In 1996, Alan Taylor's "William Cooper's Town" won the Pulitzer Prize for history. Now, the history professor at the University of California, Davis, is looking at a possible George Washington Book Prize from Washington College in Maryland – which brings $50,000.
He is among three finalists for the prize, for his "The Civil War of 1812" (Knopf, $35, 640 pages), a project that took him 15 years to complete.
The judges called the book "the most original history of the conflict ever written."
The prize winner will be announced May 25.
I caught up with Taylor by phone:
The War of 1812 is usually seen as a struggle for America's further independence from Great Britain. What is your take?
The people who lived in Canada had been born, overwhelmingly, in what became the United States. The War of 1812 was not simply one between the British and the Americans, but a civil war between Americans who lived on either side of the U.S.- Canada border.
The war ended up alienating the Canadian Americans from their cousins to the south. So the distinction between these two countries really emerged from this war.
Some native people fought with the Americans, others fought for the British. Why the split?
The British treated the Indians better than the (Americans) did. So Indians living within the U.S. hoped that the British would be their allies and help them hold back American settlers, who were invading Indian country to take Indian land.
On the subject of U.S. history, are we losing touch with it?
Yes, for a number of reasons. One is the mania for testing in grades K through 12. It's well-meant, but it's undermining true teaching because teachers are required to teach to the test. As a consequence, history comes across to students as the deadly dull memorization of facts.
If you win the prize, what about the $50,000?
I'll probably give some of it to support graduate education here at UC Davis.
Watch for Boom
More from UC Davis: The debut issue of the quarterly magazine Boom: Journal of California just came off the presses. Its aim is to "create a dialogue about the vital social, cultural and political issues of our time."
Boom is published by the University of California Press and co-edited by UC Davis professors Carolyn de la Peña and Louis Warren. It's available in bookstores and newsstands for $7.99.
A sampling of the March issue: "the impact of the foreclosure crisis on rental tenants," an interview with Bonny Doon Vineyard's maverick "president for life" Randall Grahm, and the case for "fixing (our) broken state."
To subscribe to Boom and to read some free content: www.boomcalifornia.com.
A free reception to celebrate Boom's launch will be at 6 p.m. Thursday, after the free symposium "Beyond Borders: Migration and the Next California."
Both events will be at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts on the UC Davis campus.
The symposium starts at 4:10 p.m., the Boom reception at 6 p.m. To guarantee a seat, register at www.dhi.ucdavis.edu/ beyondborders.
King, time travel, JFK
Any Stephen King news is big news, and this comes from his publisher, Scribner: At a projected 1,000 pages, the horrormeister's next novel, tentatively titled "11/22/63," is the story of a high school teacher who time-travels to the past in hopes of preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The book is expected in bookstores Nov. 8 (go to King's website, www.stephenking.com).
More from the prospectus: "Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Maine … (who finds) a portal to 1958. … So begins his new life and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful (woman) … who becomes the love of his life – a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time."
Hop on the genres
Jumping around the Internet, we came across www.genrefluent.com. The home page promises "reviews of the best recent novels in various fiction genres," but we found the site a bit top-heavy with young-adult titles.
Things got more interesting in "The Reader's Advisor," a weekly amalgamation of news, features and reviews from blogs, TV, newspapers and magazines.
A click on "Genre Links" showed a lengthy list of links to sci-fi/fantasy, crime/mystery, romance, historical, Westerns, adventure and more. The site is maintained by Diana Tixier Herald, who wrote "Genreflecting" (Libraries Unlimited, $45, 584 pages).
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