, the Landmark Books don’t talk down to their child readers. They are quite frank about history – about death, and about the fragility of good things. One might expect that a series of books for young readers might make a point of turning their leading characters into heroes and heroines. With minor exceptions, this is not the case.

The books are illustrated, ordinarily with drawings, but once in my collection with photographs (The U.S. Frogmen of World War II, 1964, by Wyatt Blassingame, 1909-1985, a gripping story, vividly told). Few of the books list references or sources. Indexes are standard equipment.

An exception is King Arthur and His Knights (1953), my least favorite of the Landmark Books I’ve read, which has no index. It’s a dull retelling of the story as written around 1460 by Thomas Mallory (c. 1415-1471). The first fifteen pages of my copy of the Landmark volume are missing, and in those pages the author, Mable Louise Robinson (1874-1962), may explain why she decided to limit herself to Mallory, but the rest of the book doesn’t interest me enough to find out. Another book in the series that I do not like much is The Story of San Francisco (1955) by Charlotte Jackson (1903?-1989), which contains a great deal of pedestrian writing. These are, however, the exceptions.

Occasionally authors describe their processes in detail. For example, in Adventures and Discoveries of Marco Polo (1953), Richard J. Walsh (1887-1960), who was also the editor of the John Day publishing company, writes that every quotation is taken from Polo’s book (Book of the Marvels of the World, also known as The Travels of Marco Polo, c. 1300), while “some of the facts have been taken from other books.” The book does not come across as a series of quotes, however; Walsh tells its story well.

In general, the books are splendid, and in many cases I find them as useful as much longer volumes on the same subjects. (In a recent interview in the New York Times, the enormously successful Jeopardy winner James Holzhauer says that he typically locates a book written for children when he wants to learn a new subject.)

One of the rewards of rereading the Landmark Books is that I had almost no awareness when I was a child of who the authors were, and now at least some of their names are meaningful to me. Although few of the Landmark Books authors are household names today, many in their own time were quite well known, or even famous.

As a thought experiment, we might put ourselves in the place of the editors of the series, and try to imagine how we’d select authors for the books we wanted to include in our project.  

For example, if we want a biography of Jesus Christ or the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, we might go to an eminent clergyman of the time. It’s hard to think who would best fit that role today; in 1956 (the date of the Luther biography) or 1959 (the date of the book on Jesus) it would almost certainly have been a clergyman, of course.

So it was – both books are written by Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), for decades the “voice” of liberal Protestantism. Fosdick’s biography of Luther is respectful but also aware of Luther’s faults. Writing a biography of Jesus must have been a daunting assignment. Fosdick handles it with aplomb, choosing to write in a way that suggests “it might have happened this way,” rather than strictly retelling the gospel accounts.

Fosdick’s books are not the only ones in the series to cover religious topics. There’s The Explorations of Pere Marquette (1951) by Jim Kjelgaard (1910-1959), who was not a religious figure but a dedicated outdoorsman, particularly fond of bears! Marquette (1637-1675) was a Jesuit priest who explored much of the northern Mississippi River valley. Religion obviously plays a part in this story, but Kjelgaard doesn’t over-stress it, and doesn’t steer away from the dangers of exploration either.

What about a choice for a book about Alexander the Great? Well, he traveled over much of the known world of his time, conquering and building, so a logical choice might be John Gunther (1901-1970), the author of the sophisticated series of “Inside. . . ” books of world reporting (Inside America, Inside Russia, and so on) that were famous for decades.

Gunther’s account is extremely well told. One of the features of Gunther’s work, echoed in many of the others, is that, as I mentioned above, although Landmark Books are designed for children, they do not shy away from the subjects of death and suffering. Gunther provides much foreshadowing of the dissipation that was to shorten Alexander’s life. My copy of this book is in disrepair – I must have read it a lot, and as I began to read it again I recalled it vividly.

For the story of the end of the Civil War, Lee and Grant at Appomattox (1950), we might very likely turn to MacKinlay Kantor (1904-1977), a Pulitzer Prize winner, who was a highly regarded Civil War historian, the author of Gettysburg (1952) and Andersonville (1955), and of the novella that was the basis of the film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Kantor writes vivid vignettes that carry the dramatic scene at Appomattox along.

And who else would you want to write The Barbary Pirates (1953) ther than the novelist C. S. Forester (1899-1966), who wrote a twelve-volume series of naval adventure novels about the fictional seaman Horatio Hornblower? His account of the struggle of the young United States with the Barbary pirates is beautifully, excitingly written.

One of the best books in the series, Genghis Kahn and the Mongol Horde (1954), was written by the historian Harold Lamb (1892-1962), who had written a full-scale biography of its subject in 1927. Lang treats the reader to a particularly judicious summary of the Great Kahn’s life on the last page of the book.

Similarly, The Monitor and the Merrimack (1951) was written by Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956). Pratt was a prolific writer, and, appropriately, he frequently wrote on naval subjects. The result is splendid storytelling, clear and forward moving, highly informative, with no waste of words. Pratt puts a premium on ingenuity and invention. Pratt’s book is illustrated by John O’Hara Cosgrave II (1908-1968), another appropriate choice – he was known for his many pictures of boats.

Stonewall Jackson (1959) was written by Jonathan Daniels (1902-1981). Daniels was briefly press secretary to both Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) and Harry Truman (1884-1972), but more to the point, he was from North Carolina, and a prolific author of many books about the Civil War. His illustrator, William Moyers (1916-2010), was best known for iconic paintings of the West, and he provides clear and vivid illustrations.

Many of my Landmark Books are so worn and covered with food stains that it’s clear I read them repeatedly. Stonewall Jackson, on the other hand, looks like I’d never opened it. (Ironically, when I went to college at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, I walked by Jackson’s grave every night – it was my best shortcut home.)

Daniels tells Jackson’s story sympathetically, and from the Southern point of view, with bare mention of slaves (Jackson owned some), but he does describe the complexities and even peculiarities of Jackson’s character.

Similar complexity can be found in the life of Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), and for Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor (1955) Landmark chose, again, a Southern writer, Hodding Carter II (1907-1972), a Louisiana journalist and publisher and the father of President Jimmy Carter’s aide of the same name.  (Those are a lot of Carters to keep straight.)

Hodding Carter II wrote Pulitzer Prize winning articles about the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, and shows at least mixed feelings about the Civil War and slavery, but in Lee’s biography he chooses to put heavy stress on Lee’s “honor,” and it’s difficult for me to understand what’s honorable about slaveholding.

For The Story of the U.S. Marines (1951), the series publishers chose George P. Hunt (1918-1991), logically enough a former Marine, who spent most of his career as a writer and editor for Time Inc. I see that my copy is one of the books originally owned by my cousin Bucky. I wonder if he wants it back.

Hunt tells the story with no awareness of the impact of the Vietnam War, a decade or so in the future, and the book ends with the Marines still in Korea (1950/51). The stories of heroism in the book would make great movies (maybe they have), but occasionally there are hints of other things as well, for example, “As was usually the case in these [wars with the Indians], white men wanted Indian land.” Similarly, Hunt writes about “America’s ambition to spread out over the southwest and western regions of a continent it considered its own,”  and one detects a nuance in tone.  

Another example of appropriate choice of author is The West Point Story (1956), by Colonel Red Reeder and Nardi Reeder Campion. Red Reeder (1902-1998) – what a wonderful name! – was himself a cadet at West Point, earning 6 demerits in his first two hours there. He rebounded well, however; he was a leader in the Normandy Invasion, lost a leg, was awarded eight medals, and originated the idea of the Bronze Star medal. (Nardi Campion, 1917-2007, was his sister, an author and screenwriter herself.) For twenty years he was the athletic director at West Point (1947-1967).

The tone of the book, not surprisingly, is more or less awestruck. Men are amazing! World War II “was won by combined effort – by sacrifices in the homes, by men laboring in the factories and shipyards, by men serving in the air, on the sea and on the ground.” Ahem – there were women involved, sir. Sometimes the effect of his book can be chilling: “The government sent more troops into the field and the ‘Indian Fighting Army’ gradually wore down the savages.”

Another kind of service is described in Royal Canadian Mounted Police (1953) by Richard L. Neuberger (1912-1960), a Senator from Oregon and a good choice to write that particular book because he knew many Mounties and their families, and is able to report a number of personal experiences he had with the Mounties and their families. It’s a superlatively written book, dedicated to his wife Maurine (who succeeded him in the Senate after his death), “[w]ho went on patrol and baked the famous chocolate cake just as good as the Mountie’s wife!”

The author of Captain Cook Explores the South Seas (1955), Armstrong Sperry (1897-1976), had a great grandfather who was a sea captain! Sperry wrote a number of historical novels for children. Possibly as a result, his book about Captain Cook contains lots of visualized scenes that couldn’t possibly be based on historical record. At one point Cook says to his wife, “A good sailor makes a poor husband, Elizabeth.” “Not my husband. . . ” she replies. Possible, I suppose . . .

Exploring the Himalaya (1958) is written by a Supreme Court justice, William O. Douglas (1898-1980), who might seem a strange choice for the subject, but he was an environmentalist and spent time in the Himalayas. Douglas appears in the book a good deal, telling what he observed. The book also follows the story of a young Tibetan woman and an Indian man who marry, under the shadow of increasing Russian and Chinese domination.

The Story of Scotland Yard (1954) comes from Laurence Victor Thompson (1914-1972), a British author who also wrote 1940 (1966), a fascinating account of that year from an “inside” political point of view. He writes a riveting account of Scotland Yard, making the reader – this one at least – think vaguely about joining the force, and he includes many personal stories.

The Pony Express (1950) is by Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958), an investigative journalist, a major exposer of health frauds, and a prolific writer in many genres. He is quite clear about the authenticity of his book:

The record here set down is intended to be faithful to period and event without being strictly factual. Detailed data on the Pony Express are scanty, vague, and often contradictory. With a few exceptions it is not even known with certainty what men rode what routes.

Permitting myself a certain license of treatment, the better to round out the picture, I have attempted to present in broad outline the character and atmosphere of [the] enterprise.

Adams acknowledges the unfairness of treatment the “Indians” received at the hands of U.S. citizens. He has a personal connection with the Pony Express, too: he met one Pony Express rider himself, an experience he tells about in the book.

The Story of the Naval Academy (1958) comes from the pen of Felix Riesenberg, Jr. (1913-1962), the son of an historian with the same name and the author of naval books. It’s a pretty straightforward history, with a slightly idealized idea of the Navy, but with acknowledgment of pranks, odd traditions, and misbehavior at the Academy, some of them remarkably dangerous.

Geronimo: Wolf of the Warpath (1958) is by Ralph Moody (1898-1982), a colorful American author and an authentic cowboy, who drew on his upbringing and adventures for over 50 Western-themed books. Appropriately, he provides a vigorous narrative.

One of my favorite books in the entire series is Queen Victoria (1958) by Noel Streatfeild (1895-1986), a genuine British aristocrat from an “historic” English family from Chiddingstone, Kent, that traces its ownership of its house there to the 1500’s. There is an easy, chatty, almost gossipy feel to the book, appropriate for someone comfortable in high British society, and she provides wonderful insights about royalty:

. . .  the country was suffering from a surfeit of expensive royal Dukes.

. . .  a monarch in a rage is not easy to deal with, since no one may answer back.

. . .  there is nothing in the history of Britain, or indeed of any other country, to suggest that heirs to the throne dreaded wearing the crown. In fact quite the contrary. History is full of examples of would-be heirs fighting to retain it, and of dethroned monarchs who could not endure existence amongst commoners.

Unconsciously [Victoria] was giving a large section of her peoples something which, without knowing it, they had always wanted: pomp and circumstance in quantity, allied to a thoroughly normal home life in the best middle-class tradition.

Historical novelists are an obvious source of writers for the Landmark Books Series. For Remember the Alamo! (1958), the publishers recruited one of the best, Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), notably the author of the celebrated and Pulitzer Prize winning novel All the King’s Men (1946). Even Warren’s chapter titles (“Stephen Austin Was an Honest Man,” “Sam Houston Gets a Razor”) are memorable, and his book is full of evocative details, with no words wasted. It is hard to imagine a better retelling of the disastrous story, or a better way to get both the facts and the atmosphere of the Alamo.

Thomas B. Costain (1885-1965) was also known for his historical novels, and The Mississippi Bubble (1955) is a serviceable retelling of a remarkable economic catastrophe, with a great deal of information about New Orleans along the way. Similarly Joan of Arc (1953), by Nancy Wilson Ross (1901-1986), an American novelist and an expert in Eastern religions, is patiently, thoroughly told. Garibaldi – Father of Modern Italy (1956) is by Marcia Davenport (1903-1996), a novelist, memoirist, and music critic. Perhaps she got her sympathy for Garibaldi from Italian opera?  

Journalism should be a good source of writers for a series like the Landmark Books, and many of its authors have journalistic backgrounds. Quentin Reynolds (1902-1965) was a well-known newspaperman in his day, and he wrote three of the books in my collection. Custer’s Last Stand (1951) is a novelistic telling of the story rather than straight history, effective and notably sympathetic to Native Americans – “We made hundreds of promises to the Indians and broke almost all of them.”

The Battle of Britain (1953), also by Reynolds, is mostly told from his point of view as a war correspondent – he was allowed to fly as a passenger in British bombers, and was also in London during the 84 days of the Battle of Britain. His first person account of that desperate period is highly effective.

Reynolds was not present for the story of The Wright Brothers: Pioneers of American Aviation (1950), of course. He only takes the story up to the brothers’ first major success. His narrative is apparently mostly fictionalized, and it makes oddly slow reading since it spends a great deal of its time describing how the brothers developed their experimental method.

Another notable journalist in the book series is the author of The American Revolution 1760-1783 (1958), Bruce Bliven, Jr. (1916-2002), a well-regarded writer for the New Yorker and author of many books, including children’s books, noted for their fresh perspectives on historical events. His account of the Revolution is clearly told, and he has strong opinions about the events of the war which he is not shy about expressing.

Abe Lincoln: Log Cabin to White House (1956) by Sterling North (1906-1974), a noted writer of books for children, is notably well written. It does become a little rushed in recounting Lincoln’s first election campaign, has nothing about his famous and dangerous train trip to Washington through Baltimore, and ends with Lincoln’s first inauguration. (Other books in the series, of course, cover later events in the Civil War.)

The Story of the Secret Service (1957) by, Ferdinand Kuhn (1905-1978), a distinguished diplomatic correspondent, is a well reported book, clear and useful in understanding what the Secret Service does – not only its famous duty of protecting the President and other officials, but also its activities against counterfeiters.

Of course many of the books are written by authors chosen simply because they can write well. For example, Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo (1953), by Frances Winwar (1900-1985), is exceptionally well told, with an excellent final summary:

He showed what a man can accomplish through strength of purpose, courage, and imagination. He destroyed the last remnants of feudalism in Europe and abolished the Inquisition in Spain. He helped to build the modern code of laws. He encouraged art and science and education.

But once he gained power he paired it with his colossal ambition. The two, like fiery steeds driven recklessly for his own glory, plunged him and his empire to destruction. So great was his fall at Waterloo that since then all defeat has been known by its name.

In many cases I feel the Landmark books are as good in their way as more famous books by writers specifically for adults. For example, Leonardo da Vinci is written by Emily Hahn (1905-1997), a prolific writer, especially for the New Yorker, and an ardent feminist who spent years in China – a fascinating character in her own right. (So is the book’s illustrator, Mimi Korach, known for sketching numerous soldiers during World War II in the United States and Europe.)

Hahn is independent minded. Concerning the famous painting Mona Lisa she writes

For my part, I am glad that Leonardo had this work to comfort him when his “Battle of Anghiari” went wrong, but I don’t think “Mona Lisa” is beautiful.

She narrates an extremely well told story, especially since Leonardo didn’t always have an exciting life. Her book, I would say, is as good in its way as Walter Isaacson’s book of the same title (2017).

I realize that I have given the illustrators in the series short shrift. Many of them were notable in their time, for example the illustrator of The Pony Express, Lee J. Ames (1921-2011), well known for his Draw 50 learn-to-draw books; Geronimo’s Nicholas Eggenhofer (1897-1985), a famous specialist in Western illustrations; William Moyers (1916-2010), a well-known Western artist suitably chosen for the story of the Alamo; and Valenti Angelo (1998-1982), a much collected artist in his time, with his icon-like pictures for the book about Joan of Arc. Clayton Knight (1981-1969), who illustrated the air fights of the Battle of Britain, had been a combat flier in World War I!

Perhaps my favorite of all the books in the series I have read is Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater by Anne Terry White (1896-1980), a prominent non-fiction writer for children. She admits at the outset that “this book does not pretend to be a biography; for the known facts of Shakespeare’s life are too few to warrant such a designation.” Within those limits she tells a vivid story as well as any of the much longer adult biographies of Shakespeare that I have read. 

The illustrator, C. Walter Hodges (1909-2004), spent much of his career writing and illustrating books about theater, ultimately leaving his collection of Elizabethan theater artifacts to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. His drawings in the book are imaginative and convincing.

Looking back, I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to read (and re-read) the Landmark series of books. They filled my mind with history and, just as importantly, with stories, in an intelligent and comprehensible way. They genuinely are a landmark in the telling of the long narrative that is history.

Why does this particular series of books strike me as so important? I can think of several reasons. One is that they represent a respect for history that I believe we all need. Mark Twain said (or didn’t say), “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” It’s important for people to learn as they grow up that the same themes resonate in life over the years – heroism, determination, respect, ambition, striving, the impulse toward war, the struggle for peace. History prepares us for what the world is like.

The Landmark Books also represent a respect for children and young adults that I feel is lacking in a great deal of what is written for them today, when fantasy in particular receives such an emphasis. Certainly imagination is important, although we certainly can argue about the uses to which it is often put.

But history is also important, and history is happening now, in remarkable ways, just as history was made in the age of the Alamo or of Genghis Kahn. The Landmark Books pay young readers the enormous compliment of telling the stories straight.

The books also introduce their readers to great personalities. The great Greek historian Plutarch (AD 46-120) wrote, “I’m not writing history, but lives,” and for millennia the study of character was a staple of education. In my opinion there is still great value in that approach, particularly since today we don’t need to think just of “great men,” but of “great people,” including women and people of varied nationalities and races.

Additionally, the Landmark Books represent good and sometimes exceptional writing. We have already noted how the editors of the series went for the “best in their fields,” and came up with some remarkable choices. Surely an exposure to literary excellence must be of great value in education.

And, speaking for myself, reading these books has given me both facts and perspectives that have been of great assistance to me, as much as possible, in acting and in playwriting. The great scenic designer Robert Edmond Jones (1887-1954) wrote, “Keep in your souls some images of magnificence,” and those words are good advice for anyone interested in working in theater. They also point out an important contribution of the Landmark Books.   

[If you are a book lover as Kirk clearly is—and ROTters will know that I am, too—you’ll appreciate Kirk’s fondness for these estimable books.  I don’t know if there’s anything in print that approximates the value and quality of the Landmark Books of the 1950s and ’60s, and the original titles are no longer available except in used bookstores and on book websites (Bookfinder.com is one I use to track down titles I want), but if you have children in the preteen years, it might well be worth looking for some of them.  Many libraries also still have copies of some if the titles.

[I haven’t thought about the Landmark Books for decades, unlike Kirk, but his having reminded me of them, I recall being engrossed in some of them, especially the Civil war books like The Monitor and the Merrimack and Lee and Grant at Appomattox.  (As I told Kirk after reading “Landmarks,” I was completely hooked on the coverage of the centennial of the Civil War in the early 1960s.  I read everything I could find and subscribed to Life and Look magazines which did illustrated stories on the war over the five years of the centennial.]

Notes on Reading

by Kirk Woodward

[As I promised back in December, Kirk Woodward has favored ROT with another piece of writing to share with the blog’s readers. He addresses the act of reading this time, but he takes a somewhat unique point of view. I think you’ll find it interesting to contemplate this activity Kirk’s way—I know I did—and it may spur you to look at your own reading process a little more carefully than we usually do.

[I will take this opportunity to note that I took a slightly different look at books and reading in “Books in Print,” on ROT on 14 July 2010. The topic also came up in passing in “Library Cuts,” 29 June 2010. ~Rick]

The art of reading probably won't go away, but the details of the process are changing. I used to look over people's shoulders on the train and try to read their newspapers; now I try to see what they've got on their Kindles. Before books join carbon paper, the iceman, and phones with cords in the Land of Obsolescence, here are notes on a few peculiarities of reading.

DON'T GULP YOUR FOOD!

My wife, Pat, has been reading, with no pleasure at all, a currently extremely popular mystery, the first book in a trilogy. She was at it again today. I asked her if she was enjoying it, and she said, "Not a bit." "Have you been able to see why it's popular?" I asked. "Not at all," she said. "I'm not the slightest bit interested in the characters or the events." "Are you going to stop reading it?" "No, I'm going to read it to the last word." "Will you read the rest of the trilogy?" "Not a chance!"

Pat is engaged in obligatory reading. Having started a book, she feels she has an obligation to finish it. If we were to create a flow chart of her reading pattern, we would see that she is actually in a sort of what's known as a decision tree. The decisions run something like this:

Will you keep reading? YES or NO.

If NO, put the book down, preferably where it's surrounded by other books, and try to forget about it.

If YES, read it the way you would a book you like, OR

Do what I do – compressed reading!

In compressed reading, you refuse to admit that you won't finish the book. Instead, you push your way through, continually moving forward, not really reading for comprehension, but noting random points here and there, convincing yourself that if there's anything important to see, you will see it. (This technique, incidentally, also works with short stories. I've applied it to the fiction in The New Yorker for years.)

Is there any value in what I'm calling compressed reading? Maybe. Sometimes even a sentence or two can tell you so much about an author that you can form a fairly decent impression of what's going on just from a sample or two. The problem with this idea, of course, is that if you're forcing yourself to turn pages, eagerly anticipating the end of the book, you probably have dismissed the author already, and could care less about the writing style that the book displays.

Of course the principal reason for finishing a book by, basically, turning its pages fast is guilt. We feel we owe a book we've started the tribute of finishing it. It's almost as though books know what we're thinking. But they don't. Do they?

And are you reading all of this article?

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

Not long ago, two movie reviewers for the New York Times discussed whether it was proper for a reviewer to reveal a surprise plot twist in a film – for example (I think it's safe to use this one) that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. To my surprise, both reviewers felt it was fine to reveal a secret in a review. Their justification was, "It's part of the movie, and we're reviewing the movie."

I don't agree with them. I feel that the basic standards of behavior apply in this case. Where are the reviewers’ manners? If someone tells you a secret, you have an obligation to keep it, and if you don’t, you have an obligation to feel really, really guilty. On the other hand, the reviewers for the New York Times seem to me to believe that they're more important than the works they're reviewing anyway, so perhaps they don't feel the usual principles of behavior apply to them. I'd be careful eating next to them, in that case – they might steal my food. And if they sat next to me on the train while I was reading a mystery, I'd worry that they'd tell me the ending when they could see perfectly clearly that I was only on Chapter Four.

However, when by myself, reading a book that contains a secret or a mystery, I don't always follow my own principle. Often, that is, I jump to the end of the book and find out who did it, who survived, or what in general happened, and then go back (maybe) and read the rest of the book.

Why do I do this? Why don't I save the ending for the end? The basic reason, I suppose, is that the older I get, the less I enjoy jolts, especially when they're well done and genuinely jolting. I’ve gotten to the point where I really hate to read about people getting hurt. (This, you can imagine, makes newspapers almost radioactive.) If we live long enough, we experience plenty of jolts in real life, and often we don’t take them as casually as we did when we were younger. If we read enough, the same principle may be true.

In my heedless youth, I admired the movie Bonnie and Clyde and could talk intelligently about its artistic values, in particular the way it forced us to acknowledge our emotional involvement in violent events. Today I can't watch a violent movie at all, and have trouble sitting through a film where anything bad happens to anyone. You would think that wouldn't leave many movies for me to see, but there are some, Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris being a recent and welcome example. You would also think that I'm not the audience today's moviemakers in general are looking for, and you'd be right.

Back to books: there is another reason I often peek ahead to see how a book ends, and this one at least makes me look slightly less like a hopeless wimp. The fact is that I don't read much fiction, not because I'm not interested in it, but because I get so involved in it that I can't do anything but read the book. Work, family, everything falls by the wayside until I've finished.

The extreme in this regard, for me, was the Harry Potter books. As I became more and more involved in the series, my first reading of each successive volume became more intense, until by the seventh (and no, I didn't look ahead to see if Harry lived – or did I? I’m not telling), my reading was non-stop, with no room for trivialities like sleeping, eating, and talking with members of my family.

Interestingly, there are people who do what I do, read the end before the beginning (or middle), but for much more respectable reasons. I have always enjoyed reading the works of George Bernard Shaw. When Shaw, who was distinguished as a reviewer of books, painting, music, and theater long before he was known as a playwright, read an unfamiliar book or play, he'd immediately open it to the last few pages. If he found those interesting, he'd go back and read the rest of the work. If he didn't, he wouldn't waste time on it. He defended this procedure as eminently sensible, and although I'm not sure how much of a logical case I could make for his approach, as a practical matter I think he’s right.


MARKS OF DISTINCTION

I am sitting here with a book called The Word of God & The Word of Man by the great Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth. It's not at all an elegant book, physically speaking. I bought it on Amazon for a dollar or so. Karl Barth is a great theologian, warm, insightful, brilliant. He's also one of the most prolix theologians who ever wrote. His great work called the Church Dogmatics runs to volumes, and is complex both in thought and in language. (In English, I mean; I don't read German.) His sermons (he started as a preacher, and for years after he became a professor he preached to the inmates at a local jail) are more accessible. The book I'm reading now, a collection of essays, is somewhere in the middle.

As I said, it's not a prepossessing volume. It's a paperback, published in 1957. The binding is gone; the pages are held together by glue, and they're brown and ragged on the edges. It's seen a lot of use. Most interesting, though, is the fact that it's heavily underlined and marked up, apparently by one Robert Manther, who signed his name on the inside front page.

The thing is, I can't figure out his marking system. There's no question he feels passionately about the book. Just exactly what his thinking process is, though, I can't work out.

Two frequently used marginal marks are "K" and "W". However, "K" may not be the letter K at all. It may be a vertical line, with two angled lines to indicate the passage it's marking. He appears to use "X" in the same way, to mark – double-mark? – sections. The contents of the sections seem to bear out that interpretation – they're definitely important thoughts. And what does "W" stand for? "What"?

All the sections with Ks and Xs next to them are underlined. But some sections, apparently of similar importance, are underlined without any marks in the margins.

Robert really goes to town on pages 20 and 21. In order, moving down page 20: a section is marked "SK", and it's not underlined. Then we have a passage with not one, not two, but three vertical lines and, to their left, the letter "K" underlined twice. A paragraph or so below, we have what appears to be an upward-pointing arrow but what I believe is actually a vertical line and a meandering "X", with one sentence underlined. Continuing down, we then have the words "as if" – also in the text – written in the margin.

On page 21, Robert appears at first to have struck out a sentence, but apparently he has only underlined it a little carelessly, and marked it with both "K" and "X". Then comes an underlined passage with – get this – the letter "Q" beside it. The following paragraph is heavily underlined, and its first sentence has three X's beside it. Finally, one underlined passage is followed by three randomly underlined letters, as follows: "to the great . . . ."

I haven't yet mentioned the check marks, circled asterisks, and obscure comments ("1/1 of Chr.", "V for Bakken") that also dot the text. This cascade of marks continues throughout the book. Robert didn't just start the book, he finished it. And it's clear that it means a great deal to him. His markings are full of passion and energy. Which is not to say that I understand them.

Perhaps that's just as well. Everyone who as a student bought or borrowed a used textbook knows the dangers of being seduced into paying attention to someone else's underlinings. Even if the person warns you, you can't help paying a little extra attention to the sections that someone else, well, paid a little extra attention to. If they've missed something important, or highlighted something misleading, well . . . you get the idea.

At least with Robert's complex system of notation, I don't really understand it, so its effect on my thought processes isn't intense. I will admit, though, that I'm still drawn to his underlinings.

The whole issue of abbreviated markings reminds me of an experience I had as a brand-new secretary (or as we'd say now, Administrative Assistant) at the old Time Inc., now Time Warner. My boss asked me to make an organizational chart of our area. I found some old assignment sheets and transferred their contents to a new diagram. Wherever I saw the initials TK, I put the name Tom Kennedy – one of our people – in the slot.

My boss was highly amused, and so was Tom Kennedy, when he found out that I'd assigned him a great many jobs he'd never heard of. TK, it turns out, was and for all I know still is the abbreviation at Time Inc. for "to come." You will point out that "come" doesn't begin with the letter K, and you're right, but don't tell me, tell the people at Time Inc.

Reading my Barth book turns out to be two experiences: the experience of reading Barth, and the cryptological experience of interpreting Robert's experience of the book, running parallel to my own. All reading involves interpretation. I suppose Robert's markings, whatever they mean, help me to keep that fact in mind.

And, of course, there are the existential questions. If Robert was so interested in the book, why did he give it up? Did he retire? Did he give up on metaphysics? Is he still with us at all? Perhaps that's where Barth's theology comes in. Books are, after all, always about something.