Read Beat (...and repeat)

Matthew Algeo got the idea for writing The President is a Sick Man after visiting Philadelphia's Mutter Museum where the tumor removed from the mouth of Grover Cleveland in 1893 is among the exhibits.
Fascinated by such an oddity, Algeo found out that Cleveland was going into his second term as president when the operation took place--in secret.
Cleveland was incapacitated for six weeks until a rubber implant allowed him to speak again. But the American people never knew that at the time.
Algeo said that the president was able to keep the procedure secret due to the summer schedule followed in that era. "Congress took two months off in the summer so the president went to his summer home in Cape Cod where the operation took place," he said.
Cleveland's routine was to go fishing every day.  While he recovered and unable to speak, he waved off reporters who asked questions. One Philadelphia reporter filed a story in August 1893 about the president being a very sick man but the White House discredited the report. Formal details about the president's oral surgery weren't revealed until years later, noted Algeo.
Public awareness about a president's condition has been limited at other times, noted Algeo, citing the 1944 Democratic Convention when Henry Wallace was dumped from the ticket in favor of Harry Truman.
An ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth term as president. While the public was generally unaware of his condition, Democratic insiders knew that Roosevelt's vice president would likely advance to the presidency. FDR died just three months after taking office in 1945.
Among Algeo's other works is Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, an account of the road trip Truman took with his wife after leaving the presidency in 1953.
"In those days, the president didn't get a pension. There was no Secret Service, no traveling entourage," said Algeo.
"Truman was the last U.S. president who didn't go to college but he knew how to campaign," the author said. In 1948, Truman was the standing president but trailed Thomas Dewey in all the polls.
"He made no bones about it when he was on the campaign trail. You need to read his speeches that year. He told labor groups: Don't blame me. Get out there and  vote."

Radio drama was declared dead in September 1962 after CBS axed its last two network shows, Suspense, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

Hold on, said Eleanor Patterson, media studies professor at Auburn University. Scripted radio programs may have stopped from being the dominant form of entertainment which they were through most of the 30s, 40s and 50s but radio drama has always been around, she said.

Shows like ABC’s Theater5 (1964), CBS Radio Mystery Theater (1974-82), and Sears Radio Theater (1979) were just some examples, she said. You also had The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a BBC effort that aired over many U.S. public radio outlets in 1981 and NPR’s Earplay (https://current.org/2018/06/wisconsin-public-radios-earplay-before-the-podcast-era-a-story-focused-series-with-experimental-edge/).

Now old radio shows proliferate online while other audio entertainment options—audiobooks and podcasts—abound. Depending on how you define radio, the golden age may still be with us.

Audiobooks now often include music and sound effects, emulating dramatic radio shows of the past, said Patterson. Meanwhile, podcasts not only offer original material but also critique shows of the past, she said. “Podcasting represents where creative radio is right now,” said Patterson.

In the TV writing class she teaches at Auburn, Patterson said she spends the first six weeks covering radio. Students create their own scripts using old radio shows like Pat Novak for Hire and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet as examples, she said.

“It’s important that we know our history. I tell students that radio is where the different genres we know today came from,” said Patterson.

Along with Novak, Patterson said some of her personal favorites are Richard Diamond and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. “I love radio noir. It’s so visual,” she said.

Radio programs like the Lone Ranger and the Jack Benny Show remain entertaining, said Patterson. “Jack Benny was the first show using the concept of a show within a show,” she said.

In the segmented world of the present, it’s important to remember that a show like NPR’s Prairie Home Companion racked up 4 to 5 million listeners every Saturday night during the 1980s and 90s, said Patterson, noting that the performance of the show’s host, Garrison Keillor, was “an ode to classic radio.”

“Network television would kill for those numbers today,” she said.

Patterson said radio is still telling stories. “This American Life (on NPR) makes use of ambient noise to create a story and sense of place,” she said.

Patterson, whose last book was Bootlegging the Airwaves, is presently at work on broadcast television which she sees surviving despite the rise of streaming. “I like to look at dead things,” she laughed.

In the world of film noir, the leading lights are usually listed as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Cornell Woolrich.

Hammett proved to be an inspiration for Mark Dawidziak, a writer whose published works include biographies of Mark Twain (the white-suited author who Dawidziak has impersonated for more than 30 years), Edgar Allan Poe (see previous podcast on The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe) and Teddy Roosevelt along with books on Twilight Zone, Columbo and Kolchak the Night Stalker.

Dawidziak said he was moved to write his own book on Hammett after several biographies appeared on the author (along with a PBS documentary) in the late 70s and early 80s.

Hammett in Hollywood would have explored Hammett’s working life in Hollywood—as a detective in the Fatty Arbuckle case, a union organizer and screenwriter, said Dawidziak. Hammett’s involvement in the movie capital also extended to the stories he wrote that became movies (including two excellent versions of The Glass Key but, most notably, The Maltese Falcon).

Finally, Dawidziak said, came the depiction of the mustachioed Hammett, himself, in a number of movies such as Julia (1977) and Hammett (1982). 

But Hammett in Hollywood never got published, said Dawidziak, because Mysterious Press, which had accepted the piece, made the decision to publish only works of fiction.

A chapter from the book—on the radio show, The Adventures of Sam Spade that ran from 1946 to 1951 with Howard Duff as Spade for four of those years—turns up in The Big Book of Noir, a collection of noirish essays edited by Ed Gorman, Lee Server and Martin Greenberg.

Dawidziak interviewed Duff shortly before the actor’s death in 1990 to learn more about a radio series he characterized as unlike any other detective program of the period.

If you were looking for Humphrey Bogart’s depiction of Spade, you didn’t find it with Duff, said Dawidziak. “Duff had his own distinctive voice,” he said.

Good writing tainted with a sly—sometimes outrageous—sense of humor made the show stand out, Dawidziak said. The distinctive villains on Sam Spade came right out of Dick Tracy, he noted. A strong stock company of radio players included Lurene Tuttle as Effie, Spade’s secretary, whose scenes with Sam are among radio’s best.

Dashiell Hammett was among those ensnared in the Red Scare of the early 50s, a time when any association with Communism was considered criminal.

His association with Hammett—simply playing the author’s best-known character—was enough to get Duff blacklisted. Cited in Red Channels, the maligning missive of the day, Duff was relieved of his duties as the wisecracking detective by Steven Dunne in the show’s final year. 

Hammett has rebounded nicely from the government’s character assassination attempts of the 50s, said Dawidziak. His five novels along with short stories and screenplays have made him almost as important as Twain when it comes to cultural impact, he said.

Sam Spade, the Thin Man, the Fat Man, and the Continental Op are all Hammett characters that have flourished in the ever growing world of film noir.

Bicycle racing was a legitimate spectator sport in the 1890s. Big crowds gathered in cities across America and Europe to watch men and women compete in a sport that exploded over the last decade of the 19th century.

Perhaps the biggest star of that period was Major Taylor, an African American cyclist who first achieved success as a teenager in 1894, noted Robert Turpin, a history professor at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina and the author of Black Cyclists: The Race for Inclusion.

A bicyclist who previously competed as an amateur in races across the United States, Turpin said he was first moved to learn more about black cyclists after learning about Taylor’s success. “He was world champion in 1899 and continued to compete on the bike racing circuit until retiring in 1910,” said Turpin.

After retiring, Taylor became known as the wealthiest man in Worcester, Mass., a town 40 miles west of Boston, said Turpin. “He purchased the first car in town and owned property there,” he said.

But other black cyclists weren’t as fortunate. While Taylor competed as a professional, able to secure large purses, other African Americans were forced to compete as amateurs, not eligible for the cash prizes offered, said Turpin.

Participation was specifically limited to white participants in the 1890s by the sanctioning body, the League of American Wheelmen (and later the NCAA), he said. Taylor and a number of other black racers who were already members were allowed to remain but others of color were excluded from competing.

Taylor also complained of sometimes being “pocketed” during races. Racers would conspire to work together to box the black cyclist out, restricting his ability to sprint to the finish. Those involved would then divide the prize money amongst themselves, said Turpin.

While racers of color would compete in Europe where they would be less likely to face racial restrictions, sometimes U.S. racism would follow. Turpin said sometimes racers would be denied access to a European hotel because of complaints from American guests.

Despite the impediments placed before them, black cyclists continue to break through, said Turpin, noting that Nelson Vails won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympic games held in Los Angeles while Biniam Girmay from Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in Africa, recently won a stage of this year’s Tour de France, becoming the first black African to take a first in the month-long competition.

He belongs in the upper echelons of special-ops thriller authors. That’s one of the comments on the back of the book jacket of Mark Greaney’s new book, Sentinel (Berkley).

You haven’t experienced a special-ops thriller? It’s a whirlwind tour of international intrigue, high-powered weapons, death, deception, and destruction as grizzled soldiers of fortune collide on unmarked battlefields.

Greaney is an old hand, having knocked off a dozen Gray Man books with a new one to be released next February.

Sentinel is part of another Greaney series, this one labeled Armoured. Here we follow the exploits of Josh Duffy and his wife Nikki, who tackle State Department duties in Ghana.

As we learn from the book’s opening pages, we’re plunged into China’s “debt-trap diplomacy” in Africa. “Loan a poor nation enough money to get itself into trouble, then control it with the compromise of debt,” Greaney writes.

One of the many bad guys in Sentinel is the Chinese agent Kang Shikun who’s plotting unrest in Ghana, considered one of the more stable governments in West Africa (while coups abound on its borders).

Kang Shikun is one of the many great names that Greaney comes up with for his characters. Others you’ll find in Sentinel include Lev Belov, Kwame Boatang, and Hajj Zahedi. I asked him how he came up with them.

“It is complete construction work to come with all those names. This is my 20th published novel with 30 to 40 characters in each book. I do all these different things to find out names. A lot of times I look at the volleyball teams of different countries. Nobody knows famous volleyball guys. I’ve pretty much exhausted all of that by now. Every Russian volleyball player has been used in the book,” said Greaney.

One of the heroes in Sentinel is Isaac Opoku, a policeman in Ghana. Greaney said that name was inspired by a taxi cab driver he encountered while touring Ghana last year.

Greaney makes it a point to research his literary locales in person, noting that, while in Ghana, he visited the U.S. embassy where he talked with several dignitaries, and traveled to the Akosombo Dam, a vital power generator in the country where much of the book’s action takes place. 

Keeping up with the news is another Greaney characteristic. In Sentinel, there are references to Russia’s Wagner Group, the mercenary unit that opposed Russian leader Vladimir Putin last year. Greaney said he was first captivated by the blend of fiction with fact that bestselling author Tom Clancy developed. Greaney coauthored three books with Clancy before the author died in 2013.

Greaney first came by a respect for daily events from his father, Ed Greaney, who served as managing editor of a major Memphis TV station, serving at the same station for 50 years, working until he was almost 80.

You can’t have a special-ops thriller without spilling a little blood but if the body count in Sentinel seems to spiral out of control, Greaney said it’s an unfortunate reflection of real-world violence that’s become all too familiar. “You’ve got 1,100 Russians dying every day in Ukraine,” he said.

Now 53, Greaney, who’s been churning out 450-page thrillers with the dedication of a Russian career soldier, vows not to spiral out of control, himself, suggesting he has plans to reduce his work schedule down to one book a year…soon.

Kathleen DuVal’s Native Nations leaves you shaking your head.

A history professor at the University of North Carolina, DuVal provides a view of this country’s colonial history we never got in school.

This history comes from those already present when the French, British, and Spanish landed on North American shores. Her detailed account (the footnotes alone are an informational storehouse) raises the curtain on the American stage, letting us see—perhaps for the first time—the power and diversity of the American Indian.

Native Americans held the upper hand in most engagements with European colonists between 1600 and 1800, noted DuVal. Not only did they have numbers on their side in those years but Native Americans possessed knowledge of the land and its resources that outsiders hungered for. 

Few of those colonists arrived in time to view urban America in its first form, developments exemplified by sites like Cahokia, near St. Louis, which reached a peak around 1100, she said.

Instead, native states developed across North America with their own customs and language, noted DuVal.

“As Spanish, Dutch, French, and British colonists struggled to put down roots, local tribes mostly avoided them, preoccupied with their own blood feuds and fitful alliances. But they were also budding entrepreneurs. They sought advantage among outposts such as Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Quebec, enriching themselves through barter and luring Europeans into their conflicts,” noted Hamilton Cain in his review of Native Nations.

We’ve all heard about Manhattan being sold for $24 worth of beads but think again if you assume Native Americans were gullible traders, said DuVal, pointing out that the lucrative fur trade that so excited Europeans allowed Native Americans to acquire items in return such as guns, metal cooking utensils, and linen.

The Mohawks “came to Fort Orange (now Albany, N.Y.) for the guns but they stayed for the cake,” wrote DuVal. After sampling cakes and cookies that Dutch bakers produced, Mohawks drove the prices of baked goods beyond the range of many Dutch colonists in the area, she said.

The story of the American Revolution is related through Indian eyes this time, a view that exposes the many moving parts of a conflict that DuVal plans to explore in her next book.

After the revolution, Native Americans convened in 1784 in St. Louis, on the site of one of Cahokia’s vacated satellite cities. The subject in question centered on the threat posed by this new country, whose people were more ambitious and more numerous than the British they deposed. The threat of U.S. expansion to Native American communities was perceived as “a plague of locusts.”

As the United States grew, native people were driven further west. The resulting collision between a determined U.S. government and Native Americans is one history most of us are already familiar with. 

Some Native Americans called for a united front to resist the threat. One of those was Tecumseh, the Shawnee leader who, with his brother Tenskwatawa, traveled widely to unite tribes in opposition to the government.

DuVal notes that Tecumseh, lauded as a brilliant speaker, visited Potawatomi towns and the towns of the Peorias on the Illinois River in 1805. He likely was one of the first of many great orators to speak in Peoria.

Despite government policy often seeming hellbent on extermination, Native Americans have survived, wrote DuVal, who cites an American Indian renaissance in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

“Even as Native communities continue to struggle with poverty, healthcare crises, and the weight of historical loss, they are reinvigorating language and traditions and exercising new political and cultural power,” she noted.

DuVal credited recent wide-ranging research that made her book possible. “Twenty years ago, I couldn’t have written this book,” she said.

While growing up in Los Angeles and while attending school in Madison, Wisc., Eleanor Patterson was fascinated by old radio: shows like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, and the Jack Benny Show.
Curious about the source of programming that long since left the air, she asked the host of the Madison public radio program how he came by the old radio programs he shared on the air. People just gave them to him, he said.
That led to the book, Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution, where Patterson explores how radio and TV shows have been copied, collected, and shared over the years--outside of network constraints.
What Patterson discovered was that after shows--both radio and TV-- went off the air they were often not only saved and shared by an active body of enthusiasts who allowed people to be entertained all over again.
Radio collectors developed fanzines in the 60s, 70s, and 80s to help circulate programs and information, said Patterson, who talked to individuals who published these newsletters that offered or sought recordings.
While the digital era now provides a wide variety of radio programs from the past, shows aren't aired as they were originally presented, she said. Internet channels often group radio shows by genre--mysteries or science fiction, for example. When radio networks were pumping out home entertainment before television took over, you had a variety of programs presented across the course of a day and night, said Patterson.
Sometimes circulating programs of the past enlisted controversy, she noted. Amos & Andy, for example, was an extremely popular radio show in its day but has been cited as promoting racial stereotypes.
Just as radio has survived television, Patterson said that old forms of media delivery have their place even in a digital world. "I see us going back to DVDs and CDs in some ways because you can control the media," she said.
Patterson said her next project will be a review of network television in the early 2000s.

Dealing with someone who faces a life-or-death situation just once is enough for most of us. But what of someone involved in transplant surgery who goes through it time after time?
How do you deal with having so much power and responsibility?  Those are some of the factors that led Dr. David Weill to write his first novel, All That Really Matters.
The former director of the Advanced Lung Disease and Lung and Heart Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical School, Weill, a former transplant surgeon, had plenty of experience to draw on.
"The characters in the book are derived from people I've come in contact with over the years," said Weill.
The subject, transplant surgery, touches on one of the most dramatic outcomes modern medicine can produce. "It's the biggest reset button you could possibly have," he said.
With 100,000 people waiting for transplants in this world, just getting on a waiting list is difficult, said Weill. "You don't know when the time (for surgery) is going to come. You have to be ready all the time. If it does come, (for family and immediate friends) you don't know if this will be the last time you'll see the very person you care the most about," he added.
Fiction presents an opportunity to make a point about the present health system that needs to be made, said Weill. "As much non-fiction has been written about our broken health system, I haven't seen a lot of progress. If anything, it's been going in the opposite direction. That makes me sad because I love this field," he said.
As head of the Weill Consulting Group, work that takes him all over the globe, Weill is already hard at work on another book.

So how does this little insect navigate between distant flower patches and the nest? That’s just one of the questions that bee researcher Lars Chittka seeks to answer.

Chittka’s book, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press) not only covers bee navigation but explores research by himself and others that demonstrate that bees have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers, solve problems, and learn through observation. In short, bees are smart.

The “simple” act of navigation alone is not a trivial challenge, said Chittka, outlining the hurdles faced as bees solve “the traveling salesman problem.” That’s referring to visiting multiple locations that may be well apart from one another in the most efficient manner possible. The bee’s complex array of senses including being able to see ultraviolet light (something humans can’t do), are part of what sets it apart, said the author.

Research also indicates that bees may be able to use the Earth’s magnetic field to aid them in navigation or the location of a nest.

There’s nothing new about this interest in bees. The ancient Egyptians studied bees while evidence of Mayan honey production in Mesoamerica is over 1,000 years old.

Chittka details his own work as well as that done by other researchers, indicating that individuals are often stories in themselves.

Martin Lindauer was injured while serving in the German army during World War II. As a result, he was sent home from the Russian front, a fact that probably saved his life since his entire company was virtually wiped out, stated Chittka. After attending a lecture by Karl von Frisch, the German scientist and Nobel Prize winner (for his work on bee communication through dance behavior), Lindauer caught the bee bug and went into research himself, carrying on even as Allied bombs fell.

After the war, Lindauer conducted his own breakthrough experiments while starting a succession of bee researchers. Among those studying under him was Randolf Menzel, a scientist who became established in his own right. Among the graduate students that Menzel attracted was Lars Chittka, now having researched the subject for more than 40 years.

Another bee researcher highlighted in The Mind of a Bee is Charles Turner, an African American born two years after the Civil War. By the age of 25, Turner had published articles in some of the most prestigious scientific journals of his day, said Chittka, noting that because of his ethnicity, Turner was never able to land a position at a college or university. Instead, Turner conducted his experiments as a science teacher at Sumner High School in St. Louis.

“His research was remarkable in identifying individual differences among insects,” said Chittka. “Contrary to the beliefs of the day, Turner believed that animals could think. He was a century ahead of his time with his research.”

The honeybees, the roving pollen gatherers, live only a few weeks while a queen bee may live up to seven years, Chittka said. He added that the managed honeybees, those maintained by beekeepers and used in agriculture are not endangered. Wild bees, however, face many obstacles. Like many other animals, bees are endangered through pesticide use and modern farming practices, said Chittka. Monoculture farming, the practice of growing the same crop in the same field year after year, reduces opportunities for bees who seek plant variety, he said.

But people can help the situation by planting a bee-friendly garden or flower box, said Chittka. Goldenrod, Bee Balm, Black Eyed Susan, Foxglove, Hosta, Coneflower, Zinnia, Marigold, and Sunflower are just some of the flowers that draw bees.

While bee research is hundreds of years old, Chittka feels that bee research is like a magic well. “After coming up with a conclusion, some new riddle always emerges,” he said, adding that the question of whether bees are conscious beings is likely to consume fu

Having been raised on TV westerns (my favorites were Cheyenne, Maverick, and the Rifleman), I never looked at rustlers as anything more than bad guys out to steal cattle.

It took Victoria Lamont, an English professor at Waterloo College in Ontario, Canada, to open my eyes.

Her book, Westerns: A Women’s History, spotlights accomplishments made by women who wrote about the Old West in an era when the Western frontier was recognized as officially closed (1880 to 1900). Yes, women wrote about cowboys, ranchers, romance, and rustlers.

In doing so, Lamont must deal with the mythology that surrounds the Old West. We know a lot about that mythology since it’s been transferred to screens both large and small for 100 years. We know who wears the white hat and who doesn’t.

“Mythology likes to be simple but these stories are complicated,” said Lamont.

Comparing two books published in April 1902, Lamont notes that both covered the same subject, action based on a real-life rustling dispute in Johnson County, Wyo. in the late 19th century--with completely different results. Owen Wister’s The Virginian became a bestseller that’s generated six films and a long-running TV series. The Rustler by Frances McElrath, a woman whose lone novel was largely unknown until reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 2002.

Wistler’s version supports cattle owners who resort to vigilante violence to deal with two men who were opposed to the cattle companies and identified as rustlers.

McElrath tells a different story, a story of a class struggle in the Old West, said Lamont, pointing to a collision between rich and poor. The rich were the big cattle operations financed by wealthy individuals in the Eastern U.S. or Europe. Cowboys who wanted to get a piece of the action, themselves, by getting into the cattle business were discouraged by the large cattle companies from owning cattle.

Unbranded cattle—mavericks—became a big issue. Cowboys who didn’t turn over these cattle to the large cattle companies would be accused of rustling, she said. If courts didn’t find those accused of rustling guilty, cattle owners felt justified in resorting to vigilante action, said Lamont.

“In my opinion, Frances McElrath’s version of history is more accurate,” she said.

Lamont’s next book focuses on another woman whose writing accomplishments have been overlooked, Bertha Bower, whose publisher decreed in 1920 that her books on the Old West were second in sales only to Zane Grey.