Job Of Editor Research Articles

Careers-perspective Interview

I did. When I first left graduate school, I was the first employee at an e-commerce software start-up that my friends had founded. I was the vice-president of marketing, but I was incredibly bored. I really missed science and health. My colleagues and mentors were less supportive of this move than my subsequent choices; it just didn't make a lot of sense to them. In retrospect, they were probably right.After that, I spent a year and a half as a management consultant specializing in the pharmaceutical industry at a firm called Plan A. I enjoyed that position because I got to learn about different diseases and, again, keep up on the literature to some degree. It was very intellectually stimulating. I really only left that job because an editorial job fell into my lap and I couldn't refuse the opportunity.The writing I did while still in graduate school definitely made me a better candidate for all my subsequent positions. I would encourage anyone thinking of leaving the bench – whether they want to be a writer, or consultant, or lawyer, or whatever – to start writing and to brush up on their communication skills.

Diversity and Accommodation Essays on the Cultural Composition of the Virginia Frontier (review)

Diversity and Accommodation Essays on the Cultural Composition of the Virginia Frontier Edited by MichaelJ. Puglisi University ofTennessee Press, 1997 310 pp. Cloth, $45.00 Reviewed by John C. Willis, associate professor of history at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. He is coeditor, with Edward L. Ayers, of The Edge ofthe South: Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia ( 1 99 1 ) and author of the forthcoming Forgotten Time: The Ya^oo-Mississippi DeltaAfter the Civil War. Emory, Virginia, played host to a polyglot gathering of locally focused intellectuals in October 1992. Over a span of two days, scholars interested in frontier Virginia met there to consider, debate, and reevaluate settlement of the Old Dominion 's early westward fringes. From this ferment, editor Michael J. Puglisi of Marian College drew forth the contributions ofnine historians, two geographers, two archeologists, and a linguist. No doubt, "Diversity and Accommodation" seemed an accurate tide for these disparate perspectives (and a true description of the editor's job in fashioning them together). The book reveals how much the contributors have in common, despite their divergent occupations: an appropriate interdisciplinary bent; an eagerness to avoid habitual stereotypes oftheir subjects; and a conviction that frontiers should not be approached as boundary lines between civilization and barbarism, but regarded as "mixing zones, where different cultures, environments, experiences, economies, motives, and perspectives come into contact." Puglisi's introduction to the volume announces the contributors' opposition to "images of ethnic and cultural separation, of German clannishness and Scotch-Irish individualism," and their shared conclusion that "culture and ethnicity were important identifiers , but the groups did not exist in isolation from one another, whether physically , socially, or economically." While sweeping surveys ofthe backcountry have sometimes depended on simplistic generalizations, studies of individual actions within identifiable localities (like those in this collection's essays) might be expected to reveal specific points of exchange, mixing, and accommodation. In the first ofthe book's five sections, "Toward a Social History ofthe Virginia Frontier," Robert D. Mitchell purposefully advocates local studies as a means of achieving "a new geographical history . . . [to] reconstruct places 'from the ground up.'" One of the geographers represented in the collection, Mitchell reminds readers that even remote glades on the Virginia frontier were "subject to Reviews 87 historically contingent processes." To comprehend these changes and their import , scholars must be "more sensitive to matters ofplace, to the location ofphenomena , to the environmental dimensions of new encounters, to the settlement landscapes created by colonization, and to the transformation ofplace in the creation of new societies." While Mitchell does not specify how to prevent this renewed empiricism from devolving into particularism, he clearly believes that no history offrontier individuals can succeed unless firmly grounded in the subjects' natural setting. The collection's second section is much more concerned with man-made contexts . Although vaguely entided "Cultural Perspectives in the Shenandoah Valley ," it concerns the changing group identities ofvarious eighteenth-century settlers . Historian Warren R. Hofstra's work on ethnicity and community formation provides an excellent framework for the discussion. His examination ofthe Shenandoah 's development not only conveys the general stages ofbackcountry settlement and town growth between 1730 and 1 800, it also provides vivid examples of individual and family experiences on the frontier. Without denying the importance ofethnicity (or the persistence of ethnic tension), he suggests that families' strategies for survival were at least as significant in shaping the society as were national origins. Essays by Richard K. MacMaster and Kenneth W. Keller provide in-depth consideration of two backcountry communities. The collection's diversity emerges most clearly in a problematic third section devoted to frontier Virginia's non-European inhabitants. Natives and African Americans, readers are pointedly reminded, also contributed to the cultural mix, economic change, and social constructions of western Virginia. Four essays by historians, archeologists, and a linguist consider how the arrival of European settlers affected aboriginal ways and led to slaveholding. This section would have been more gripping, however, if its authors had kept the interaction of cultures and economies—a major theme of the book—in mind. That perspective might have banished sentences like, "Notoriously ambitious to own slaves, the ScotchIrish eagerly adopted the institution...

Arthurian Women: A Casebook ed. by Thelma S. Fenster (review)

138ARTHURIANA that the editors were bravely meeting deadlines by filling in some of those unmet gaps that are the bane ofevery editor's job. More serious is the disappointing entry on pp. 491—492 on ' Jeanne d'Arc' Paul D. Solon has provided several other fine entries, but in this one he opts for one historiographie tradition, and that the most minimalist and negative. In view ofthe current explosion ofinterest, scholarly as well as popular, on that charismatic figure, one wonders why the author (and the editors) chose to be so uncharacteristically and narrowly partisan. One of this encyclopedia's most commendable qualities is its generally judicious equity on disputed issues: see for instance Henneman's excellent entry on 'Feudalism' (pp. 343-344), graced by his doffing the hat to Bouchard's 'Fief Holding' on the followingpage and by its concise four-item bibliography—Elizabeth A. R. Brown's famous 1974 critique ofboth name and thing (she has contributed fine entries elsewhere in this encyclopedia), the classic Ganshof, Duby (the 1953 thesis on the Maçonnais), and Fourquin (the 1976 translation by Iris and A. L. Lyton Sells of Lordship andFeudalism in the MiddUAges). Henneman's economical piece on 'Gilles de Rais' (pp. 778-779) is a fine briefexample ofhistoriographicallyjudicious critique. Readers of this journal who have had the chance to appreciate Garland's New Arthurian EncycUpedU (1991) will not be surprised to see that Arthurian literature is very well treated. Even the historical issues, peripheral as they are to France, are presented with adequate brevity. Kibler's Arthur' (p. 74), followed by NorrisJ. Lacy's 'Arthurian Compilations' (same page) are model capsules ofinformation. One ofthe longer biographical entries, F. Douglas Kelly's 'Chrétien deTroyes' (pp. 219-222) offered this reviewer deep instruction as well as pleasant reading. JEREMY DUQ. ADAMS Southern Methodist University Thelma s. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women: A Casebook, introduction by Thelma S. Fenster. Arthurian Characters and Themes, vol. 3, Norris J. Lacy, Series Editor. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996. Pp. lxxvii, 344; 10 black-andwhite plates, isbn: 0-8153-0623-7. $35. Thelma Fenster has gathered here a useful and interesting collection of nineteen essays focusing on women characters from Arthurian literature of many eras. The essays are mainly reprinted pieces, but four were written for this collection and two, those by Laurence Harf-Lancner and Anne Berthelot, have been newly translated from the French. The reprinted essays in the collection date from the earliest, Sue Ellen Holbrook's fine 1978 Speculum essay on 'Nymue, Chief Lady of the Lake in Malory'sMorteDarthur' to the excerpt from E. Jane Burns's provocative and splendid 1993 book Bodytalk, 'Rewriting Men's Stories: Enid's Disruptive Mouths.' To have all ofthis material in one place—discussing the same general topic from diverse critical perspectives—is a good thing, and Fenster notes in her lengthy introduction to the volume thatArthurianwomen have languished unheeded bymuch critical scholarship. She envisions the volume as encouraging others to contribute to the discussion. An REVIEWS139 ample and helpful 'Select Bibliography' ofpublications, concentratingonworks after 1975, follows the introduction. The editor has chosen her offerings wisely, arranging the collection from work on medieval Arthurian literature in various national traditions (Regina Psaki's piece on the Italian Arthurian women—a much-neglected area—is especiallywelcome in this context), to Spenserian treatments (Judith H. Anderson's onArgante), to nineteenthand twentieth-century permutations of the topic. The penultimate organizational category in the volume is 'Another Look,' comprising two iconographie studies about depicting Arthurian women: Joanne Lukitsh on 'Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographic Illustrations to Alfred Tennyson's The IdylL· ofthe King and Muriel Whitaker's 'The Woman's Eye: Four Modern Arthurian Illustrators,' plus Constance W. Hassett andJames Richardson's essaywhich complicates spectatorship and gender in Keats and Tennyson, 'Looking at Elaine: Keats, Tennyson, and the Directions of the Poetic Gaze.' Initially I thought throwing such a wide net and including the final grouping 'Revisionary Tales: Guenevere and Morgan in the Twentieth Century,' a mistake leading to an inevitable devolution into the pop-fic, fantasy, and sci-fi genres. But the mix ofobscure dramatic and prose Arthurian works coupled with TH. White in Elisabeth Brewer...

JOHN FOXE'S VICTORIAN RECEPTION

In the first year of Victoria's reign, the English reading public's expectations of ‘A new and complete edition’ of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments began to receive fulfilment, as the initial three volumes were issued by Seeley and Burnside. Not all were prepared to give the work a magnanimous reception. Chief among the detractors of that age was Samuel Roffey Maitland, destined in the near future to become librarian at Lambeth Palace under Howley's tenure as archbishop of Canterbury. This essay explores the nature of Maitland's fervent objections to Foxe and his martyrology, and also examines Maitland's relationship to the major religious movements of his day (including Tractarianism). It argues that Maitland was offended by what he perceived as Foxe's extreme partisan bias (as a member of the puritan wing of the English church) and equally, by the poor editorial job which he believed to have been performed in the Cattley/Seeley project. Furthermore, it maintains that Maitland had a sympathetic though rather complex relationship with the divines of the Oxford Movement, including John Henry Newman. Maitland's scholarly credentials as a Foxe critic are also examined.

The editor's job

The editor's job

“All Brides Are Not Beautiful”

In a memorial service in 1987 for a long-time New York Times employee, then-Publisher A.O. Sulzberger recalled how she caused him problems by often ruffling the feathers of New York's high and mighty. It was up to him to offer explanations: I played a round of golf with a young woman who obviously had more on her mind than her putting. After the third hole, she couldn't hold back. That was a terrible piece Charlotte Curtis wrote about my mother-in-law, she exploded. Why did she have to write about all those diamonds and furs and the like. I was mortified. I'm sorry, I replied. what did your mother-in-law think about it? That's the terrible part, she replied. loved it.' Such is the story of Charlotte Curtis, who from 1961 until her death in 1987, served as page and society reporter, page editor, associate editor and columnist for the New York Times. Her irreverent style, which included price estimates of the gowns of New York's most elite society matrons, paved the way for her rise at the Times and led her to become the first woman to have her name on the Times masthead.2 She also was credited by some writers of the 1960s and 1970s as the journalist who expanded women's and society news from recipes, bridal gown descriptions, and club chitchat to controversial topics such as abortion and divorce.3 Curtis's rise at the Times came during the 1960s and 1970s, an era when few women held top editorial jobs at the nation's major newspapers. Some top news managers at the Times, including Sulzberger and former Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal, credit her rise to an extraordinary writing talent and the willingness to work hard. Her husband said it was because of a combination of diligence and a steely determination to succeed.4 Some former co-workers and observers, including feminist author Gloria Steinem, say it went beyond that: she maneuvered by developing friendships with the men who ran the Times.5 Curtis walked a fine line as she rose through the ranks of the male-dominated Times of the 1960s and 1970s. Her personal papers, previously closed to the public but made available to the author by Curtis's husband, indicate that it was a combination of this innovative style and her ability to cultivate friendships with top Times editors that led to her success. In addition, she came to the newspaper at a time when a top editor was seeking variety from the staid, competent, hard-news style that characterized the Times, and he saw her as a fresh voice and a needed change of pace. To nearly everyone who knew her, Curtis' personality was a series of contradictions. She believed men and women were equal in every way, yet she opposed the use of Ms. as a reference in the Times. She was a shy person who shunned personal confrontation, yet she often ridiculed the rich and famous by quoting the silly and self-incriminating comments they sometimes made at public gatherings; she was a vocal and long-time supporter of civil rights, yet she had ambivalent feelings about the growing feminist movement; and, while she was not reluctant to meet with the vice president of the Times to protest an editor's treatment of a friend or to criticize the demotion of a fellow employee, she did not join or speak publicly about a sex discrimination lawsuit filed against the newspaper in 1974 by many of her longtime co-workers.6 Curtis became one of the most powerful and visible women on the Times during the late 1960s and 1970s, but her lack of participation in this lawsuit came with a price: some who knew her believe it cost her the respect of many of the women at the newspaper. When first encountered, Curtis seemed a clone of the Junior League types she frequently covered; throughout her life, she wore simple, classic dresses and limited quantities of discreet gold jewelry. But physical appearance and manner were the extent of her resemblance to a demure young woman. …

A Mexican View of America in the 1860s: A Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction (review)

256CIVIL WAR HISTORY enter a written contract with him, all of which may dramatize the freedmen 's new assertiveness. Significantly, McKinley names a new stallion "Ku Klux" but comments no further. He refers disparagingly to Tunis Campbell, the local black leader, but when he learns of the death of Scott, the "camp servant" who nursed him when he was wounded during the Civil War, McKinley recalls that Scott was as "true as steel" and "one of the few negroes who was a friend of the whites" (36). An excellent introduction by Russell Duncan, an authority on Reconstruction Georgia, helps place McKinley's Journal in the context of the times. One disappointing aspect of the book is its lack of photographs of persons mentions in the narrative and their magnificent, pristine surroundings. Recommended for scholars and anyone interested in the natural beauty of coastal Georgia, McKinley's Journal is indeed a timely publication. Readers will be reminded that the logging operations now allowed on Sapelo by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources only can be harmful to the fragile ecology of this now-state-owned island that Archibald McKinley once worked and loved. Walter J. Fraser, Jr. Georgia Southern University A Mexican View ofAmerica in the 1860s: A Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction. Edited and translated by Thomas D. Schoonover. (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991. Pp. 271. $39.50.) This is the second volume of Matías Romero correspondence to be edited by Schoonover. The first volume, Mexican Lobby: Matías Romero in Washington, 1861-1867 (1986), included 133 memorandums written by the Mexican chargé and minister to the United States. The new volume provides 126 summary reviews of political and military events in the United States during 1860-67. Schoonover selected and translated both the memorandums and the reviews from ten previously published (187092 ) but relatively rare volumes of Romero correspondence. Schoonover's second volume differs strikingly from his first. The memorandums in the first volume detail Romero's own diplomatic activities. They refer to personal conversations with men like Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, Charles Sumner, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant and discuss diplomatic maneuvers in both the United States and Mexico. Over 60 percent of the memorandums fall into the postwar period, and Schoonover's editorial comments are limited to synopses of political events for each year. The reviews in the new volume, 80 percent of them written before or during the war, provide summaries of public events rather than a record BOOK REVIEWS257 of Romero's personal experiences and observations. Unfortunately, the material seldom provides information that could not be found in the daily newspapers, which is where Romero probably culled most of his information. The reviews lack the drama and insider's view that one finds in the memorandums. Schoonover tells us this is intentional, that the new volume seeks to underscore the links between domestic events and foreign policy by revealing those domestic American events that Romero considered important for furthering Mexican interests in the United States. In this light, the reviews will be useful to students of Mexican-American relations during this stormy period. Schoonover does a more thorough editorial job in the new volume, particularly in relating events in the United States to Romero's diplomatic mission and Mexico's interpretation of the situation abroad. He also supplies notes and a bibliographical essay on current historical literature concerning events and people mentioned by Romero. The first volume had neither. On the other hand, as in his first volume, Schoonover fails to make any but the most basic internal editorial changes in the Romero text, and he never ventures to correct errors made by Romero. For instance, Romero states that Leroy R Walker replaced Braxton Bragg as Confederate secretary of war. Sixteen pages later, he correctly identifies Judah R Benjamin as the new secretary (although who Benjamin replaced—Walker or Bragg—remains unclear), but then proceeds to make Braxton Bragg (rather than his brother Thomas) the new attorney general. Elsewhere, Romero has Gideon Pillow, Simon Buckner, and Albert S. Johnston being captured at Fort Donelson. When he corrects this error by having Pillow and Buckner retreat from Donelson six pages...

To Readers ofThe Justice System Journal

After three years at the helm, Tom Church has decided to step down as editor of The Justice System Journal. Tom has performed most ably as edi tor and we will surely miss his dedication, hard work, and leadership. The job of editor is very demanding of time and energy. Tom was able to direct the Journal most effectively while carrying out his teaching and other re sponsibilities at the State University of New York at Albany. His contribu tion to the success of the Journal has been very substantial and we look forward to his continued involvement as a member of the Journal's edito rial board. I am pleased to announce that Keith Boyum, a professor of political sci ence at California State University at Fullerton, has agreed to become the new editor of the Journal, commencing with the first issue of volume 14, due to be published early in 1990. The field of judicial administration has been a primary area of interest for Keith since his graduate student days in the early 1970s. Among his many publications in the judicial administration field are two articles in earlier volumes of the Journal. I am sure that Keith will prove to be a worthy successor to Tom Church. The Justice System Journal was created in 1974 to provide a forum for both practitioners and those studying the justice system to disseminate new ideas and knowledge about the administration of justice. Tom Church and the editors who served before him have all contributed a great deal to the achievement of this objective. Today, the Journal is a unique resource in the judicial administration field, and I fully expect that it will continue to grow in stature under the able direction of Keith Boyum.

The art of skillful acquisition

A lmost twenty years ago, I was a copy editor in my company's journal publishing program. I certainly could recognize the differences between good and bad scientific writing, and I knew how to structure a journal article~introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references~but I did not know how to structure a book. Nonetheless, I accepted a promotion to a book editorial job and on the first day marched into the editor-in-chief's office and said, "Here I am. What do I do now?" He said, "Develop books" I said, "Yes, but how? What exactly do I do?" He said, "Oh, my dear, I cannot set it all out for you. That would be spoon feeding. You would retain nothing. The only way for you to learn how to be an editor and how to develop books is to learn it on your own. That way it will stick with you and you will learn from your mistakes." I said, "How long will this take, my learning it on my own?" He said, "Five years. It always takes five years to become an editoE I thought to myself, this is a dumb way to do it. We probably stay in business in spite of ourselves. At any rate, off to my office I went, armed with a company catalog, and I did eventually learn how to develop books. I did also learn from my mistakes, but it was an inefficient process. It took too long, because I had to reinvent the wheel that every editor before me had already invented. It cost too much money, because while I was learning on my own how to develop good books, I developed some bad books. I have one gem to my credit that sold a grand total of 511 copies out of a run of 8,000. Actually, though, that old system of learning the editorial process by osmosis and trial and error was as much a product of its time as it was of that particular editor-in-chief. The late 1960s and early 1970s were more leisurely paced for publishers than are today's times. The information explosion had not yet occurred. There were far fewer publishers. There were far fewer books and journals being written or published. There were virtually no electronic publications vying for the book or journal dollar. Then, during the early 1970s, the world changed; and it changed scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing with it. The baby boomers had worked through the system, leaving el-hi and college publishers with vast investments in

The Editor's Job

The Editor's Job

The Labour Caucus Minutes

Early in 1951, when Ben Chifley was recovering from the heart attack he had suffered late in 1950, I tried to persuade him to write an autobiography, or at least some memoirs. I offered to do some digging and devilling for him if he would?indeed, for some years I had been jotting anecdotes to that end at Cabinet committee meetings and else where. In 1951 his only response was to take his pipe out of his mouth, grin and say: 'Ah, boy, when I go no one will care a damn about me!' And that was that. So I came back at him a few days later with a request that I might study the seven volumes of manuscript and type script Caucus minutes which were kept by the Secretary of the Federal Parliamentary Labour Party with some other Party records in a locked tin-trunk in the Whip's room in the Opposition Lobby of the House of Representatives. I explained (truthfully) that I was writing a sort of constitutional history of the Federal Labour Party?but did not mention that, since he would not venture on an autobiography, I had determined also to write his biography. 'Ah, that should be easy,' he replied. 'I'll just ring Tom Sheehan [the Caucus Secretary] in Sydney and get him to send up the key.' He rang then and there and demanded that the key be sent up that night. Listening, I gathered that Tom was a little doubtful about the propriety or wisdom of giving an outsider?and professor at that?the run of the tin-trunk. But the key arrived next day. Chif then suggested I take the seven volumes home with me. I refused to take such a responsibility with such a priceless treasure. So we agreed that I should read them all and take what notes I wanted in the Whip's room in the next four weeks before the House met. Now, the Whip had an inside room relying entirely on artificial lighting. After three solid weeks of reading and deciphering various handwritings which ran forwards, backwards and some far from well formed, I had taken extensive transcripts and notes but seemed nearly blind.1 I offer this short reminiscence to indicate how grateful we can all now be to the Parliamentary Labour Party, Editor Patrick Weiler and the Melbourne University Press for making it possible for scholars any where in the world or Labour Party enthusiasts anywhere in Australia to sit back in comfort in future and read with ease and pleasure a very competently and faithfully reproduced, annotated and printed text of the Caucus minutes covering the period at least to 1949. Let me say at once that the confidence in Patrick Weiler of those members of the Depart ment of Political Science in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University who chose him for this responsible editorial job has been fully vindicated. He has done a thorough and

Comment

NLW is to be congratulated on its promptly‐secured interview with Harold Hookway in a sparkling March number which compares very favourably indeed with the January LAR that I happened to be reading at the same time. Generous though it was of NLW in an earlier issue to lament Edward Dudley's passing (temporary no doubt) from the LA Council, surely here was a massive vote of no‐confidence in an editorial job universally admitted to be badly done. How can the head of a great and successful library school find time to edit his profession's official journal? I have previously suggested that the LA should try to establish some business relationship with the only current English library publication for all staff levels in all types of library that comes close to what the membership wants. Let the LA stick to those publications that it does very well and that enhance its reputation—Library history, and the Journal of librarianship, and pass the buck for a newsy popular magazine elsewhere.

Human Reproduction and Sexual Behavior.

This volume is a variegated potpourri of gynecology, endocrinology, embryology, reproductive physiology, sexology, superficial normal and abnormal psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. It succeeds in its purported objective, as stated in the author's preface, as "a compromise to try to cover more subjects adequately, and none exhaustively." Of merit is the timeliness of some of the material, the usual lag between the discovery of scientific material and its publication in textbook form being not quite so apparent here as it is in most books dealing with this rapidly changing subject. It suffers from the overall lack of cohesiveness and intercorrelation that is almost expected in a work by multiple authors. The editor's job was made exceedingly difficult by his attempting to make the text all things to all men. Although the ostensible approach is basically clinically oriented toward gynecological endocrinology, it runs off tangentially into the biochemistry of steroid

WELCOME

Page iii of this number lists eleven new members of the Editorial Board of Pediatrics: Alfred M. Bongiovanni, David H. Clement, Bruce D. Graham, Malcolm A. Holliday, Reginald S. Lourie, Alexander S. Nadas, Frederick Robbins, Frederic N. Silverman, William A. Silverman, Orvar Swenson, and F. Howell Wright. The absence of four familiar names will also be noted. Harry H. Gordon, Horace L. Hodes, Nelson K. Ordway, and William McL. Wallace have served the readers of this journal six years, and have thus become ineligible for continued Editorial Board membership. To write that the task of the Editors has been eased by the work of Drs. Gordon, Hodes, Ordway, and Wallace would be a profound understatement. At least during the past year, the Editor's job would have been impossible without their contributions. The tempting comparison between numbers is, of course, no measure of the tasks accepted by the incoming eleven or the effectiveness of the departing four. It does reflect a steady increase in the number of manuscripts received (each of them read and evaluated by at least one Board member), and the growing complexity of investigations related to child development and health. This requires, on the one hand, a number of editorial specialists, each capable of judgment in depth concerning some particular area. On the other hand, balance provided by the broad views of experienced generalists is equally essential. It is hoped also that the enlarged Board will increase this journal's awareness of the needs of pediatricians everywhere and of the Academy of Pediatrics in particular.

Congenital Heart Disease, Report of the Fourteenth M & R Pediatric Research Conference

This brochure, which is already in the possession of most of the readers of this review, should not be ignored. To the pediatrician it is one of the most clinically useful of this Conference Report series. To those with special interest in pediatric cardiology it supplies information unobtainable elsewhere. The delay of over a year between conference and publication which was necessitated by a painstaking editorial job has resulted in some loss of glamor. For example, human cross circulation in intracardiac surgery, new and sensational at the time of the conference, is already discarded by its proponents, in favor of the pump-oxygenator.

Charles Stearns Wheeler: Emerson's "Good Grecian"

friends of Emerson is Charles Steamrns Wheeler. Very little has been written about him although from 1836 to 1842 he worked closely with Emerson on numerous editorial jobs, was foreign correspondent to the Dial, caused Alfred Tennyson to break his nine-year silence in 1842, and probably gave Thoreau the inspiration for going to Walden. Wheeler was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, three and a half miles from Concord, in 1816. With Thoreau he attended Phineas Alien's Concord Academy and entered Harvard, with Thoreau as his roommate, in 1833. At Harvard he made an excellent scholastic record, graduating with second honors in 1837. Among his student friends were Samuel Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Jones Very, John Weiss, and Thoreau. Conscientious, indefatigable, and badly in need of money, Wheeler performed numerous jobs outside his curricular duties. During his last two years at Harvard he earned six hundred dollars by teaching, copying, editing, and index-making. He helped Jared Sparks with several volumes of the Library of American Biography, and his editorial work led to his close association with Emerson.1 When in 1838 Jones Very suffered a nervous collapse and had to be taken to an asylum, Wheeler took his place as Tutor in Greek.2 At first he had much difficulty in managing the students. They broke out the windows to his room and were disorderly in numerous ways. Wheeler's friends thought that his trouble was caused by his having to take over the Greek class so

THE SECOND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

THE SECOND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS1 BY THEODORE C. BLEGEN It is pleasant to see ideas turn into manuscripts, manuscripts into printers' proofs, and proofs into published books, with title pages and binding and nicely stamped "backbones." The job is finished, ready for its circle of readers (if any) and the not always tender mercies of the reviewer, who, one devoutly hopes, will get beyond the blurb, preface, and table of contents. The editor rejoices when his book comes out - and the travail of giving birth to it is soon forgotten: the hours of work, the hunt for misprints which lurk in places that the eye glides over, the long correspondence, the task of revision, the sparring with strong-willed authors, the dickering with printers, the closing of contracts, the designing of title pages and jackets, the measurement of pages, the matching of footnote numbers, the conferences with typographers, the writing of blurbs. These and other little editorial episodes fade from one's mind - until one opens the newly published book and promptly discovers a misprint that is forever beyond the power of correction. But even a leering misprint - the unhappy aftereffect of a disease known as "proofreader's myopia" - cannot dispel a certain glow of satisfaction. It is pleasant to hold the book in one's hands - pleasanter still to have a row of more than thirty books, as in the NorwegianAmerican Historical Association - books that one trusts will stand up in quality of content as impressively as they stand up on the bookshelf. The end result of the editor's job is, of course, book production . His business is to get books written, edited, and 1 This address, now slightly revised for publication, was delivered at the silver anniversary meeting of the Norwegian- American Historical Association in Northfield , Minnesota, October 6, 1950. 149 150 THEODORE C. BLEGEN published, and he knows that these things do not happen by pushing a button or invoking some magic charm. They are planned for and worked for. The task of an editor is one of imagination and sweat, ideas and drudgery, dreams and work, running errands, inspiration, "running heads," chapter titles, and indexes. It is remarkable, in a review of the work of this Association for twenty-five years, to realize how much of our publication was planned in advance. Relatively little has fallen like ripe fruit into our hands, finished except for printing and binding, though we have had some good luck. Most of our production has come from stimulation and encouragement, suggestions of things worth doing, earnest urging, conferences , letters, sometimes the promise of specific assistance of one kind or another. Many things have been started that were never finished. Some things have been finished that could not be published. Many things we dreamed of have not been done because we lacked energy or time or means or success in our hunt for others to do them or to join us in doing them. We have had profit and loss. But we have never failed to profit by looking critically at work yet to be done, by studying, not our achievements, but our failures and blind spots, by scolding ourselves about what we have not succeeded in doing. If I could draw any lesson from such measure of success as we may have had in this quarter century, it is that we have accompanied review with challenge, appraisal of things done with study of things to be done. I have amused myself recently by looking over an appalling number of reports, annual and triennial , that I wrote in the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's to the Association and its Executive Board. I claim no great insight or wisdom for these reports, but I can truthfully say that I have never given a report to this Association that has not presented a program for the future, that has not in some sense challenged the Association. One of these, published in THE SECOND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 151 1942, was called Planning for the Future . Four years earlier Dr. Bjork and I prepared an extensive document entitled A Review and a Challenge. Often we have presented programs of publication that ran far...