Rick Atkinson Doesn't Want to Stand on a Soapbox

New York Times

24-04-2025

In an email interview, the Pulitzer Prize winner welcomed more writers onto his turf and revealed a 'soft spot' for one character in 'War and Peace.' SCOTT HELLER
What books are on your night stand?
Leo Damrosch, 'Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World'; Ada Ferrer, 'Cuba'; Ron Chernow, 'The Warburgs'; David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, 'Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine'; Brian Capon, 'Botany for Gardeners: An Introduction to the Science of Plants'; and, for grandchildren sleepovers, Maurice Sendak, 'Where the Wild Things Are.'
How do you organize your books?
My 'books to get' list for 'The Fate of the Day' exceeded 2,500 titles, of which I own almost half, including 19 volumes of 'The Papers of George Washington.' Those books snake through my home office and up through the third floor, alphabetically by author. Titles that I won't need for the final volume in my American Revolution trilogy are consigned to the basement, the garage or a storage locker in Rockville, Md. In the living room I've got a built-in case for books by my former Washington Post colleagues. Bob Woodward alone occupies a long shelf.
What kind of reader were you as a child?
Ardent and middlebrow. In grade school I devoured the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, then as a young teen discovered the enchantment of books like 'The Complete Sherlock Holmes' and 'Ivanhoe,' as well as the magical rhythm of our language in poems like Alfred Noyes's 'The Highwayman' and Longfellow's 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' Reading William L. Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' when I was about 15 put ideas in my head.
What's the last great book you read?
Hilary Mantel's 'The Mirror and the Light,' the final volume of her dazzling trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. I read it very slowly before bedtime while writing 'The Fate of the Day,' hoping for inspiration.
Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine?
I've got a soft spot for Pierre Bezúkhov from 'War and Peace.'
What's your favorite book no one else has heard of?
'Conquerors' Road: An Eyewitness Report of Germany 1945,' by Osmar White, an Australian journalist who bore witness with a conviction that, in his words, 'the living have the cause of the dead in trust.' As a former war correspondent, I find it extraordinary that White had trouble getting the thing published.
While generously praising 'The British Are Coming,' Joseph J. Ellis maintained that you are 'less interested in making an argument than telling a story.' Do you agree?
Absolutely. If you believe your calling is to be a storyteller, don't regret not being a polemicist. I've also been called an antiquarian, a pointillist and a scribbler. Guilty on all counts.
What are the challenges in writing the middle volume of a trilogy?
You can't presume that the reader has read Volume 1, so a bit of back story must be stitched in without being tedious. Recurrent characters like Washington and King George III reappear in the narrative, but I can't backtrack excessively as we watch them grow, evolve or devolve in the second volume. Perhaps most important for a narrative writer is the need to brachiate, like a gibbon in the treetops, using momentum to keep the story moving.
What was the most useful advice your editor offered on this book?
I've had the same editor, John Sterling, since 1987, for all eight of my books. I distilled his wisdom into a four-word injunction that I keep on a sign next to my writing desk: Get On With It.
Tell me about a supporting character in the book who deserves even more recognition.
Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene is familiar to readers of military history, but should be known to all Americans. A lapsed Quaker from Rhode Island, he was second only to Washington as the Continental Army's indispensable man.
Along with crediting 'a hundred or more' archivists, librarians and historians, you offer some thanks 'for corralling misbehaving electrons.' Explain.
I can break a computer just by looking at it. I'm grateful to those who fix them.
What impact might government cuts have on your ability to research the next volume?
Covid was bad enough in constricting archival research and library visits for a couple years. Let's hope, for the sake of scholarship, that there's no shortsighted squeezing of the National Archives, Library of Congress, national battlefield parks and other cultural troves.
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?
John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.' It's short.
Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?
At the risk of encouraging talented competitors, war. The more lyrical voices that capture and convey it, the better the chance of readers comprehending, viscerally, how grotesque it is.
You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Edward Gibbon, who was a member of Parliament during the American Revolution even as he was writing 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'