Hi folks,
You may have noticed that there are now ads on the website. That’s on me . . . this is not a free account, and I have my annual site renewal coming up, so every little bit helps. Anything above what it costs to run the site will naturally go towards my research and historical work, which as one might imagine is also expensive. I greatly appreciate your patience with this transition, and please do let me know if the ads become a hindrance to your ability to enjoy or read the posts here.
Also, as I wrote last week the final year of letters is going to take more time to produce, if for no other reason than there are twice as many letters for this period! Which is exciting, obviously, but it also means I’m going to need some time to review and write about them.
So what will I do in the interim?
First of all, I’m bringing back the book reviews! Since I have a stack of books about World War II, I might as well get started and update you on how that’s going. Since Friday is a good day for those, I will try to keep posting those each Friday, starting with this one.
In addition to that, one of my buddies from grad school recently posted a series of posts on Facebook about his ten most influential albums. I thought that was a pretty cool concept, but Facebook being what it is, I didn’t want to place my content there . . . so why not blog about them? I spent some time thinking about it, and I’m going to share them with you over the next few weeks here, along with some stories, some historical context, and a little bit of musical criticism.
Of course, those of you who know me are probably aware that I never really put away my flannel shirts and Smashing Pumpkins CDs, so I narrowed my choices down to a wide variety of albums that reflect a broader range of interests and (as the list would imply) influences. Not necessarily my Desert Island albums, but those albums that challenged me, that opened me up to new worlds and pushed me in new directions. There’s some Johnny Cash, some Curtis Mayfield, some Sleater-Kinney, some . . . well, you’ll just have to stay tuned! And as I go through the list, I would love to hear your thoughts as well. Do you like these albums? Hate them? What should be on this list that isn’t? Please let me know in the comments!
Finally, a bit of good news: on Saturday I received the proofs for my upcoming book, Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing in Western Nebraska, 1850 – 1890. The book itself is gorgeous – the type, the font, even the title page . . . it all looks fantastic. The University of Nebraska Press does a fantastic job with all of their books, but I really love how they produced mine.
My job now is to review the proofs for typographical and layout errors over the next couple of weeks, and then send it back to be printed.
In other words: it’s almost done.
-Matt
