Tag: Fire of Genius

2 Comments

The Year in a Writer’s Life – 2020

  By , ,

David J KentHeck of a year, wasn’t it? I’m sure I’m not alone in admitting that the year in a writer’s life didn’t go exactly as planned. And yet, looking back on what I wrote for 2019, I realize 2020 wasn’t that different, at least as far as the writing part goes. There was, however, one huge difference, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Royalties continue to trickle in for my three previous traditionally published books on Tesla, Edison, and Lincoln. Okay, maybe royalties have fallen to a drip. But my editor sent word in the spring that the Edison book would be coming out in a Chinese-language edition. Those licensing fees and royalties haven’t shown up yet, at least in part because of something called COVID.

Oh, you’ve heard of COVID? Of course you have. The rather unplanned pandemic did what pandemics tend to do, completely mess with everything previously considered normal in the world. Publishing was no exception. With stores closing temporarily in the spring and only partially reopening (and in some cases, reclosing) over the rest of the year, it was a tough time for actual bookstores. Barnes & Noble was already reworking its business model before being hit with guards standing outside the doors metering potential shoppers to a few at a time. Independent bookstores were especially hard hit. That said, Amazon and big box stores that also sell groceries (e.g., Target) had increasing book sales as the year progressed. With people sequestered at home, more people read more books. Like Amazon, publishers also did well as books replaced lost restaurant, movie, and bowling nights. Overall, print sales were up about 8% for the year and some publishers were reporting their best year ever. So I should see those Edison royalties eventually, maybe even in the spring. My two e-books also occasionally send royalties my way.

The writing life itself kept me incredibly busy in 2020. With my travel schedule reduced to zero, I spent more time reading and writing. Here’s some writing highlights:

  • Began a series of posts on whether Confederate monuments should be removed. I’m hoping to turn this into a book.
  • Wrote and delivered three presentations on Zoom (not counting my participation in dozens of additional Zoom meetings). I’ll moderate a panel in two weeks.
  • Three book reviews for the Lincoln Herald, an academic journal.
  • Produced eight book reviews for the Lincolnian, the newsletter of the Lincoln Group of DC.
  • Wrote an article for the Lincolnian on Lincoln’s Long Road to Emancipation.
  • Wrote an article for The Lincoln Forum Bulletin.
  • Had three separate contributions in the “From Our Readers” section of Writer’s Digest magazine.
  • Was interviewed on Facebook Live by filmmaker Annabel Park on Lincoln’s views of the current election.
  • Entered nine writing contests. Of these, seven are still under review (two didn’t win, although for one I received very helpful feedback).
  • Collaborated with Ru on a planned travel book.

And that isn’t even the BIG NEWS!

[For those with good hearing, that’s a drum roll in the background]

On December 31, 2020, the very last day in the year of the corona, I signed a formal contract with a well known publisher, who will publish and distribute my new book on Lincoln’s interest in science and technology. 

This is the culmination of years of research and toil. There’s a long story behind the production of this book, but I finally got around to putting forth a proposal this year. My agent shopped it around and two publishers expressed interest. Negotiations were to be had, and on the final day of 2020 I carefully scrawled my official signature at the bottom of the fifth page of micro-print. That’s just the beginning, of course. My deadline to provide the full manuscript is July 1st, and the projected date of release is February 2022. I’ll provide more details as the project progresses, but suffice to say I’m very happy to be proceeding…and will be exceedingly busy writing for the next several months. I can’t travel anyway so I might as well be writing.

So what is the plan for 2021?

In case you skipped over the big news right above this paragraph, the first six months will be consumed with writing my Lincoln book. I will live and breathe the book during that time.

In my spare moments I’ll continue posting essays related to Confederate monuments with a goal of compiling them into book format at some point. I’ll also squeeze in essays for the travel book collaboration, although realistically that will have to wait until the summer. There are three other book projects that will sit in some level of dormancy until the second half of the year. I’ve cut my intended reading goal from my usual 75 books down to 50 books to free up some time for writing. I’ll also squeeze in some book reviews for the Lincolnian and possibly the Lincoln Herald. In the latter stages of the year I’ll pick up my previous goals of producing articles for journals and magazines, at least part of which will be marketing-related for the new book. Finally, I’ll likely increase my speaking schedule, especially as the book release date gets closer (and into 2022 once it hits stores).

Needless to say, I’ll be spending a lot of time at my computer in 2021.

Happy New Year to all!

Follow me for updates on my Facebook author page and Goodreads.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

 

2 Comments

What Killed Abraham Lincoln’s Mother?

  By

Nancy Hanks LincolnNancy Hanks Lincoln died October 5, 1818 of “the milk sick.” Or did she? While Abraham Lincoln biographers generally attribute her death to milk sickness, a possibility exists that it might have actually been something else. The story goes like this:

Early in October, Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, relatives of Nancy who had joined them in Indiana the previous year, died of the milk sickness. Within two weeks, Nancy began showing symptoms and after a week of agony, died. While the Lincolns and others knew vaguely it was associated with milk, no one had yet connected the disease with the ultimate source. Some had noticed the seasonality of the disease and that it seemed to occur more often in years in which natural forage vegetation was in short supply. Less than normal rain in 1818 had resulted in dusty conditions and low crop yields. As a result, the Lincolns’ livestock instinctively foraged for food wherever they could find it, often into the underbrush of the neighboring forest. What they found was a weedy plant now known to be white snakeroot (current scientific name Ageratina altissima).

While early observations suggesting plants as a source occurred before Nancy’s death, it was not until 1834 that a physician and scientist named Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby learned the connection to white snakeroot and led a campaign to eradicate the weed from her Rock Creek, Illinois community. Ohio farmer William J. Vermilya independently implicated white snakeroot in 1837. Given the lack of scientific infrastructure, these early discoveries were insufficient to settle the issue and as late as 1841 the Kentucky legislature was offering $2,000 to anyone “who shall, within five years after the passage of this act” succeed in discovering “the true cause of the disease, now known to be caused by the poisonous effects of the wild, flowering white snakeroot transmitted by the milk, butter, and flesh of cattle consuming the plant.”

That “true cause” was a natural toxin called tremetone that remains active even after the plant was dried for hay. Sometimes farmers noticed listlessness, trembling, and peculiar odors found in the breath of cattle, sheep, and horses. The tremetone easily passes into the milk, which was how most humans were exposed to the toxin. Milk sickness was not a pleasant disease. One of the symptoms is a scent similar to acetone (similar to today’s nail polish remover). Persistent vomiting, abdominal pains, muscle stiffness, and eventually tremors, respiratory distress, and agonizing pain were obvious to the Lincoln family. Not seen was the intense inflammation of Nancy’s gastrointestinal tract, enlarged liver and kidneys, and swelling of her heart. Milk sickness was a painful death.

The definitive conclusion that milk sickness was caused by tremetone was not determined until the early twentieth century. In 1818, all the preadolescent Abe could do was helplessly watch his mother die. Death from the lack of scientific knowledge was one reason Lincoln later supported the greater use of science in agriculture—and the broad dissemination of information to farms of all sizes throughout the nation.

But wait. Tremetone? Virtually everyone that mentions milk sickness says the toxic is called tremetol, not tremetone. For those who are into organic chemistry, the “-ol” means it is the alcohol version of the chemical; the “-one” means it is the ketone version. [Since this isn’t a chemistry lesson, you can look up the difference.] Tremetone is found in tremetol, which is actually a toxin mixture from the aforementioned white snakeroot plant. While most sources say the tremetol is the toxic component, biomedical researcher and Lincoln historian Edward Steers, Jr. argues that tremetone is the actual toxic chemical. Like Steers, I’m also both a scientist and Lincoln historian, so I think I’ll go along with him on this one.

But wait, there’s more.

Steers also suggests that Nancy may not have died of milk sickness at all. When you think about it, the circumstances seem suspect, not the least of which is the fact that no one else in the Lincoln family died despite all of them drinking the same milk and eating the same food. Steers suggests that Nancy may possibly died of brucellosis, a bacterial disease associated with unpasteurized milk or undercooked meat, especially from goats but also from cows and pigs. Symptoms are similar to milk sickness, including fever, sweating, vomiting, weight loss, and muscle pain. Because it is contagious, Nancy may have gotten it when she was nursing the Sparrow family.

So was it milk sickness, brucellosis, or something completely different? In truth, we don’t really know. The series of symptoms and deaths were attributed to milk sickness at the time, but as we’ve seen, they didn’t really understand what was causing the disease, just that it had some vague connection to milk. Or so they thought. Since it’s impossible to accurately diagnose from the limited anecdotal hearsay available from family and friends, biographers stick to the generally accepted story that Lincoln’s mother died from milk sickness. But maybe she didn’t. This is an important reminder that historians need to be careful when they simply report old sources without fully researching the details. And perhaps, that more scientists need to be historians.

[Adapted from my forthcoming book]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

2 Comments

Isaac Newton Becomes Abraham Lincoln’s First Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture

  By

Lincoln Department AgricultureOn June 30, 1862, the Senate confirmed Isaac Newton as Abraham Lincoln’s first Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture, which Lincoln had signed into existence a month earlier. Having come to despise the hard labor of his early years on subsistence farms, Lincoln had always favored government intervention to help people better their condition and looked for ways to bring science to agriculture.

In his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861, Lincoln wrote:

Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government. While it is fortunate that this great interest is so independent in its nature as to not have demanded and extorted more from the Government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether something more can not be given voluntarily with general advantage…While I make no suggestions as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized.

Congress took the hint. With his Republican Party in control and uncooperative Southern representatives no longer an impediment to action, Congress passed a bill creating the Department of Agriculture. Its goal was to institutionalize science in agriculture and thus put farming on the path to the future.

The bill stipulated that the goal of the new independent department, sent to the President by the aptly named Galusha Grow, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Solomon Foot, President of the Senate pro tem, stipulated that the role of the new independent Department was:

to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.

In his next annual message to Congress, Lincoln eagerly reported that he had “caused the Department of Agriculture of the United States to be organized.” The new Department would develop scientific experiments, collect statistics, test new seeds and plants, and disseminate any knowledge gained to agriculturists. [cite From the bill] As innovative variations were developed, seeds, cereals, and cuttings would be distributed to farmers for widespread propagation. New knowledge on nutrition, soil management, tilling strategies, and crop rotation would also be relayed to the farmers so they could improve crop yields for a growing nation. Lincoln’s vision of bringing scientific benefits to the people would begin.

Lincoln called Agriculture his “people’s department.” Isaac Newton—no relation to the famed English astronomer, mathematician, and physicist—was an agriculturist who had made acquaintance with Lincoln while selling farm products to the White House. Derided early on for his lack of formal education, Lincoln took a liking to him, perhaps because he could relate to his initiative and self-schooling. Newton turned out to be well suited for the job.

Near the end of 1862, Newton sent a 54-page handwritten account to Lincoln, the first annual report from the Department. After describing the history of agriculture through the ages, Newton reported excellent harvests of crops across the northern states even with the loss of many men serving the war effort. He noted that the North, with its free labor, was faring better than the South, whose slave labor system harmed fertility and agricultural yield.

Newton went on to tout agricultural science advancements made by inventor Jethro Tull (horse drawn hoe, mechanical seed drill, improved plow), chemist Sir Humphrey Davy (Elements of Agricultural Chemistry), agricultural writer Arthur Young (Annals of Agriculture), and the reapers of John Henry Manny and Cyrus McCormick, with which Lincoln was already familiar from his legal career. Reiterating Lincoln’s Wisconsin speech, Newton noted that agricultural progress requires “a more thorough Knowledge and practice…as a Science and an Art.”

All of this would eventually lead to a more thorough education of the farmer in physical science and political economy. In too much of the nation, Newton wrote, farmers continued to cultivate depleted soil, thus necessitating the application of manure as fertilizer in an unwinnable battle against soil nutrient exhaustion. Using science, including proper tilling practices, crop rotation, and nutrient preservation, he argued, agriculture could provide greater consistency and magnitude of production for decades to come.

Lincoln had successfully turned his much-maligned farming drudgery into a department that would transform American agriculture.

[Adapted from a work in progress]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!