I just got a brief update from the NPS folks letting me know that my edits/additions to the church book manuscript were headed in the right direction. This validation was much needed as I’ve also been back-fitting some of the latest changes into my upcoming lecture on the subject. Both pieces are stronger and all the extra work I’m doing is certainly paying off. I have a feeling this book will be a big stepping stone for me.

I also received an email from Traci Lower (my pub at Patriot Press), telling me that I got an invitation to join the Military Writers Society of America. It is a most welcome honor that I am certainly going to pursue.

I have 2 articles to finish for the paper next week including a last-minute review of a great new book by Jeff Toalson. I finally finished my author interview for the July/August issue of Civil War Historian and I agreed to do a presentation on the “Great Southern Revival” at the Manassas Museum in August. Somewhere in there I have to write a completely new and original lecture on Sgt. Kirkland for a May chat at the local CW Round Table, review Eric and JD’s new book on the retreat from Gettysburg, write a feature on Lee at Stratford to coincide with a Lee’s Lts. living-history event, do a book sale/signing at the annual Gathering of Eagles in Winchester, update a t-shirt crest for a Civil War group's annual muster AND fit in my family and regular job. Oh and then there’s that fun baseball book I’m working on with Eric Wittenberg. I'm also working on doing both a talk and book signing in September at Gettysburg and a special report from the newly restored Cyclorama for the paper. Lord have mercy!

Needless to say my blogging may slow a bit as the summer months approach, but I promise to post updates as often as I can.  (I know as a Christian I am supposed to be against cloning, but if I could just get one more of me). This week I had an NPS historian, my boss, my wife and my father all tell me that I need to learn to take it easy and say 'no' once in a while.

I'm trying... "n-n-n-n-o-o-o-o" 

I was pleased to read this report today and I wanted to share it with you. According to Reuters Life! w/ reporting by Julie Mollins; editing by Patricia Reaney:

NEW YORK (Reuters): When it comes to literary pursuits in the United States most people agree on at least one thing -- the most popular book is the Bible, according to a new survey. It came in first in a Harris Poll of nearly 2,513 adults but the second choice in the survey was not as clear cut. "While the Bible is number one among each of the different demographic groups, there is a large difference in the number two favorite book," Harris said in a statement announcing the results.

Men chose J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and women selected Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book, according to the online poll. But the second choice for 18- to 31-year-olds was J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, while 32- to 43-year-olds named Stephen King's "The Stand" and Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons".

Picks for second-favorite book also varied according to region. "Gone With the Wind" was number two in the southern and mid-western United States while easterners chose "The Lord of the Rings" and westerners opted for "The Stand". Whites and Hispanics picked "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book after the Bible, while African-Americans preferred "Angels and Demons".

"Finally, they may not agree on candidates, but one thing that brings together partisans is their favorite book. For Republicans, Democrats and Independents, the top two books are the same -- the Bible followed by "Gone With the Wind." Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code", "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand and "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger rounded out the top 10 favorites.

This afternoon I received some very sad news that my uncle had passed away. Although he had been dealing with some serious health issues over the last year, I am still surprised that he is gone and I have spent the last hour or so reflecting on my memory of him. As sad as his passing is to the rest of us left behind, there is cause for joy. He was a devout Presbyterian and a good Christian man who was surrounded by his loving family as he drifted off to a much better place. I myself take comfort in knowing that he is currently in the presence of our Lord and Savior.

Although I try not to post family-related material here, I do feel it appropriate today, as my aunt and uncle are among my biggest supporters. In fact, I had just sent them a card with an autographed copy of ‘The Southern Cross’ last Tuesday. As my relatives have all been at the hospital for the last few days, it is probably still sitting in the mailbox waiting to be opened when they return home.

I had added some scripture in the card and it somehow seems fitting given the circumstances of today. I had quoted from Numbers 6: 24-26: The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace. (NIV)

My aunt and I had discussed our fondness for Romans 8:28 and at times like these, there is perhaps no more comforting a verse: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (KJV)

Living here in Virginia, I had not visited with my uncle in a year although I did see my aunt over the holidays up in Pennsylvania. Still, my mind is full of wonderful memories of spending Thanksgivings and Christmas at his house, swimming in his pool, and riding in his plane. Both he and my aunt have shared a great interest in my writing. Next to my mother and father, their validation of my Christian work has been a blessing indeed. My uncle was also a skilled woodworker and he made me a very special log-coaster out of a photo taken of me at Gettysburg in 1978. I have always treasured that gift for the fond memories and it still sits in our curio cabinet to this day.

Right now, I am praying for my family up in PA who is in mourning, and I will do the same at church class tonight. But I will also rejoice in knowing that my uncle’s life was a full one, and that he has gone on to a place of greater glory, of which I can only imagine.

None of us can achieve anything meaningful in life without the love and support of others and I am grateful to have a family full of devout believers, like my Uncle Jim, who have enabled me to be a far better person than I could ever be on my own.

One curious reader asked me to elaborate on my original update post, so before I disappear into my office for a few weeks, here is what’s going on in my world:

For some reason people seem to be interested in ‘me’ lately (as if I don’t talk about myself enough here). I recently did an interview with the good folks at PASTimes, a wonderful Christian history writer’s group, as well as a rather long piece for an author’s spotlight feature in the July/August issue of Civil War Historian. I’ll post links when they are available online. Both interviewers queried me in regards to my faith and how it affects my work. Obviously I am trying to keep a foot firmly planted in both realms (Christian and Secular) and I am working very hard to grow in both directions. As I am exploring other mediums now such as radio and hopefully film, I am ultimately trying to become a better writer as that is the foundation for everything I do.

I am also trying to become a stronger analyst in regards to the secular side of my authoring. I've never had a problem researching and writing narrative in the baseball genre, but for some reason I remain personally attached to my Civil War subject matter. In the Christian realm, this is actually a benefit as it helps me to glean inspiration from my subjects and share positive stories that are uplifting in nature. However, when not kept in check, this internal-bias can easily interfere with a secular history’s accuracy. In other words, it’s easy to inject my own personal assumptions and judgments into a piece without even realizing it. Yeah, you heard me right. I'm actually talking about Civil War memory.

I will say that writing straight-secular Civil War history is much more of a challenge to me. I still struggle with this approach at times and I am still learning to do a better job of removing my own values from the narrative. My tendency is to present things as paying tribute, trying to see the good on all sides. This is noble, but it can also be a disservice to the people I am writing about. A perfect example of this is my recent book “Houses of the Holy” about the historical churches of Fredericksburg. Initially, my first draft of the manuscript lacked the painful realities that were necessary to tell an accurate story. In short, I wrote a piece that was overly positive and soft on complex issues like race-relations and slavery. It was also a bit too pro-Southern at the expense of some factual content. Thankfully, John Hennessy who reviewed the draft, called me on it and was gracious enough to go through the piece with me to make sure the final proof will reflect the true story. He taught me that it's okay to acknowledge the blemishes that darken our history along the way, and to not try to polish them bright with my own optimism.

Simply put, I started out writing a regional title hoping to be endorsed by the National Park Service and ended up subconsciously targeting the POV towards the church congregations themselves. This blurred my focus and has required me to revisit the project with a more objective eye. Although this set me back a bit in the schedule, my publisher has really appreciated our sincere effort to refine the narrative as they know in the end the book will be a stronger product. So that is where I’ll be for the next couple weeks, reworking sections of the manuscript and back-fitting some of this new approach into my lecture on churches that I’ll be doing at the end of the month.

I also have to research and write a presentation on Richard Kirkland for the FCWRT, and pen two book reviews for The Free Lance-Star and one for my blog. This includes Eric and JD’s “One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863,” for which I am receiving galleys from this week, “No Soap, No Pay, Diarrhea, Dysentery & Desertion: A Composite Diary of the last 16 months of the Confederacy” by Jeff Toalson, and a blog review of “General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse.” (Plus work continues on the baseball book of course. I have been working my way through the Hall of Shame parts and Eric has some great interviews in the works.)

Needless to say, I will be a busy man, but I welcome this challenge and hope that I can rise to the occasion to do John and the rest of the good folks at the NPS’s efforts on my behalf justice. This will take time. Time that I would have spent blogging, but no longer have. This book is a big step for me career-wise and I have committed myself to doing it right.

Oh, and I prayed on it too. That always helps me, no matter what audience I’m writing for. See you all in a few weeks.

Many of you are well aware of another little firestorm that was ignited by a post that I did recently on what I consider to be a widening-divide between academic historians and the ‘blue-collar’ crowd. As noted, I have received a bunch of emails in support (a handful last night), but no one wishes to be posted in the Comments section as they know the original post was clipped for use as an example at a conference. I do appreciate all of their sentiments, but one gentleman emailed something that I feel inclined to share. On a related note, I had a very valued expert prove to me that I’m a noble guy, who still has a lot to learn. We’re both working on it. Here’s the email:

Dear Mr. Aubrecht,

Thank you for having the courage to stick up for the little guy. Although I think it is fair to say that your beef with Mr. Levin may have influenced your comments – by the way the two of you should really learn to get along, I think you both make the scene better – the spirit of your argument rings true. I am a retired park ranger, avid re-enactor, former round table president, and I have witnessed both sides of this divide. I fear that your post did not do your argument justice, as it was not framed with any definitive examples in support. So here is a list. It is meant to help you all examine yourselves. You may quote it freely, but I ask that you not post my personal information below as I do not want to end up being quoted at Mr. Levin’s conference. Perhaps he will value my point of view as a third-party. Please excuse the language as I am also a retired Master Chief and have a penchant for the four-letter word.

The so-called academics: These are the same people that went ape**** over a friendly and fun list of the top 50 Civil War books on CWI. (What looked like a fun and nostalgic look at our personal favorites suddenly turned into a critical analysis of the evils of the Golden Book of The Civil War.) These are the same people that appear to take others to task for printing positive Confederate material, yet turn around and do the like approach with Union perspectives. (This happens time and time again and is a disservice to both sides when it appears in such hypocrite ways.) These are the same people that criticize southern heritage groups for their flags, license plates, commemorations and tributes to their ancestors. (Who are they to say how one should honor their ancestors?)

This is not to say that they are bad people or that they are not good at their jobs. Maybe some of this is in fact, their jobs, but it’s not that difficult to see how some people may look at them from a distance with distaste. That said, you amatuers can learn a great deal from these professionals and the door swings both ways. Don’t be so defensive and don’t be so **** insecure to approach them. I think most teachers love to teach and would leap at an opportunity to share their knowledge.

Don’t judge the whole. You may have been treated rudely by an academic in the past, but that isn’t a fair barometer for all is it? Teachers, you may have run into some real dip****’s pretending to be subject matter experts, but that too is not an accurate census of this crowd. They know their stuff too, they just remain personally attached to it.

In the end both sides of this argument have merit and both of you should be able to recognize and respect one another despite it. In the navy we have a saying that is appropriate for this occasion. Never **** another sailor off as he may be the one holding your life-jacket one day. Carry on!

I wish I could have said it better myself. This latest 'exchange' of course comes with the territory of editorial blogging, but frankly, it’s the exact reason why I am rapidly losing my desire to do it. In fact, I am seriously debating limiting future posts to simply essays and project updates. My apologies to my regular readers. I'll get back to posting the good stuff soon. I want people to feel uplifted when they come here, not angry. And that goes for me too.

First off, I’m VERY curious why no one has blogged on this yet… I’m just beginning to get back into the swing of things at the office and I am slowly-but-surely catching up with what is going on in the ‘real’ world (as much as I can stomach that is). Needless to say, I was surprised to read that a recent genealogical research project into the presidential candidates' ancestry has discovered that Barack Obama has a prolific lineage that includes a distant relation to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. According to CNN’s website, Lee was a fifth-cousin to one of Obama’s ancestors making Obama his fifth cousin, eight times removed. Their common ancestors were Richard Eltonhead of Eltonhead, Lancashire, and Ms. Anne Sutton. Another great Virginian, President James Madison is also a relation. That's extremely interesting to me. I would love to know what Obama thinks of being a "descendant" of 'Marse Robert.' And I’m curious to know if these newfound relations will affect the voting public’s opinions in any way.

Harvey Frommer is a longtime mentor of mine, and probably the best baseball historian that I have ever known. He has a new release coming out titled “Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral And Narrative History” (Abrams/Stewart, Tabori and Chang) and I for one cannot wait to add it to my collection. Harvey has written over 30 books on the history of our national pastime, many focusing on my beloved Yankees, and his work is always educational and entertaining. Here is some additional info on this new book from Harvey’s Press Release:

This is the only book with a foreword by Bob Sheppard, Yankee legendary public address announcer. It mixes and matches voices from as far back as the 1920s to  today providing the perspective of the rank and file who give the nitty gritty that the you won’t find from heavier names, those who will say over and over again: “When I stepped out onto the Stadium . . .” Instead, nearly one hundred voices give the book a sense of place and time and people. There are Hall of Famers, bat boys, fans, vendors, famed broadcasters and authors, Yankee players and managers as well as their rivals, and long-time observers of the Stadium scene. There are game calls from legends like Mel Allen, Frank Messer, Phil Rizzuto, Michael Kay. There is the smell of mustard and the smell of jockstraps, the feel of being crushed, eight deep on the downtown D train after a game. And a sense of place you won't find in any "official" history enhanced by more than 200 images, many of them archival and many never before published in a book. There are ticket stubs, baseball cards, program covers, scorecards. And there is a large “Stadiumology” section with stats and facts, first and lasts.

I plan on writing a detailed review of this book in the near future so stay tuned. For more information on this and other Frommer titles, please visit Harvey’s official website.

Tonight I received an angry email from a rather disturbed reader, who took offense to my recent posting about the widening gap between academic and amateur historians. After calling me a bible-thumping hack (thank you by the way), he also accused me of being a “Lost Causer.” I have always been a little confused about people’s interpretations of that term so I did a quick Google search and came up with Wikipedia’s definition which is as follows:

The “Lost Cause” is the name commonly given to a literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the Southern United States to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War of 1861–1865. Those who contributed to the movement tended to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force, and tended to condemn Reconstruction. Some of the main tenets of the Lost Cause movement were that:

1. Confederate generals such as Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson represented the virtues of Southern nobility, as opposed to most Northern generals, who were characterized as possessing low moral standards, and who subjected the Southern civilian population to such indignities as Sherman's March to the Sea and Philip Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley in the Valley Campaigns of 1864.

2. Losses on the battlefield were inevitable due to Northern superiority in resources and manpower. Losses were also the result of betrayal and incompetence on the part of certain subordinates of General Lee. (The Lost Cause focused mainly on Lee and the eastern theater of operations.)

3. Defense of states' rights, rather than preservation of chattel slavery, was the primary cause that led eleven Southern states to secede from the Union, thus precipitating the war. Secession was a justifiable constitutional response to Northern cultural and economic aggressions against the Southern way of life.

After reading these qualifications I must say that I am apparently guilty as charged. BTW: None of these tenets are necessarily bad things and the majority of these beliefs albeit bias, are not that far off base. It also does not mean that one cannot have a strong affection for the Southern Confederacy’s perspective and still respect their northern counterparts. I do.

This reminds me that April is Confederate History Month. Don’t forget to acknowledge the courage and sacrifice of the boys in gray. They deserve to be remembered too. And to the gentleman that took the time to email me with his displeasure. Thank you Sir. I value your patronage of my blog and I hope that you will come again. I may be, as you say a Lost Causer, but I am also appreciative of your opinion and feedback.

It appears that an opportunity to do some teaching has come about. (Note the irony after I posted about the ever-widening gap between ‘elitist’ academics and we ‘uneducated’ folks.) Anyway, I've never considered myself an educator by any means, (I still don’t), but I do love speaking to people about the subject of spiritually during the Civil War. This afternoon, I received an email from a gentleman named Rudy Halleck who runs an organization called Saved-Sons here in Virginia. Saved-Sons publishes Christian teaching materials and helps book guest speakers for church retreats and dinners.

Their goal is to provide young men with a religious-perspective that they probably do not get in school. I have been asked to speak at a fall retreat about the “Great Southern Revival” and its impact on the spiritual lives of Confederate soldiers. It’s a great topic that I look forward to tackling and what makes it even neater is the fact that I will be speaking at a campsite pavilion. In fact, I don’t have to worry about creating a PowerPoint, as there will be no electrical-outlets.

Beginning in the fall of 1863, this event, sometimes referred to as "The Great Southern Revival," was in full progress throughout the Army of Northern Virginia. Before it was interrupted by Gen. U.S. Grant's attack in May 1864, approximately seven thousand soldiers-10 percent of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s force-were reportedly converted. Dr. Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., author of A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies, reports that “The best estimates of conversions in the Union forces place the figure between 100,000 and 200,000 men-about 5-10 percent of all individuals engaged in the conflict. In the smaller Confederate armies, at least 100,000 were converted. Since these numbers include only ‘conversions’ and do not represent the number of soldiers actually swept up in the revivals-a yet more substantial figure-the impact of revivals during the Civil War surely was tremendous.”

I certainly hope that I can come up with a presentation that reflects this most blessed event and is worthy of these gentlemen's attention. According to the Saved-Sons' mission statement in the email: “Saved-Sons recognizes the need to give today’s teenagers positive role-models that are worth looking up to. In today’s fallen society, impressionable youth are far too often exposed to celebrities, athletes and music artists with less than desirable character traits. As parents and mentors, it is our job to introduce them to more holy and wholesome subjects that are worthy of their admiration and emulation. Unfortunately, our public school system has pushed Christian values out of the classroom and it has been left up to us to fill this void. Saved-Sons provides scripture-based lesson plans that can be used at youth group meetings, church retreats, and after school bible-study programs. While it is not our intent to interfere with any school’s existing program, we are hoping to add a godly viewpoint that will enrich the education of those wishing to know more.”

I’ll keep you updated on where this goes. Saved-Sons is a start-up and they hope to have a website soon. I will add their link when it is. I sent a tentative acceptance email, but do not have any specific details yet. I am hoping that is doesn’t conflict with my schedule. It would be a blessing indeed to speak to a group of young men on a subject that is so inspirational and enlightening.

[UPDATE: I did want to add that Saved-Sons discovered me thanks to my book 'The Southern Cross' being carried and showcased in the Re-enactors Missions For Jesus Christ (RMJC) bookstore and their booth at this past weekend's Civil War Seminar at Liberty University. My thanks to them for selling my title and therefore, promoting my witness.]