The book is out

As of Tuesday, my book is officially out. Rush to your local bookseller and demand they sell you a copy. Get your friends and family to buy one. Badger your local library to acquire multiple copies. Donate one to your high school. Nag the school board to design a course based on it. I'm available for interviews. I'm available for signings. I'm available for lunch (if you're paying). Let's sell this thing.

This is a huge milestone in my life. Actually, several milestones in several aspects of my life, but let me stick to the most obvious. This is a major punctuation point in that project. I came up with the idea, sold it to an agent, who sold it to a publisher, who helped me edit the final copy, which was printed, and officially came out Tuesday. Preordered copies were shipped and my friends have been reporting receiving them all week. Technically, the project isn't over. I need to help sell it; do interviews, readings, and signings; and possibly write some more related mammoth materials.

This milestone is also a call to start a new project. I've written before how the book grew out of the idea for a single blog post, that became a series of blog posts, to a short book, to a dissertation. The two things I want to write now are the book I've wanted to write for thirty-five years--my history of the aftermath of WWI--and the other is another blog post gone out of control--my interpretation of the psychology and history of American political partisanship. Both have contemporary relevance.

The WWI book is coming up against marketable centennials. This will be an easier book to write. I've not only been thinking about it for over half of my life, it's the field of history that I specialized in during grad school. I own over a hundred books relevant to the topic. Unfortunately, the books are all in storage in Washington while I'm stuck in Alaska.

The book on recent partisanship in American politics, is something I've started over and over again as a blog post. I always get stuck at the point where I want to start citing sources. This is where my mammoth book got out of control. Tracking down things I've read over the last twenty years, just for a long-read blog-post that fewer than fifty people will finish was too discouraging to contemplate. It would make a great magazine piece, but I doubt my mammoth book alone is enough credentials sell the idea.

I'm also tempted to drag out some of my other abandoned, long blog-posts and try out publishing an e-book just for the experience. Unfortunately, many of those posts are on a hard-drive, stored with my books over a thousand miles away.

Decisions. Decisions.

PS -- Buy my book.

PPS -- I suppose this means I should go back to talking about politics and things unrelated to the book.

A blues mitzva

Lately, I've been riding the bus into different parts of town running errands and getting back in touch with my bus rider roots. This morning a cruise ship docked in town so, not only did each segment of my voyages have its own unique flavor, each one was spiced by the addition of curious outsiders surrounded by volunteer tour-guides of every race, age, and degree of sobriety helping (or hindering) them on the way to their destinations. This got me thinking about bus adventures I might not have told since I returned to Alaska. This one is especially for Anthea Rutherford but I can think of many others who will appreciate it.

While house and animal sitting for sister number one, I was returning home from a doctor's appointment via the store. The young man in the seat behind me was telling a friend on the phone about a concert he had seen over the weekend. Since I can't afford to go out, I never know whose been in town, but the kid's enthusiasm really drew me in.

"They had this guy with them--I wish I could remember his name--he had white hair and he was really pale, like an albino. When they started to jam, he was the most incredible guitarist I've ever heard."

He went on like this for several blocks. When he finally hung up, we were almost at my stop. U spun around in my seat: "That guy you heard, was he 'like an albino' or was he really an albino?"

"I think he was really an albino."

"Edgar Winter. His name is Edgar Winter." We were almost at my stop and I pulled the signal cord. "He has a brother named Johnny Winter, but he's been too sick to tour lately. I'm sure it was Edgar."

The bus came to a stop. As I headed for the door, I walked past him and said, "go to YouTube and look up 'Frankenstein'."

He was typing as I went out the door.

I think that counts as a blues mitzva.

Note: Johnny Winter died a few weeks after that, but Edgar is still boogieing on.

And yet another

Oh look, here's another review. Barnes & Nobel has this one on their page for the book.

Library Journal

When people first encountered the extinct mammoth remains, opinions varied on what these creatures were. In a thorough look at the beginning of paleontology, especially cultural influence and assumptions, technical writer McKay traces how people interpreted this mystery. The author organized centuries of sometimes messy findings into a coherent report spanning continents. History enthusiasts will appreciate learning how the mammoth and other discoveries were documented or lost. Shipwrecks, fire, and improper preservation destroyed evidence; inaccuracies in maps, sketches, and written descriptions impeded comprehension. Readers will find it humbling that the greatest minds of past centuries were adamantly wrong and will enjoy reading about their rationales: of course, it made sense to believe that mammoths lived underground and couldn't survive upon reaching the earth's surface. Similarly, those who held to a literal interpretation of the Bible assumed that the mammoth skulls belonged to giants who once roamed the land (the concept of a defunct species would have implied a flaw in God's design, a heretical thought).

VERDICT For those seeking a scholarly, straightforward examination of paleontology's origins and key players. 

—Elissa Cooper, Helen Plum Memorial Lib., Lombard, IL

Damn, this is fun.

Another review

Today, I have a review on Booklist Online. It will also go out in their weekly news letter. It's recommended both for adults and teens. Since it's behind a subscription wall, I'll quote the whole thing here:

Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science. McKay, John J. (Author) Aug 2017. 256 p. Pegasus, hardcover, $27.95. (9781681774244). 569.6. 

Humans and mammoths coexisted until 10,000 years ago, but in the intervening years, humans lost that knowledge, even though they continued to find mammoth bones and trade in their ivory. In the seventeenth century, the recovery of teeth and bones of giant land mammals validated, for some, the existence of the mythical creatures described in the Christian Bible and local folklore until a modern elephant skeleton was first seen in Europe, and observational connections were made. But how could elephants, hot-weather animals, have gotten to North America and Europe? The great deluge described in the Bible was one explanation. Giant bones from a similar time frame were found in North America. Russian expeditions to map routes to Asia led explorers through some of the most fertile areas for mammoth ivory and bones. A nearly complete mammoth found in Siberian glacial ice helped to fill gaps in scientific knowledge and place this extinct species in the animal kingdom. McKay masterfully weaves an intricate story of the events, politics, people, and scientific development associated with the “rediscovery” of mammoths. — Dan Kaplan

Heh. "Masterfully."

Book update

The book has been printed. The printer started shipping to wholesalers last week. It should finally work it's way into your local bookstore the first week in August.

Meanwhile, the British science journal, Nature, is planning to review it and the Christian Science Monitor will be interviewing me for their review page.

My answer to a Quora question:

History is a useful narrative constructed from what we know about the past. Let me unpack that bit by bit.

"History is a ... narrative..." History is not an accurate reproduction of the past and it is not all of the facts. History is a story (as the word indicates). We know he names and home towns all of the soldiers involved in D-Day. We know what many of them ate that day. We know the technical specs of their weapons, who designed, and who manufactured them. We know the logistics of getting them to the beach, the support efforts, and the casualties. To wrote a history of that day, the historian has to pick and choose through all of the raw data--the facts--to decide what is necessary to tell the story they want to tell.

"History is ... useful..." No historian is completely random in picking their narrative. Again, look at military history. A narrative based on the same data/facts might describe a glorious victory, a unredeemed tragedy, or illustrate some aspect of the human condition. Facts and interpretation are two different things. This is why conservatives get so upset about how history is taught in the schools. Each new generation of historians reinterprets the same facts in the light of their experiences. Conservatives want history to be carved in stone. Facts are facts. History isn't facts; history is interpretation of facts.

"History is ... constructed from what we know..." We can't know everything. This is obvious in the far past where we take every tiny data point and try to squeeze as much information as we can from it. Every decade or so we have an earthshaking discovery in ancient history. Here is a city that dominated this trade route for three centuries and this changes everything we thought we knew about the cities on either end of that trade route. Even in something as information rich as the D-Day example, there is an enormous amount we don't know. What were the conversations that led to important decisions. Who knew what and when did they now it.

It's an historian's cliche to refer to history as a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, and no box to show us what the picture should look like, and no edge pieces, and a few handfuls of pieces from other puzzles added, and a hyperactive cat in the house, and half the pieces are wet... and that's why we love it.

To my journalist and media savvy friends

This is an expanded version of something I just put on Facebook. Most of my Facebook friends know I currently live in Anchorage, Alaska. I hope here to get some advice from a wider audience.

Here's a gratuitous mammoth picture so you'll stop and read the post.

My mammoth book comes out in six weeks. I need to do what I can to help promote it. My publisher is sending out review copies to some science magazines. I'm thinking more local. Who should I point them to at Alaska Dispatch News for a review? Would any of the columnists be interested in a local author piece (this goes for the whole northwest. I lived in Seattle for twenty-five years)? What about readings and signings now that Titlewave (the main independent bookstore in Anchorage) is no longer selling new books? Podcasts (can be anywhere, not just Anchorage)? Any ideas for local opportunities or further afoot? Events at museums or guest lectures for paleontology classes?

I'm trying to find some way to move back to the Seattle area. If I do get back, I'd love to arrange events at Elliott Bay Books (where I used to work), the University Bookstore, Powells in Portland, and all points between. Maybe Seattle Times or other regional papers would be interested? Again, does anyone know who would be the best person to query? Bigger papers get lots of unsolicited books to review; as with everything, a contact is infinitely better than a cold call.

PS - As a writer, I am available to write "what this latest discovery means" pieces. I'm also open to mentoring on how to sell such stories. If you're a writer with experience at this, teaching me would be good exposure (#PleaseDontHurtMe).

We have a review!

Publisher's Weekly, the trade journal of the publishing industry, chose the Discovering the Mammoth to be reviewed this week. They can only review a fraction of the new books each week, so I think this is a good sign.

It's me

I don't usually post pictures of myself online. None of my social media avatars are pictures. But, the publisher needed a dust jacket photo, so I may as well share it. After all, it's going to be printed by the millions when my book becomes an international, runaway bestseller.

I've been blocked

My accomplishment of the day. He can dish out cold-hearted sneers all day, but remind him of his dog-murdering son and he turns all mushy.