Category: History (Page 1 of 7)

Author Q & A with Karen Abbott

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 15)

Award-winning New York Times bestselling author Karen Abbott adds to her popular lineup of historical nonfiction with The Ghosts of Eden Park– a surprising memoir of the life and times of George Remus, the 1920s teetotaling opportunist whose skyrocketing rise to “King of the Bootleggers” during Prohibition would end in tragedy.

An instant New York Times bestseller, Indie Next pick, Amazon best book of August, and a top fall title for both Newsweek and Publishers Weekly, the book is as important for its historical worth (many of the characters in this real-life saga have been practically wiped off the historical map of America’s past) as for its entertainment value.

Abbott’s work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications. Her previous books include Sin in the Second CityAmerican Rose, and Liar Temptress Soldier Spy.

A native of Philadelphia, she now lives in New York.

Tell me how you first learned about George Remus’s true story, and why it caught your attention and inspired you to write Ghosts of Eden Park.

Karen Abbott

I usually get my ideas by perusing old archives and out-of-print books, but this one came through television–specifically the show “Boardwalk Empire,” which aired on HBO for five seasons. There was a minor character named George Remus. He spoke of himself in the third person and stole every scene he was in. I wondered if Remus was a real person, and indeed he was! His real story was much more dramatic than the show’s portrayal, with a sordid love triangle, a devastating betrayal, a murder, and a sensational trial.

The real Remus also spoke of himself in the third person: “This is going to be a hell of a Christmas for Remus”; “Remus has been betrayed by everyone he had trusted”; and my favorite: “Remus’s brain exploded.”

In all my years of researching history, I have never come across a more interesting, bizarre, and brazenly outlandish character. He was an impoverished, abused German immigrant kid who, through determination and savvy, became the most successful bootlegger in American history. Within a year of launching his operation, he owned 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States–an astonishing figure. Newspapers at the time compared him to Vanderbilt and Rockefeller.

At the height of Prohibition, Remus lived an “outrageous” lifestyle on many levels, using his background as both pharmacist and lawyer to game the system. Can you give us an example about Remus’s story that you would say proves the old saying that “truth is stranger than fiction?”

Remus is said to be a real-life inspiration for Jay Gatsby, mainly because of his lavish parties. The most famous was his 1921 New Year’s Eve party, when he unveiled his brand-new Greco-Roman bath, built for $175,000. At one end stood a variety of Turkish and Swedish needle baths, a style and pressure for every taste, and even electric baths–an early version of a tanning bed, heated by incandescent lights and said to make the user “frisky.” Remus’s glamorous wife, Imogene, put on a daring one-piece and executed a perfect dive. Remus handed out party favors: diamond stickpins and watches for the men, 1922 cars for the women, and a $1,000 bill tucked under everyone’s plate. In a gesture emblematic of the times, one what would be remembered in awe decades later, Remus lit guests’ cigars with $100 bills. All this in an era when the average annual salary was about $1,200.

Mabel Walker Willebrandt has been called “the most powerful woman in the country” at the time when she became the assistant attorney general of the United States in 1921 and took on the challenging task of enforcing the National Prohibition Act, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Tell us about her role in this story.

When President Warren Harding appointed Willebrandt to be the assistant attorney general of the United States, she, along with all other adult female citizens, had only had the right to vote for nine months. She was 32 years old, only five years out of law school, and had never prosecuted a single criminal case–and yet suddenly she was in charge of the thousands of Prohibition cases that began piling up in the courts, including cases against Remus.

To add to the pressure of her job, she had a serious hearing problem, and spent an hour every morning styling her hair to conceal her hearing aids. She was almost inhumanly tough and thick-skinned, qualities that were reinforced by the ice-cold bath she took every morning. Her favorite saying was: “Life has few petted darlings”–and she didn’t consider herself one of them. Her formative childhood event: She once bit a pet cat’s ear. To teach her a lesson, her father bit her ear back. During her time, she was the most powerful and the most famous woman in the country, and I couldn’t believe she’d be so lost to history.

Your astounding research for this book made it possible for you to complete it with “no invented dialogue,” thanks to government files, archives, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, books and hearing and trial transcripts, as you listed in your Author’s Note. Tell me about this extraordinary investigation and why this level of accuracy of detail was so important to you.

A confession: I have never had so much fun researching a book. When I discovered that the Yale University Law Library possessed a 5,500-page trial transcript, I immediately set out for New Haven. Nearly every page was a treasure trove–all of the details I would need to recreate conversations and craft scenes. I found incredibly intimate details about Remus. For example, he didn’t like to wear underwear, which in the 1920s was considered evidence of an unsound mind. It took me four months to go through the trial transcript and compose an outline, which amounted to 85,000 words–nearly as long as the finished book itself.

George Remus’s wife, Imogene, fell in love with Franklin Dodge, the very Prohibition agent who put her husband in jail. Who was Imogene, and was she truly in love with Agent Dodge?

Imogene Remus was a classic villain: greedy, conniving, duplicitous–qualities for which she was roundly denigrated and punished. As awful as she was, a man who’d engaged in similar misdeeds likely would have gotten away with them. I think she was aware of this double standard and that it fueled her rebellion. She was the epitome of what the New York Times called the “middle-aged flapper,” defined as one who yearns to escape from a monotonous routine and seeks independent adventures.

When Imogene met Remus, she was going through a nasty divorce, supporting herself and her young daughter by working as a “dust girl” in Remus’s law office. She’d had a difficult life, and here was this brilliant, doting man who was poised to make millions as a bootlegger.

She was full partners with Remus before she turned on him, and she used all that knowledge to fortify her relationship with Dodge. Trial witnesses testified about Imogene and Dodge’s flirtatious phone calls, about their afternoon rendezvous in speakeasys, and about their plans to hire a hitman to kill Remus.

I don’t know if Imogene and Dodge were truly in love, but they definitely shared a common goal: to steal Remus’s fortune and ruin his life.

Lemuria has selected The Ghosts of Eden Park its August 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Lawyer masterminds bootlegger empire in Karen Abbott’s ‘Ghosts of Eden Park’

By Patrick O’Daniel. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 11)

Karen Abbott expertly weaves a story of ambition, treachery, and revenge in her new book The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America. Drawing from court testimonies, newspapers, and other first-hand accounts, Abbott details the rise and fall George Remus, the so-called “King of the Bootleggers.”

The Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution banned the sale and transportation of most alcoholic beverages in the United States. George Remus, a successful defense attorney in the Midwest, represented many bootleggers arrested for violating the law. He was amazed at how easily his clients paid exorbitant court costs and fines. Intrigued by the profit potential in bootlegging, he studied the prohibition law, discovered its loopholes, and found a way to cash in on the liquor business.

Remus found that millions of gallons of liquor remained in bonded warehouses after prohibition went into effect. The only way the owners could legally get rid of it was to sell their stock to drug companies who in turn sold the liquor as prescription medicine. Remus saw an opportunity and decided to buy both distilleries and drug companies to become both buyer and seller.

Remus falsified or destroyed records of shipments, and had crews from his trucking company divert liquor to a fortified safe-house in rural Ohio where they sold it illegally. Remus bribed law enforcement to avoid arrest as he bought more distilleries, warehouses, and pharmacies. He lived a lavish lifestyle reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby and made millions at a time when the average salary was less than $2000 per year.

Abbott goes into detail about Remus’s business operations and the men that worked for him. She recounts the hijacking that led Remus to use armed convoys and a fortified safe-house. She describes how easily a rich bootlegger could corrupt poorly paid law enforcement and how hard it was for honest prohibition agents to do their jobs. On one occasion, Remus’s lieutenant George Conners expertly cajoled a couple of prohibition agents with whiskey and money after the two nearly discovered the operation. Every decision described sheds more light on Remus’s character.

Abbott also brings to light Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the crusading Assistant Attorney General who wanted Remus behind bars. The story takes a bizarre turn when Agent Frank Dodge, the man Willebrandt sent to investigate Remus, and Remus’s wife Imogene became lovers and conspired to steal his fortune. Their treachery would not only bring about Remus’s ruin but their own as well.
Abbott’s colorful settings and intricate relationships make the book read like a novel, but always with an eye on historical accuracy. She inserts excerpts of court testimony as epigraphs to set the stage as events unfold. Eyewitnesses recount personal observations, motivations, and secret plots. The details help the reader see the conspiracies take shape against Remus, his downfall, and what brought him to seek revenge.

Abbott captures the feel of the Jazz Age and its gangsters, scofflaws, and crusaders in this story. The Ghosts of Eden Park is a well-researched and highly engaging work filled with intrigue, infidelity, murder, and headline-catching courtroom drama. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Prohibition Era, including fans of Prohibition by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.

Patrick O’Daniel is the Executive Director of Libraries for Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis and author of Crusaders, Gangsters, and Whiskey: Prohibition in Memphis, When the Levee Breaks: Memphis and the Mississippi Valley Flood of 1927, Memphis and the Super Flood of 1937: High Water Blues, and co-author of Historic Photos of Memphis.

Lemuria has chosen The Ghosts of Eden Park as its August 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction. Signed first editions are available in store and on our website.

Extending the Narrative: David Blight’s ‘Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Peace’

I’ve read and taught Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, for years, so when I saw David Blight’s Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Peace, I was intrigued. Douglass’ Narrative covers just a sliver of his life, but it does so with intensity and purpose—namely, to help Americans in 1845 see and vicariously experience the horrors endured by enslaved people in America.

Blight’s biography, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History, offers a similar intensity, but pulls the camera back to offer a wider-angle view. We are greeted with the larger political and social contexts through which Douglass’ life flowed, yet Blight’s writing never looses its focus on Douglass’ own experiences. Showing these intersections between national history and Douglass’ personal history allows Blight to muse on how Douglass’ writing and activism affected the American abolitionist movements, and how the various gears of those movements affected Douglass personally.

The book does a fantastic job of both lionizing Douglass, with quoted, researched descriptions of his wildly popular speeches, and humanizing the man by showing us his personal struggles with family and dear friends. Especially heartbreaking is the deterioration of the friendship between Douglass and abolitionist stalwart William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison was the first major abolitionist figure to recognize Douglass’ genius. Garrison thrust Douglass to the forefront and encouraged him to use his story as a weapon against those who deemed slavery just. Both men valued each others’ opinions and held the other in high esteem. Yet ego and ambition (from both men, honestly) eroded their relationship into one of petty bitterness.

Blight’s biography does what all great biographies do: it gives insight into the character, showing complexities beyond the blurbs in history books. And while Blight’s tome is a thick one (760 pages of narration, with an additional 100 of end-notes) the detail with which he tells Douglass’ story doesn’t get bogged down in useless minutia. His writing is lively and thorough at the same time—a true rarity.

Margaret McMullan’s ‘Where the Angels Lived’ is a mesmerizing account of a family’s fractured history

By Ellen Ann Fentress. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 5)

Her grandfather, a Catholic University history professor, said he was the last of his accomplished Viennese family. He wasn’t, Mississippi author Margaret McMullan found out in an on-the-ground hunt that took her to Hungary, Austria, and Israel to learn the truth.

McMullan’s grandfather Friedrich Engel, who fled Vienna in 1939, was actually part of a renown—and at the time quite alive— Hungarian Jewish family. The Engel de Janosi clan had presided over their corner of Hungary as an economic and civic power, thanks to flourishing wood and coal enterprises that employed thousands. Emperor Franz-Joseph I of the Austro-Hungarian empire granted nobility to patriarch Adolf Engel and his descendants in 1886 in “recognition of economic virtues.” The family lived in palaces.

And yet. As Hungary and the citizens of the Engels’ town of Pecs, Hungary were overrun by Nazi forces in 1944, a century of prominence, good works and assumed assimilation weren’t enough for the Engels. The scion of the Pecs branch of the family—McMullan’s grandfather’s first cousin Richard Engel—died at the Mauthausen concentration camp after being rounded up along with other town Jews in March 1944. The story of Richard’s descent from respected, wealthy World War I war hero and city civic leader to being marched off as townspeople watched is the spellbinding story that McMullan tells in Where the Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss and Return.

McMullan has crafted a mesmerizing account not solely of the downfall of her prominent cousin Richard Engel, but also of the shocking transformation of a Hungarian town. Interestingly, residents are now more eager to demonize the past Soviet occupation than to explore any town Nazi complicity in 1944.

McMullan’s has done more than tell this story masterfully. To relay an account of Richard Engel, it was up to her to uncover it. “What is not discovered, what is not saved is lost and forgotten,” she writes. “History is so often written and manipulated by winners. History can’t be written by the dead.”

McMullan came to her project when, out of curiosity, she typed in her family’s Engel de Janosi name at the Yad Vashem Holocaust archive in Jerusalem, when visiting with a writers’ group. The name Richard Engel de Janosi of Pecs, Hungary appeared. The archivist handed McMullan a form called the Page of Testimony. “No one has ever asked about this man, your relative, Richard,” the archivist tells her. “You are responsible now. You must remember him in order to honor him.”

Where the Angels Lived tracks McMullan’s steps from learning of the extensive family history hidden by her grandfather up through her eventual excavation of Richard Engel’s life. Her search benefited from extraordinary persistence and also the serendipity of meeting key people with information to share.

Of course, the memoir’s inevitable look at the gradual nature of totalitarianism’s growth resonates today, as both the U.S. and Hungary experience right-wing resurgences.

To research Richard Engel, McMullan applied to teach at the University of Pecs, which was seeking a lecturer in American literature through the Fulbright academic exchange program. She moves there for a university term in 2010 with her husband Patrick and their eighth-grade son James.

McMullan persists and builds a sense of her cousin Richard through her research. Even the holes in his portrait make him more universal, she reflects. “Maybe I can see Richard more accurately than I can see any other human being,” she writes. Her quest deepened her sense of her own Engels legacy as well. “I feel them at my side as I walk. All this time, they were never very far away.”

Ellen Ann Fentress is a writer, filmmaker and teacher in Jackson.

Margaret McMullan will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Memoir” panel at 1:30 p.m. at the Galloway Fellowship Center.

Author Q & A with Tom Clavin

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 24)

Among those worthy of celebrity status in mid-19th century America were rugged gunslingers whose reputations were often built on myths and legends borne of truth and tragedy–and one who reached the heights of notoriety was Wild Bill Hickock.

New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin adds to his collection of historical nonfiction with Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter, examining in detail the life and rowdy times of this iconic American figure.

Notoriety gained from the press made Hickock a nationally known figure, and thus, placed a target on his back for hotshots who wanted to make a name for themselves as the man who would take him down.

A quick-draw artist who was known for his accuracy and courage when it came to gunfights, Hickock became a lawman at 20, and wen ton to hold the titles of Army scout, federal marshal, and Union spy. It would be a bullet that would end his life at age 39.

Clavin has served as a newspaper and web editor, magazine writer, TV/radio commentator and reporter for the New York Times. Among his career credits are awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, an dthe National Newspaper Association. His book include Dodge CityThe Heart of Everything That Is, and Valley Forge. Clavin lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

“Wild Bill” Hickock, hom you describe as the “first post-Civil War celebrity of the West,” was well-known as America’s first gunfighter during the 1800s–but his real name wasn’t even Bill. Tell us how James Butler Hickock became popularly known as “Bill”–and how he earned the legendary title of “Wild.”

Tom Clavin

Two separate events resulted in “Wild Bill.” The first and less dramatic is he had a brother who called himself Bill–his real name was Lorenzo–and probably as a joke when traveling together on a steamship on the Missouri River they called each other Bill. Lorenzo disembarked, “Jim” Hickock pushed on, and passengers called him Bill, and he got comfortable about this.

The “Wild” part happened after he entered a saloon fight on the side of a bartender outnumbered 6-to-1, and onlookers thought that was a wildly gutsy thing to do. From 1861 on, he was Wild Bill Hickock.

Why do say in your Author’s Note that it was a “gullible and impressionable public” that made Wild Bill bigger than all of the legendary frontier figures (like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson) who came before him?

There had always been a hunger back East for tall tales about frontier figures, bu the public became especially ravenous after the Civil War when the American frontier exploded with seemingly limitless potential. Hickock cut a romantic, larger-than-life figure and had a distinctive look and there was a bigger than ever number of readers. All this combined to almost overnight elevating him to superstar status.

It was a Harper’s New Monthly Magazine article in February 1867 that first spread Hickock’s name and legend across the nation, making him nationally famous at age 29. What effect did that article have on Hickock’s life?

The article made him very famous. He could not have been prepared for that, but he sort of took his fame in stride. Hickock did not seek attention, but he didn’t hide from it, either. He was mostly a modest man, but a part of him enjoyed being almost a mythical figure. The downside was much of his fame was as a best-in-the-West gunfighter, making him a target for those younger and possibly faster who wanted to take that title. For the rest of his life, he had to wonder which bullet had his name on it.

Briefly, for what exploits was Wild Bill best known?

Though we don’t have a lot of details, his years as a spy behind Confederate lines were full of exciting exploits. Obviously, being a gunfighter who could shoot faster and more accurately than any man he encountered. And especially when marshal of Abilene in Kansas, Hickock became the prototype of the two-fisted and two-gun frontier lawman. And he was the most well-known of Western plainsmen.

“Wild Bill,” was described as “the handsome, chivalrous, yet cold-eyed killer who roamed the prairie, a kind friend to children and a quick-drawing punisher of evildoers.” He died at age 39, and you liken his life to a Shakespearean tragedy. Explain how that comparison fits.

Hickock fits into that tragic mold dating from Euripides in Ancient Greece and elevated by Shakespeare of the hero who attained heights, but flaws felled him. The West changed fast around Wild Bill Hickock, and he was unable to adapt–and he was a gunfighter going blind.

Like many tragic heroes in literature, he sensed his days were short and life had been unfair but he courageously accepted what was to come. Hickock was an honorable man ultimately dealt a bad hand.

Tom Clavin will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, March 27, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Wild Bill. Lemuria has chosen Wild Bill as its April 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Tom Clavin’s ‘Wild Bill’ sets record straight on wild west gunfighter

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion Ledger Sunday print edition (March 17)

For those not especially knowledgeable about tales of the old frontier (other than movies and TV shows), Tom Clavin’s Wild Bill is full of surprises.

The first surprise in the book subtitled “The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter” is that that Wild Bill Hickok’s name wasn’t Bill.

It’s believed that the man born as James Butler Hickok often joked with his brother Lorenzo by calling each other Bill. Since he answered to it, the name stuck. It may be also that James was known as the Wild Bill and his brother was the Tame Bill.

He signed all documents J.B. Hickok throughout his life.

Whether true or apocryphal, there’s no dispute that Wild Bill was an incredible marksman. Ambidextrous, he early on carried Colt Navy .36-cal. pistols facing butt out on each hip, which he later exchanged for double-action Colt .44s filed down for quicker action. He shot with both hands simultaneously and equally accurately.

“Witnesses report seeing Hickok driving a cork through the neck of a whiskey bottle at 20 paces, splitting a bullet on the edge of dime at the same distance, and putting as many as a dozen bullet holes in a tomato can that had been tossed in the air,” Clavin reports.

This skill made him a formidable foe in a gun battle and it also tended to dissuade lawbreakers when he served as marshal for the town of Abilene, Kansas, frequently putting on shows to demonstrate his prowess.

He also didn’t quite fit his “wild” moniker in his bearing and manner, in that he was by all accounts a cool customer. Raised in an abolitionist family in Illinois, during the Civil War, he served as a Union scout and spy, often going behind Confederate lines, and was able to coolly talk his way out of some tight binds. It was this ability to talk his way out of trouble, backed by his reputation as a crack shot, that later served him well as a lawman.

Much of what is known of Hickok through movies and Wild West shows is also probably fabricated, Clavin reveals. For example, it’s doubtful, he says, that Hickok and Calamity Jane were lovers. While they were friends, contemporary accounts seem to indicate that the somewhat dandy-ish Hickok who wore expensive clothes and bathed every day (an unheard-of practice at the time), considered her rather uncouth. She was prone to drunkenness and a prostitute who also wrangled horses, mules and cattle, usually wore men’s clothes, and was not known for her hygiene.

He also was devoted to his wife, Agnes, whom he married rather late in life (about the time he knew Jane), and she was flamboyant in a different way, as the owner of a circus and a world-renowned performer.

Calamity Jane claimed she and Hickok were lovers and had herself buried next to him at Deadwood, S.D., where he was shot dead from behind while playing what came to be called the dead man’s hand in poker: two pair, aces and eights.

What is known, according to Clavin, was that Hickok was the first fast-draw gunslinger in the Old West. His killing of a man in Springfield, Missouri, (Clavin says Independence, Missouri) July 21, 1865, by quick draw methods—rather than pacing off a duel—was widely reported and was quickly emulated across the West.

Unfortunately, because it also happened while he was quite young, it caused “shootists” who came along after to seek him out to show who was the fastest draw. He died at 39, Aug. 2, 1876, victim of a self-styled gunslinger who crept up on him.

But if a bushwhacker didn’t get him, the times would have. Hickok set the mold for gunman/lawmen who faced off in high noon style, but when he was killed, towns were shifting to “peace officers,” who arrested lawbreakers to take them before a judge, Clavin notes.

Hickok remained true to himself “while the West changed around him.”

Wild Bill is filled with the famous names of the West, such as Buffalo Bill Cody, Kit Carson, and the rest. It is a fascinating account of an incredible Western icon, diligently researched, and breath-taking in its scope.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Tom Clavin will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, March 27, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Wild Bill. Lemuria has chosen Wild Bill as its April 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Author Q & A with Adam Makos

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 24). Click here to read this article on the Clarion-Ledger’s website.

It was Adam Makos’ grandfathers’ service in World War II that inspired a career for their grandson, leading to Makos’ deep interest in the military and the American heroes whose stories he feels is his duty to tell.

The author’s newest book, Spearhead: An American Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II, chronicles not only the surreal story of one young tank gunner’s epic battle in Germany, but that soldier’s deliverance from its trauma that would come some 70 years later.

Having earned a spot in what has been called “the top ranks of military writers,” Makos’ previous works include New York Times bestseller A Higher Call and the widely acclaimed Devotion.

Today he lives in Denver.

Your books have highlighted tales of historical military heroes whose stories would have otherwise gone unheard by the American public. Why has this pursuit been a such a passion for you personally?

I love searching for untold stories because it gives my readers a chance to see a new side of World War II, or to meet a new hero, like watching a movie for the first time.

To me, it’s also about justice. To think that some young man risked his life for us, all those years ago, or maybe he made the ultimate sacrifice and bled out on some European battlefield, as one of the heroes of Spearhead actually did, I don’t think it’s right for us to ever forget their names.

How did you find out about Clarence Smoyer, a U.S. Army corporal and tank gunner from Pennsylvania coal country who served in World War II?

Adam Makos

I truly feel I’m “led” to some of these stories, in the spookiest ways. A college buddy told me about Clarence, a quiet hero from his hometown. So one day in 2012, I went up to Clarence’s brick row house and knocked on the door. He welcomed me inside, pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and we talked for a bit before he stunned me with a revelation when he asked, “Would you like to see a letter from the German I fought against?” He was in touch with his former enemy.

Smoyer’s defining moment of the war was a dramatic showdown in Cologne, Germany, between the newfangled American M-26 Pershing “Super Tank” he commanded and the fiercely infamous German Panther tank–a 1945 duel that was, almost unbelievably, captured on film. What was it about his story that compelled you to meticulously research and document it in Spearhead?

Before I met him, I knew about Clarence’s remarkable, Wild West-style tank duel in the street of Cologne. It’s considered one of the most famous actions of World War II, because it was caught on film. Now, anyone can watch it with the click of a mouse button.

But even putting the reader into the middle of that duel, two tanks quick-drawing on each other, 75 yards apart, wasn’t enough to fill a book. It was the deeper, human story that drew me to write Spearhead. Our World War II tank crewmen faced a terrible reality every time they started their engines.

The first tank always gets hit.

That was the nature of tank combat on the Western Front in early 1945. The Germans were on the defense; they could dig in and wait for our guys to come over the hill or around the bend. They could wait to fire until the first American tank rolled into their crosshairs.

So to go first took guts, because that guy was probably going to get hit. When Clarence was assigned the Pershing, a deadly new role fell to him: now, his tank would go first, in every battle.

So I asked myself: Why would any man saddle up for that? Why did Clarence? And the answer was quite profound. He did it to keep his buddies safe. He told himself: We have the biggest gun, we belong out front.

You recount Smoyer’s disturbing decades-long bout with PTSD, and how he finally decided to face it. Explain how this unlikely outcome (of meeting his former enemy in person in their later years) was such a defining chapter in his life.

Like many veterans, Clarence came home and buttoned-up his memories of the war and never aired out the troubling things he’d seen.

So, in his later years, when the memories resurfaced, there was no one left to talk with–all of the men from his crew had passed. There was just one man he could turn to, who had seen the same horrors in Cologne, but from the other end of the street. This man had been his enemy (in the tank duel), Gustav Schaefer.

When Clarence returned to Cologne in 2013 and sat down to talk with Gustav, his former enemy proved to be his saving grace. Talking. It’s what helped him put his ghosts to rest. And he emerged from the ordeal with a new friend. He and Gustav called each other war buddies. They used to exchange Christmas cards and letters. They even Skyped on the computer, talking face to face.

It’s a one in a million chance that they’d have found each other, 70 years after they fought. Then to have actually met, with Clarence flying across the ocean and Gustav driving from northern Germany. And then for them to become inseparable friends? You couldn’t script a better ending to a war story.

Any plans for your next book?

I do have a new World War II book in the works, likely the last I’ll write while veterans are alive to share their stories. For now, however, I’m just enjoying my time celebrating the heroes of Spearhead.

Clarence is 95. Buck Marsh, the GI who used to ride into battle on Clarence’s tank, he’s 95, and he’s coming with me to Jackson, to our signing at Lemuria Books on March 1. For now, I just want to throw a big party for these heroes, to let people meet them and shake their hands, and realize how lucky we are to still have them, 75 years later.

Adam Makos (and Buck Marsh) will be at Lemuria on Friday, March 1, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Spearhead. Lemuria has chosen Spearhead as its February 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

A portrait of a lawless Memphis in ‘Crusaders, Gangsters, and Whiskey’

By Charlie Spillers. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 11)

Patrick O’Daniel’s book Crusaders, Gangsters, and Whiskey: Prohibition in Memphis is not only true crime, it is a virtual film noir in print with gangsters, bootleggers, cold-blooded killers and corrupt officials bursting from the pages.

From 1920 until 1933, Prohibition was the federal law of the land, banning alcohol across the country. But in Memphis, Prohibition lasted under state laws from 1909 until 1939. On page after page, author Patrick O’Daniel shows that Prohibition “led to increased crime, corruption, health problems and disrespect for all laws for three decades.”

O’Daniel poses and answers this question: “How did Prohibition affect Memphis?….The answers lie in the lives of the people… who fought for Prohibition, the people who fought against it, and the people who profited from it. And their story begins with a gunfight.” This paragraph sets the tone of a lively book, its broad sweep and captivating details.

Memphis is notorious today as one of the most violent cities in the nation. But it was even worse in the early 1900s. Crusaders, Gangsters, and Whiskey reveals a city overwhelmed with crime, violence and corruption. Some of the gunfights in Memphis during Prohibition evoke images of the gunfight at the OK Corral in the old West.

William Latura is one example of the dozens of criminals depicted in the book. He helped cement Memphis’ reputation for lawlessness. Arrested 35 times for liquor and gambling violations, Latura was one of the most violent and feared men in Memphis.

During a period of several years he tried to kill a saloon keeper, nearly disemboweled a man with a knife, shot a woman, shot a man over a gambling debt and shot another man. After African American saloon-keeper Hammit Ashford whipped Latura’s girlfriend with a riding crop, Latura stormed into Ashford’s Saloon on Beale Street and shot six African American men and one woman. Then he walked back to a bar and continued drinking nonchalantly.

His trial was a mockery. The jury did not consider killing black men by a white man to be a serious crime, so he was let go. He later killed two more men, each time claiming self-defense. But Latura finally became too wild for city leaders. He threatened to kill the newspaper editor and his staff if they continued to refer to him as “Wild Bill” and threatened police officers and even the sheriff. When police went to arrest Latura he reached for a gun and was killed.

When Memphis prohibitionists spoke out against liquor interests, they spoke out against gangsters like Latura. But in their naïveté, they, “had no idea that eliminating the saloons would give rise to a far more dangerous type of criminal. The next generation of outlaws… would unleash an uncontrollable crime wave….”
O’Daniel documents a cauldron of lawlessness, murders and corruption. Driven by prohibition, Memphis was wide open and notorious nationwide as a “resort” city. Illegal liquor and crime flourished under the protection of corrupt cops, prosecutors, judges and city officials. He writes that, “the brunt of law enforcement fell on African Americans, immigrants, the working class and the poor, while the wealthiest used their influence to skirt the law.”

Although corruption was pervasive, honest law officers continued to pursue bootleggers and gangsters. But Prohibition eventually failed because of the lack of public support for the unpopular law and the ineffectiveness of law enforcement.
O’Daniel’s book brings to life gangsters, criminal organizations, and crusaders whose actions shaped the character of Memphis well into the twentieth century. With its brisk pace, Crusaders, Gangsters, and Whiskey is a lively, illuminating and fascinating read.

Charlie Spillers is the bestselling author of Confessions of An Undercover Agent: Adventures, Close Calls and the Toll of a Double Life. and Whirlwind: A Frank Marsh Novel. His next book, Flashpoint: A Frank Marsh Novel, will be released soon.

Patrick O’Daniel will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Crime and the Law” panel at 4:00 p.m. at the State Capitol Room 201 H.

Author Q & A with Bob Drury

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 4)

By examining the true story of George Washington’s six-month battle with disease, desertion, and frigid weather as he turned the Continental Army into a fighting force that would win America’s freedom from the British, co-authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin show readers how this turning point in U.S. history is still relevant today.

Valley Forge is the pair’s sixth book together, supported by research that includes thousands of original documents written or dictated by Washington and highlighted with “a cast of iconic characters”–some of whose names have faded from history but who were instrumental in America’s struggle for freedom.

Drury and Clavin’s previous books include the New York Times number one bestseller The Heart of Everything That Was, and other New York Times bestsellers Halsey’s Typhoon, Last Men Out, and The Last Stand of Fox Company.

Drury said his collaboration with Clavin has “settled into a process” of shared research, with him conducting interviews and Clavin taking the lead in editing.

“He is a very good editor, and I do the writing,” Drury said. “We realized we couldn’t have four hands on the keyboard.”

Bob Drury

All told, Drury has authored and/or edited nine books, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Men’s Journal and GQ. Nominated for three National Magazine Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, Drury has covered news in Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Darfur, among other sites. He makes his home at the Jersey shore.

Clavin, who lives in Sag Harbor, New York, has worked as a reporter for the New York Times, and has served as a newspaper and web site editor, as well as working as a magazine writer and TV and radio commentator. He has earned awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Newspaper Association.

What was it about Washington that motivated him to persevere despite not only the conditions of the Valley Forge winter, but the political battles he also fought on a regular basis?

In public, Washington showed his steely will, but we discovered a different side. In private, he was very conflicted. One of the tensions of Valley Forge was that Washington had the weight of the war and the protection of his men on his shoulders, as well as his political relationship with the Continental Congress–and it burdened him.

He had the console of his young officers and “surrogate sons”–the Marquis de Lafayette, who was only 19; Alexander Hamilton, who was 22; and John Laurens – the “forgotten founding father,” also 22. Alone, he unburdened himself to (his wife) Martha.

I have personally read every (document) Washington wrote during (a period from) 1777 to 1778. He wrote about how he felt the burden he could never show to the Congress. On the outside he kept a steely composure and will. His confidants and his journals allowed him to keep his composure.

Of the 2,000 men who perished at Valley Forge (that winter of 1777-1778), half died of starvation and exposure, and half from diseases like typhus, typhoid and cholera.

Washington had to make an example of himself. He was driven. We don’t think of Washington as insecure. But earlier he had to take orders from British officers whom he outranked. He was a man who had no college education. Yet he became the father of our country

Through the years, several other authors have written books about the events at Valley Forge that winter. What is it about your account of Valley Forge that separates it from other books?

We contend that Valley Forge was THE turning point of the American Revolution. As we were putting this book together, we knew that other (authors) have disagreed. Everyone has their own feeling of what was the turning point for the Americans. We give a view of Washington they’ve never seen before. We decided early on that we would be prepared for this (challenge).

We present a cast of characters others have not, and we dispel many of the myths.

One of those myths is the notion of what bad luck it was for George Washington and his men to have been at Valley Forge in such a bad winter. Actually, it was one of the mildest on record at that time. The records show that it would snow, then soon turn 40 degrees, then it would rain, and everything would turn to mud–and the latrines would overflow. Over 500 horses starved to death in the freezing cold. They would be buried about a foot deep, and the heavy rains would wash their bodies up. Together, this created a pervasive odor that hung over the camp and made it miserable.

Another myth was that everyone (around the Valley Forge area) was starving to death, but 1777 produced the greatest harvest of the decade. There was plenty of corn, wheat, cattle, and mutton. The problem for the soldiers was that the local farmers preferred to smuggle their foods to the British Army for money. Remember, not all Americans supported the revolution. About 40 percent of the country’s population then were for the revolution; about 20 percent remained loyalists to King George, and the other 40 percent were really not committed to either side.

Another fact we bring to light is that this was the first time in American history that the military was integrated. There were 750 black soldiers, all free men from the northeast, who fought alongside the Continental Army. American military units were not integrated again until the Korean War (in the 1950s).

If the British had chosen to attack Washington and his men at Valley Forge that winter, history would have surely been changed forever. Do you think it was America’s destiny that it didn’t turn out that way?

I think it was a combination of destiny and British hubris. Back then there was a “fighting season” in temperate climates, and armies didn’t fight in winter. If they had attacked Washington at Valley Forge that winter, they would have overrun the American forces in a minute. They were overconfident that they would brush the Continental Army like a piece of lint off their shoulder. They thought that in the spring, they would take care of this rag-tag army.

I think it was a little destiny, a little luck, and a lot of British hubris.

When you’re researching a book that dates back this far, do you find yourself in awe of the fact that you’re looking at actual diaries and documents that are as old as these, and that they belonged to real people?

Oh, yes. Valley Forge is so well documented. I read nearly 2,000 documents that were written or dictated by Washington. Quite often with centuries-old documents like diaries or journals, university libraries and sometimes historical societies preserve them in such a way that you cannot touch them with your hands. They may be stored in fiberglass boxes and you have to turn the pages with tongs because they’re so old and fragile.

On one hand it makes you realize how young this country is. Also, we can clearly see what we think we know about Washington, and what is actually true. His writings show us his angst and self-doubt about things we never think of.

Why do we need to be reminded about Valley Forge today–and how can we apply the hard-fought lessons of what they endured and what their sacrifice helped make possible?

Not to be too political, but our country is so polarized today–not that it wasn’t in 1777 and 1778. At that time the U.S. was in an age of enlightenment: there was a novel idea that thinking itself, and definitely expressing those thoughts, that was the ultimate form of political engagement.

I think that’s something we’ve lost today, and that (finding it again) would move our country forward.

Bob Drury will at Lemuria on Monday, November 12, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Valley ForgeValley Forge is Lemuria’s November 2018 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Eric Jay Dolin’s ‘Black Flags, Blue Waters’ is a fascinating voyage

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 7)

Eric Jay Dolin’s Black Flags, Blue Waters lives up to its subtitle as “The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates” with little known facts, sweeping narratives, and gripping tales.

It’s a fascinating voyage into the Golden Age of Piracy that not only proves true some of the stereotypes of legend, book and film, but also debunks others and shockingly reveals the depth of early America’s connection to the outlaw seafarers.

Indeed, the contributions of pirates to colonial America, Dolin reveals, was vital to the nation’s founding.

For example, he reports that by 1684, “at least half the coins in colonial America” were Spanish pieces of eight, most of them likely from pirates. The Boston mint, established in 1652, produced the colony’s coins from silver bullion provided by pirates. And the sea-dogs provided a substantial amount of indigo, cloth and sugar that provided New England’s essential needs—avoiding the high prices, inferior goods, and taxes of imports from the mother country.

Their plunder enriched the colonies, making niceties affordable to the masses. So much so that early colonists often sided with the pirates against the Crown’s wishes, laws, and regulations.
In this early period, pirates saw their occupation as a job, not a lifestyle, providing for their families and the wealth of their communities.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that the wealth was robbed from galleons loaded with gold and silver from the New World owned by English rival Spain, or was carried to Puritan New England from merchants robbed in the Muslim world.

Piracy in New England touched and infused all classes, both good and ill. The great-grandfather of President Millard Fillmore himself was a pirate (though conscripted against his will).

The organization of pirates at sea was also endemic of the American character, practicing that new idea of democracy 100 years before the colonies rebelled from monarchy. Crews on pirate ships signed contracts that stipulated their rights, obligations, and percentage of the booty each member received. And they could elect or remove a captain by voting—an unheard-of practice at sea.

This is not to say that pirates were upstanding citizens. Indeed, Dolin reports, they were usually thugs and ne’er-do-wells who differed only from their landlubber criminal contemporaries by robbing and debauching on water.

Even so, the picture formed by Dolin offers a view unlike that popularized in swashbuckling films and novels. For example, while pirates could be—and often were—cruel, barbaric and violent, they also preferred not to fight. The threat of violence was more to their liking, raising the Jolly Roger to extort riches rather than actually risking death.

It suited the preferences of the victims, as well. A sailor on a merchant ship working for low wages was not disposed to risk life and limb for investors or potentates far away. Better to heave to and give it up, to sail another day.

Dolin goes into great detail about the pirate colonies of the Caribbean and Bahamas (reportedly hosting some 4,000 pirates and dozens of ships at a time), as well as ventures along the American Eastern Seaboard, from the early 1680s to 1726. Then the tide turned from pirates aiding colonial economic interests to more frequently harming them with predations closer to home.

He offers extensive notes and bibliography for further reading.

Arghh, maties! Thar be treasure here.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Eric Jay Dolin will be Lemuria tonight, Monday, October 8, at 5:00 to sign and read from Black Flags Blue WatersBlack Flags, Blue Waters is Lemuria’s September 2018 selection for our First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

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