In this episode we're taking a look at another great new book on this history of the American Revolution: The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, by Richard Bell. In this book, we get to see how the revolution affected not only North America, but most of the world. To learn more about how you write a book that manages to cover such a massive subject with remarkable alacrity, I'm joined by the author of The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, Dr. Richard Bell.

Rick Bell is a professor of history at the University of Maryland and is the author of three books, as well as an edited collection. His first book was We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States, which came out in 2012. He followed that up with Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, an award-winning book that was published in 2019. The American Revolution and the Fate of the World came out at the end of last year. He has also created two streaming courses through the Great Courses series online, with a third on the way.

I have to tell you, I was a little surprised at how I absolutely devoured this book, and I was even more surprised to learn how it came together. I think you'll love learning about Rick's approach to writing, his thinking about structure and character, and his habit of wandering the halls of his department, talking to himself. Here's my interview with Dr. Rick Bell.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Richard Bell, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World
• Richard Bell, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
• Richard Bell, We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States
• Richard Bell on Great Courses Plus: "America's Long Struggle Against Slavery"
• Richard Bell on Great Courses Plus: "Ordinary Americans in the Revolution"
• Zotero
• Octet musical
• Alan Taylor
• Jill Lepore
• Eric Foner
• Ira Berlin
• Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
• Edward P. Jones, The Known World

In most episodes, I interview an author of nonfiction history about their research and writing process, but in today's episode we get to do something a little different. We're taking a closer look at how authors and presses get the word out about new books. And we're going to do that with an insider's perspective. I'm very excited to be joined in this episode by Sonya Bonczek, the director of publicity and communications for University of North Carolina Press.

I have exchanged many emails with Sonya over the past few years whenever I've had podcast guests who publish with UNC Press, and I've been impressed at the great publicity work that Sonya and her team are doing. So when I thought about who might be able to bring us a publicist's perspective, she was first on my list. I was eager to hear from Sonya about how book publicity has changed throughout her career, what works and what doesn't, what she wishes more authors know, and how she's feeling about the state of the book industry today, especially when it comes to nonfiction history.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Support Drafting the Past on Patreon
• Amanda Ice, Harvard University Press publicist, on Your Words Unleashed
• UNC Press on Instagram
• UNC Press on TikTok
• New York Magazine's 2008 article on whether book publishing would end
• The New York Times, "'Luddite' Teens Don't Want Your Likes", December 2022

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In case you haven't been paying attention—or maybe you don't live in the United States--you should know that this year marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. If you prefer funny words, you can call it America's semiquincentennial. Anyway, what this means for us is that there are a shocking number of books about the American Revolution, the early United States, and related subjects coming out this year. You're going to hear some of them on this show, starting with today's episode. One of the fascinating things that these books will show us is just how many ways you can approach history. So first up, in this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Andrew Edwards to talk about his new book, Money and the Making of the American Revolution. Andrew is a lecturer at the University of St. Andrew in Scotland, and a historian of capitalism, money, and early America. In Money and the Making of the American Revolution he takes a deep dive into the role of money—and the meaning of money—as one of the key causes of the American Revolution. Andrew tells the story of money in the American colonies and in Great Britain to explain that it was a fight over money and who got to define it, rather than taxes, that kicked off the colonists' rebellion. If that sounds dry and maybe a little confusing to you, I'm happy to report that Andrew does a remarkable job of telling this history in a way that is interesting even to those of us who don't love making sense of obscure fiscal policies. In our conversation, we talked about just how he did that and why he wrote an avid defense of narrative history in the book's introduction. But first, he tells us about the very winding road he took to becoming a historian in the first place.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Andrew David Edwards, Money and the Making of the American Revolution
• Zotero
• Eelco Runia, "Presence," History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006), 1-29
• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings
• Martha Sandweiss, The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West and Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Isabela Morales also mentioned Martha Sandweiss' history writing course in her episode of Drafting the Past)
• Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History
• R. F. Kuang, Katabasis

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.