Will "Quality" Survive at the new Anheuser-Busch InBev?

As I've noted here before, my concern about the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch stemmed from my fear that a Great Company would, under the new leadership, become Just Another Company. (And as I've also said here, and in other places, you don't have to like the beer in order to respect A-B's relentless, obsessive concern for quality. See, for example, this sort-of-related essay.)

Anyway, Jeremiah McWilliams, our man on the St. Louis beer beat, investigates this very topic in a piece in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Also see his related entry at Lager Heads, his excellent blog-about-beer.

A Historian At Work: The Basics, Part Two of Two

Part One --- Part Two 

"Years!" you say. "How can it take you years to write a book?" "Look at Michael Pollan? Or Thomas Friedman? Or Doris Kearns Goodwin? They publish a new book about once a year. What? You too stupid to do that? Are you lazy?"

I'm not sure about the too stupid part, but I’m definitely not lazy. But those people have something I don't have: Help. They rely on paid assistants to do the scut work, much of the research, and, for better or worse, much of their writing, especially of the first drafts.

What's scut work? Remember all those sources I mentioned above? Those aren't just sitting in a neat stack somewhere, waiting for me to leaf through them. I have to find them. I have to figure out what I want to read, what I need to read, and then I have to track down a copy of whatever it is -- newspaper, magazine article, traveler's diary. (*1)

If I'm lucky, the material is in the nearby university library, or that library can borrow it for me. If I'm not so lucky, I may have to travel to the place where the material is stored. For the beer book, for example, I used various repositories in Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Louis.

And then I have to read and absorb and analyze it. (*2) And then I have to repeat the process, oh, another seven, eight hundred times. (No, I'm not exaggerating.) (Nor am I complaining. I LOVE my work.)

Months later, when I've conducted enough research so that I "know" my subject, I start writing. And as soon as I start writing, well . . . something amazing thing happens. As I write, my brain begins a conversation with itself and I truly begin to understand what my book is about, what all that research material means, and whether I ought to go this direction, or that direction.

Often that means I have to stop, go back to the sources, and re-read them because I've decided that my initial understanding of them was flawed. Or, more often, I realize that I need to read different sources, ones that I didn’t realize were relevant. And then I go back to my keyboard and start writing, and the creative process starts all over again.

And . . . five years later? I’ve completed a book. That's what I do. Any takers?

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*1: This is what historians refer to as "constructing a bibliography."

*2: Up until about, oh, two, three years ago, about 98% of this material was on paper or on microfilm or microfiche. I've spent hours of my life sitting in front of a microfilm reader, loading reels of film, slowly scanning the film, re-winding the reels, etc. (The good news is that these days those machines are electric, so at least I don't have to hand-crank to rewind the entire reel. I actually damaged my right shoulder in grad school just from cranking the handle of a microfilm reader.) Nowadays, I'd say about half the sources I use have been digitized. More about that later.

We're All Special; Or, The Moral of "Harrison Bergeron"

Apropos this blog entry from last month; And apropos the idea that we're all "special" and therefore presumably equal, or at least equally special; And apropos the corollary that anything especially "special" is therefore verboten, my husband mentioned "Harrison Bergeron," a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1961. (*1)

The story is sufficiently "special" that it merits its own Wikipedia entry, which is here. Read it and ponder. Or, ya know, weep.

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*1: The subject came up when my husband, who is a philosopher, wondered aloud how his students, who are mostly young enough to be his grand-children, could engage with Facebook, Twitter, etc., and still find the long moments of deep concentration necessary for substantive thought.

A Historian At Work: Verification and Digital Sources

In my previous post, a reader asked if a blog could be a source. The answer is "yes," and I discussed the issue in my reply. But there is another problem that historians face when it comes to digital sources: Permanence. Or, more accurately, lack thereof. What happens if that digital source vanishes? A little background: Historians "document" their sources for their work. Here's an example: This is from my most recent First Draft Follies blog entry

August Busch and Anheuser-Busch, Johnson said, constituted a "selfish" interest that had "openly and without shame . . . prostituted and exploited" the national pastime by making it the "handmaiden and adjunct of the brewing business." (*18)

I documented the source of that quote like this:

*18: Senate Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Subjecting Professional Baseball Clubs to the Antitrust Laws, 83d Cong., 2d sess., 1954, 71.

The "source" here is testimony from a congressional hearing held the second session of the 83rd Congress. The testimony was published, and this particular quote is on p. 71 of that published document. With that information, anyone can find the "source," and read it for themselves. (By the way, this is an example of a primary source.) What happens if a historian wants to use someone's blog as a source? No problem: They name the blog, the date of the entry, and provide the url. Like this:

Maureen Ogle, "First Draft Follies: Budweiser, Baseball, and . . . Communism," February 23, 2009, http://maureenogle.com/2009/02/first-draft-follies-budweiser-baseball-and-com...

All well and good. Unless . . . that link goes "dead" somehow. Doesn't matter how: I remove my blog and its contents, the host vanishes, some hacker destroys my site. Whatever.

Point is if a historian used this "document" as a source, and then the source disappeared or was destroyed -- well, no one else can verify that he or she ever found it. For all we the readers know, he/she made up the source. (*1)

If I had printed a paper copy of that blog entry, then a historian would have what amounts to a back-up.

The historian would use the same citation, but add something like "From the collection of Maureen Ogle; Special Collections, Iowa State University Library." (I'm totally making that up, by the way; there is no "Maureen Ogle archive" at Iowa State University.)

I've noticed in the past few years, that writers who are citing e-sources often include the entire url, no matter how clunky or long it is, along with the date on which they accessed that web page. Presumably, this is to "document" their document.

But again, that document could vanish, in which case no one can prove (or disprove) that the historian actually accessed that page. How will this play out in the next few decades? I dunno. I'm guessing various historian-geniuses are contemplating the problem.

Me? For now, I'm trusting myself, being honest, and hoping that my readers will therefore trust me, too. But it's definitely going to be an issue in the years to come.

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*1: I hasten to add that this can happen with conventional, non-digital sources, too. There was an infamous case a decade or so ago of a historian making up sources to suit his needs.

Happy Birthday, Jay!

My pal Jay Brooks, one of THE best people on the planet, is celebrating his 50th birthday today.

Jay, here's to fifty more! (And if only the planet had more like you...)

A Historian At Work: The Basics, Part One

Part One --- Part Two 

I realize many of you don't know what historians DO. Don’t feel bad; most people don't. Nor should they. If I were reading a blog about, say, civil engineering or radial oncology, I'd need some basic background because I have NO idea what civil engineers and radial oncologists do. I mean I know that engineers build dams and bridges, but that’s the beginning, middle, and end of what I know.

So, I thought I'd provide some basic background on how historians work. If you're a historian or professional researcher, you can skip this part.

Much of my daily routine consists of doing research. I conduct that research using two kinds of material -- or, as historians say: "sources" -- primary and secondary materials (or "sources).

An example of primary materials, or, "primary sources" are letters written by Abraham Lincoln to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. A secondary source is a book or essay in which a scholar (a historian) analyzes those letters.

So, for example, when I decided to write a history of Key West, Florida, I needed to learn about Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Key West for many years. To research his life, I used primary sources such as letters that Hemingway wrote to his friends and family while living in Key West.

I also relied on secondary sources, namely biographies of Ernest Hemingway. The letters (primary sources) provided Hemingway's first-hand accounts of Key West. The biographies (secondary sources) provided details of Hemingway’s life (his childhood in Illinois, his years in Paris, etc.)

So when I'm writing a book, whether it's a history of Key West, of beer in America, or (my current project) a history of meat, I read a wide range of material. Lots of material. What feels like an endless river of material.

And once I've finished the research, then I have to write the book. (Which, I might add, is a quite different task that requires a different set of skills.) Which is why I only publish a book every few years. Ain't no way to speed up the process.