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.]