I’ve been intrigued to watch so many news anchormen and women reporting from home because of the virus. When ever I see a bookcase in the background I try to read as many titles as I can to see what books we have in common. So for tonight I will show you the little book case I put in my office that has the books queued up that I am most likely to read or resume reading.
At the moment I’m on a kick to finish reading some of the books that have waited several years for me to return to them. Spread out on the floor are four of them. I’ve just read the final section of the book called “the Bosses” by Alfred Steinberg. As of the book’s 1972 publishing date it was the 20th American History book that Mr. Steinberg had written. I was only really interested in reading about the boss of Kansas City, Missouri through the 1920’s and 30’s, That was Boss Pendergast. The last section being about Tom Pendergast. My Dad grew up in next door Independence, Missouri, where then Senator Harry Truman lived about a mile away from my Dad. Apparently there was a possible kidnapping attempt of Harry’s daughter Margaret in 1930 when my Dad was in school or lived across the street from it.
After reading it I began writing an intro to a section of my book about my Dad’s influence on me and his experiences in Republican politics in the 1930’s. He was an avid Reform Republican who wanted to get rid of corrupt politicians. The Steinberg book does a good job spelling out how corrupt Boss Pendergast was by beginning with the election of 1934 where gangsters tied to Pendergast killed four election workers at some of the polls where voters went to cast ballots. No wonder my Dad was serious about keeping things honest.
If you read the previous post you know that I intend to drop everything to finish my book by the end of May. I spent four hours on the task today. I wrote 1300 words and set up the project so I can work quickly from now on. I’ll see if I can put in more than four hours tomorrow. If I do that will be a good sign. If I do it for a week it will be hard to stop me.
My French pen pal wants to read it. Maybe I’ll translate it into French for the continental book market.
