Harvardinates

Whew! Just finished! The process of writing the book, Harvardinates: The life and times of John Leverett, first secular President of Harvard, has been long and arduous. I just finished with the writing an hour ago, and slung it off to my two proofreaders, my brother and my wife. I still have to do the index for the paperback version. And I have to decide whether to put in more pictures.

I learned a lot in the process, and actually set it aside several times in the process of writing it. I am still not entirely confident in the accuracy of everything i've written. This would be a good argument for finishing the index before publishing.

The problem is (argument for publishing), I'm dying to publish, having finished and having birthed it. It's almost unbearable to wait. I don't want to pressure the proofreaders; on the contrary, I want them to be careful with it. But I would love to see it out there.

I wrote to Leverett House, Harvard, hoping to be able to peddle the book there, in one form or another. Maybe they can set up a zoom, or put me in their Leverett House newsletter. They are kind of a singular fan club of John Leverett, President of Harvard. They consider him to be their one little corner of Harvardiana and the guard it jealously. So I think I'll have a little business there if I can get people to actually try it.

Let me tell you about what I learned. First was about Bezaliel (see below post), which haunts me. The guy had a younger brother, by two years, who died at some point, or perhaps just disappeared in the war, or sailed off or something. Who knows? Bezaliel is a mystery and unlike John, his brother, his fate has gone pretty much unrecorded.

The second is about Cotton Mather. We are generally agreed that Cotton Mather was the enemy of the age, come unhinged, put nineteen people to death including one minister/Harvard graduate. He was all in favor of these hangings and he paid a price for it. But he also brought inoculation to America, and he paid for that too. He decided that enough was enough for the smallpox, and he was going to do what he could to eradicate it.

Out of that, I had to give him some respect. He actually sacrificed his own need to be powerful, in order to do what was right for his flock. And he stood up to them even when they threw a bomb into his house. The bomb apparently didn't explode, but hey. That's a story. It's one of many, but it's something I learned.

The book should be out within the week. If I get ancy, I might do it tonight. I should probably work on the index, though. That's a somewhat tedious job, but at least it involves going over the words one at a time. The spellcheck will have trouble with half this book, and won't be crazy about 17th century spellings. But I can do that too and that will at least show me all the mis-types which I always find embarassing, after I've published.