This might be of interest to antebellum American temperance historians.


----------------------
Jon Stephen Miller
Department of English
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa  52242
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 09:10:18 -0500
From: Brian Vargus <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: H-NET Discussion List for American Political History
     <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Weighty Whigs

On Fri, 26 Feb 1999 18:06:42 -0500
"Richard Jensen" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

excerpted from CHRONICLE of HIGHER EDUCATION 2/26/99
at http://www.chronicle.com/weekly/v45/i25/25a01601.htm

This spring, Oxford will drop onto bookstores 1,296 pages of *The Rise
and
Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of
the
Civil War.* Michael F. Holt, the chairman of the history department at
the
University of Virginia, has toiled for 20 years on the book, which
Oxford is
already promoting as "magisterial."

Signed in 1988, the manuscript eventually landed on the desk of Thomas
LeBien, who was new as the press's American-history editor at the time.
And
what a manuscript it was -- 3,500 pages, which would have made for an
1,800-page book. Or perhaps two still-healthy volumes. Early on, Mr.
LeBien
and the author decided to publish one big book, hoping that it could
reach a
trade audience.

"This is a seminal work of American political history, and that's what
Oxford
is known for," says the editor.

The book is so long because Mr. Holt argues that to understand the Whig
Party, you must look at how it functioned not just at the national level
but
in local politics, too. The manuscript featured a "cast of thousands,"
according to Mr. LeBien, and had to be trimmed accordingly. "The trick
was to
make careful decisions about what were the most telling or appropriate
sources," he says.