New Release: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
By Seth Grahame-Smith
Grand Central Publishing | 336pgs
Release Date: March 02, 2010
Seth Grahame-Smith’s fantastical foray into the horror/history genre Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, opens in a small cabin in Indiana, during the year 1818. Lincoln, a boy of just nine years, watches his mother’s life slip away as she suffers from a mysterious illness called “Milk Sickness.” Later as a young man, he learns that his mother’s death was caused by a vampire, and embarks on a life-long crusade to fight against the undead masses. Though Lincoln’s great accomplishments of ending slavery and fighting to keep America united have been well documented, his vendetta against vampires remained secret. Author Seth Grahame-Smith is finally able to bring these secrets to light with the discovery of The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln. Drawing on events recorded in the diary, Grahame-Smith stages an epic “biography” of the 16th President, revealing the shrouded history of the Civil War, and the role the undead evil-doers played in the upheaval.
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In February, concerns were raised about the veracity of one of Charles Pellegrino’s sources in his new book The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back, which documents the experiences of Japanese blast survivors as well as the American flight crews that dropped the atomic bomb. Joseph Fuoco (now-deceased) claimed to be a last-minute substitution on the flight crew of one of two escort planes accompanying the Enola Gay during its fateful mission on Aug. 6, 1945. But, Fuoco’s account of the bombing and his claim that an accident while readying the weapon killed an American scientist and weakened the bomb’s power, have been vehemently denied by historians and the surviving flight crew members. The Seattle Times reports that evidence has come to light that proves flight engineer, James Corliss, actually flew in the escort plane, not Fuoco. Though, it is possible that he did participate in reconnaissance flights over Hiroshima before and after the blast.
Last week, blogger and radio host Rob Port set the conservative blogosphere ablaze when he presented photographic “evidence” that “Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books in the White House Library”. During a recent tour of the White House, Port found two books on socialism in its library, snapped a photo, and blogged about it on the web. His post created a controversy, inflaming both sides of the political aisle, and inciting numerous comments. Yet, it turns out that his “evidence” and the surrounding controversy is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. The Washington Post reports that a First Lady did indeed choose those books for the White House library, but it was Jacqueline Kennedy, not Michelle Obama, who chose the books in 1963. The books have been in the White House for almost 50 years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations (yes, even the Reagan years). Port said in his post that his tour guide credited Michelle Obama with selecting the books, but it is unclear if the facts were misstated by the guide or misheard by the blogger. Perhaps if Port, a self professed bibliophile, had done a little more reading and a little less inflammatory finger pointing, he would have been able to report the facts more accurately.
In 1951, before Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the Johns Hopkins Hospital “colored” ward, doctors took a small sample of her tumor. The tissue sample, taken without Lacks’ knowledge, stunned scientists when the cells successfully grew in the research lab. This marked the first time a line of human cells had survived without a human body. Lacks’ cells, later known as HeLa, proved extremely robust and flourished in the lab environment. Since their initial harvest, at least 50 million metric tons of the cells have been grown, and have contributed to advances and breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases like polio and AIDS. Yet, Lacks’ family were never told of (or compensated for) this research, and only learned of her miraculous afterlife in the 1970′s when the scientists at Johns Hopkins contacted the family in hopes of further testing. Science writer Rebecca Skloot combines Lacks’ personal history and her family’s reaction to the situation, along with scientific accounts, to tell a compelling story in her new book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 330pgs).
In 1940, high school students, Linda Porte and Woodland Drake, were introduced by mutual friends during a study session at the Millicent Library in Fairhaven, MA. As the library was closing Linda became upset that she would not be able to finish her report. The book she needed, a guide to Fairhaven, was a reference book and could not be checked out. During the group’s walk home, she again expressed her disappointment at not having the book, and Woodland surprised her by pulling it out of his jacket. This act of “unofficial borrowing” would spark a lifetime of love, with a marriage that lasted 64 years and four children. Their son, Paul Drake, himself a librarian at the University of Guam, recently recounted his parent’s love story to the Standard-Times. Incredibly the couple had held on to the book for the rest of their lives, but after they both passed away (Linda in 2007 and Woodland in 2009), Paul felt it was time to finally return it to its rightful owner.
Upon reading James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, former journalist Henry E. Scott developed a deep fascination of Confidential magazine (fictionalized in the novel as Hush-Hush magazine). The result, Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, “America’s Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine” (Pantheon, 240pgs), delineates the history of the original scandal rag that gave birth to today’s purveyors of titillating tales, such as Us Magazine, Entertainment Tonight and TMZ. Publisher Robert Harrison introduced the bi-monthly magazine in 1952, its blazing yellow and red masthead and catchy headlines gleefully exposing the infidelities, sexual orientation and political leanings of the day’s biggest stars. Through his research, Scott was surprised to find that each published article was carefully fact checked, and most of the stories reported the facts accurately. Though more respectable publications, like Time, derided the scandal sheet as “a cheesecake of innuendo, detraction, and plain smut”, the public devoured every issue and circulation soon rose to more than 3 million.
