Drafting the Past

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About this episode:
When Katherine Grandjean’s new book, Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution, came out earlier this summer, somehow I missed it. But I’m awfully glad someone corrected that for me (shout out to historian Robert Parkinson), because this was a remarkable book.
In it, Grandjean follows the trail of a pair of brothers who terrorized the Kentucky and Tennessee countryside for nine months in 1798, murdering dozens of people for reasons that were unclear to their contemporaries and to the people who have written about them for the past two hundred years. Grandjean not only tells a gripping, beautifully written story, but she weaves it with the uncertain political and social atmosphere of the United States in the wake of the American Revolution. It’s a story about masculine violence, class, property, and the creation of the nation, and it has surprising resonance even now.
Dr. Katherine Grandjean is an associate professor of history at Wellesley University, and a historian of early America. Her first book was American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England. In our conversation, she had insightful things to say about building tension, balancing narrative threads, and the hard, tireless work it took to track down the evidence that makes a story like this possible to write.
Mentioned in this episode:
Katherine Grandjean, Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution
Katherine Grandjean, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England
Jane Kamensky
Jill Lepore
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

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In this episode, Kate interviews Dr. Thomas Andrews, a historian who cares deeply about the writing—and revision—process. Thomas is a professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder and is also the faculty director of the Center for the American West. He’s the author of three books, including the Bancroft-award winning Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies, and his newest book, The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Pandemic and the Fate of Reconstruction America. In addition to his own writing, he has interviewed historians as part of the Writer’s Studio feature in the journal Modern American History, which is a series of terrific interviews about how some of the most highly regarded American historians work. As you might imagine, Kate and Thomas had a great time talking about the writing process and especially Thomas’ love of revision. This one also includes a treadmill desk, a harrowing publishing tale, and why he might have taken Bill Cronon’s dissertation advice a little too seriously.
Mentioned in this episode
Thomas Andrews, The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Pandemic and the Fate of Reconstruction America
Thomas Andrews, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies
Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War
Susan Orlean, “The Walking Alive,” on using a treadmill desk
Writer’s Studio feature archives in Modern American History journal
Linda Gordon
William Cronon
Richard White
Donald Worster
Patricia Limerick
Curb Your Enthusiasm

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About this episode
For this episode, Kate is joined by Eric Jay Dolin, the New York Times-bestselling author of 17 books, to talk about his writing process and what it’s like to build a career as an author of popular histories. His books include Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America; A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes; Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates; and Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution.
His most recent book is The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail. His books have won awards and are frequently named best books of the year. Before writing history books, Eric worked in environmental policy and earned a PhD in environmental policy and planning from MIT.
We talked about how his career has developed, the ups and downs of the book market, and he dished about advances, career trajectories, and why he thinks he’d rather have a huge book now than early in his career.
Mentioned in this episode:
Eric Jay Dolin, The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860
Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
James Truslow Adams, The Founding of New England

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About this episode:
How many history books have kept you up late into the night, turning the page to find out what happens next? That’s exactly what the newest book from this episode’s guest did to Kate, but it was well worth the lost sleep.
Catherine Grace Katz joins the Drafting the Past podcast to talk about her newest book, Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War. Catherine is a writer, historian, and lawyer, with degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge along with a JD from Harvard. Her first book was Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War.
She joined Kate to talk about what goes into writing such extraordinary true stories, from how she works without an outline to the writing tool she found in her mom’s basement, and the unlikely inspiration for the book in a classic holiday movie.
Mentioned in this episode:
Catherine’s website
Catherine Grace Katz, Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War
Catherine Grace Katz, Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary
Norman MacLean, Young Men and Fire
Gioia Diliberto, Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition
Tana French
Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Phillippe Sands, The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, and the podcast precursor, Intrigue: The Ratline
Helena Merriman, Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berline Wall and its podcast precursor, Intrigue: Tunnel 29
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O’Meara
Pitch Club

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In this episode, Kate spoke with Tai S. Edwards and Charlee Huffman, writers and editors of a new book, Shokhi: A Kanza Relative, A Monument, and Rematriation. This book is a little different from others that have appeared on the show: it tells the story of how a group of people, include Kaw Nation citizens, historians, artists, activists, and others worked together to bring a grandfather rock, In‘zhúje‘waxóbe, back to the Kanza people with whom they had a centuries-long relationship. The boulder had been appropriated as a memorial to the founders of Lawrence, Kansas, and the land on which it stood bore witness to many intersecting narratives of people and place. The book, is part history, part artistic expression, and part handbook for this kind of restorative work.
Tai and Charlee discussed their collaborative process, incorporating disability accommodation into the heart of their work, and how they let the land lead them in telling a history with many voices.
Tai S. Edwards is professor of history and director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College. She is the author of Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power and co-editor of Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery, also published by Kansas. c. huffman is a Kaw Nation Citizen with an MFA and an MDiv who sits at the intersection of privilege, dis/ability and Indigeneity; a place where poetry and theology dance. Her writing has appeared in The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet, a poetry anthology edited by Hannah Soyer.
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Mentioned in this Episode:
Shokhi: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation
Poet Marilyn Haeker
Michael Grow, US Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War
Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea series
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Doorkeeper of the Heart
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me