PEARL
HARBOR: From Infamy to Greatness
1. What inspired you to write your book? The reasons why I
write the books I write are pretty quirky. I did a biography about American
founding father Thomas Paine because I heard that story of how, ten years after
he had died, his biggest fan became incensed that Americans weren’t properly
honoring his memory, and went to his grave in New Rochelle, dug up the body,
and ran off with it to London. I wrote a book about the first men on the moon
after going to a launch in Florida and wondering why I had to sit 3.5 miles
away from the liftoff, and it was explained to me that if something goes wrong
on the pad, the rocket will explode with 4/5ths the power of an atomic bomb
hurling 100-pound pieces of shrapnel for a radius of 3 miles; so NASA prefers
that its guests sit 3.5 miles away. And the reason why I picked Pearl Harbor is
that on September 11, 2001, I was living about a mile away from the World Trade
Center and had gone up on the roof to look at the accident that had happened
there that morning. I saw that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and was
wondering how this accident could have happened, and then I wondered why that
other plane was flying so close to the towers. For the next three years, I developed
a phobia about planes; not riding in them, but being under them. I’d look up
and see one and think: what is it doing there? Where is it going? And I looked
into how to cure myself of this crazy fear, and I found out that thousands had
gone through the exact same phobia. Those thousands were survivors of Pearl
Harbor.
2.
What is it about? A definitive history of December 7, 1941, and why America’s
reaction to it defined our nation more than July 4, 1776.
3. What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for
readers who finish your book? That if
you wait long enough, things usually turn out all right in the end.
4.
What advice do you have for writers? I advise novice writers to seriously
investigate what books are similar to theirs, go through the acknowledgements,
find the agents and editors, and write a pitch email with the subject “Since
you worked on XXX by XX …” So few submissions from first timers show any effort
at cracking the business that it is almost guaranteed to get a serious
response.
5.
Where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? I’m very sorry that
the industry didn’t window ebook release dates to have a hardcover exclusive
for at least 6 months. But I do love that books can now exist in all these
different formats and I hope that even expands so that you can buy everything
and anything from a beautifully produced autographed cloth edition in a great
brick and mortar to a free download sneak preview chapter to a pallet of riches
at Costco.
6.
What challenges did you have in writing your book? Pearl Harbor is the Everest
of research. The guy who wrote the big book before me, Gordon Prange, was
ordered by Douglas MacArthur to interview every member of Japan’s military involved
with Operation Hawaii, and he went totally off the rails, writing an infamously
endless letter to his publisher about why he couldn’t finish his book, and then
dying before he could in fact finish it. So the tome he spent his life
on, At Dawn We Slept, ended being written by two of his
students, who then went on to write I think five other books under Gordon
Prange’s name; he became the Ian Fleming or VC Andrews of military history. So
right away the question came up: was Pearl Harbor going to kill me too? And on
top of the unbelievable amount of material that’s already been written on this
topic is the fact that it’s infested with conspiracy theory people who pop up
everywhere you look and make a mess of things. And they did such a good job
that a lot of people when they found out I was working on Pearl Harbor their
first question was: did Roosevelt do it?
7.
If people can only buy one book this month, why should it be yours? Every facet
of human existence is in this story. Bravery and cowardice, triumph and
failure, professionalism and ineptitude, racism and reconciliation … so many
have taken up Pearl Harbor because it is an endlessly fascinating story.
For more information, please consult: http://www.craignelson.us/ or
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