The Way It Was: Walter Lord on His Life and Books PDF
Preview The Way It Was: Walter Lord on His Life and Books
THE DAWNS cso s i ~~ ¥ - \ 3 EARLY LIGHT | WALTER LORD FROM 1900 TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR Walter Lord A varied narrateve of that extraordinary period (after phembing aadb efore taxes) whan —even in fieses of panic and itastey—men aed wanes belinved, acted and lived with confidence im thelr inspired ability to reform the wicked, rebaild the rules and suddeo the enemy. Mei— hh St SHOby e | THE UAXProSarsry , py i (The Miracle of DUNKIRK qaL ives By the author of A Night 10 Remember ew Thoughts. ©) and at @) About the Titanic th 16) .b) WALTER LOR? THE WAY IP WAS Walter Lord on His Life and Books Edited by Jenny Lawrence Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/wayitwaswalterlo0000lord a vrvy = 77 = a =7 ; i y,. Aro a°noe > THE WAY IT WAS Walter Lord on His Life and Books Edited by Jenny Lawrence Copyright © 2009 by Jenny Lawrence All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-615-25973-4 Book design by Thea Karas Text set in ITC Giovanni (T1) Additional fonts used are Arial and Adobe Casion Pro. Contents Brelacepemnnten. sees metre. re heteier, inn tele. © ous OR at 4 TANGULC EELOL Y Petree coon met essa tee weet ST ere ee, di Shaplemee aie RootsorMemory.mrc mt et ee is @iaptemme) aV ovace Olt an ee ein ees neers 25 Ghapicem ie SCNOOMLD AVS etes stern. freee aera camara 39 Ghapterms4 =@ loalcand Daccer raee ee 583 Chapter ss Verremantic Didier cern eee ee a (JHATHCTAEO MilI LGTiGaLLOUCIIIGt: me enerd crest ee eee eee hen 85 iia stetee cae IS te LOE CImDer ers teen teat ee ce D5 Giiapleme ss Dayopinjamy erect eee eee 115 Siiaptereo NAC 00d Neat syn tae ne ee ee ee ee 135 GirapicinlOmlime tos cinder ene ee em eee 149 Giraprermilset reas! ats VWOuld NOLIDIC amernns tr netc ee:1 67 Giiaters L2 Sincredibic Victory seneett ener cone 185 Chapter 1321 he Dawns Early Light iticccaanctrsnierts avsntnntescdvecsesnee 207 Ghapterm tae ortely Vigil aes k wR ti ato insees aitenssececansoaaare: 225 G@haptemipa tnewMirdci2'of Dunk Riereccccsm tects aera: 247 Ghaptenslon Dicisignt Lives Ones. cn te eee eee aseceeestanecna: 265 ALOK WOT CHI te tee ni oct case raadsdee ts Da eteeen cate sete Maaivsaveds 281 ACKMledO SIWEM (Siig osz ecvsectiss thee a loensunerenstaens (yateeeeiae Meeaticasea 282 Tec eee ee as Ne hoe neea ea eden dalenlae caneasemaoeenapormannnnse Zoo Preface hen I was 11 years old, Walter took me to every home WAV fester football game. My father was Walter's editor at the time, and Walter was a familiar figure at our house on Long Island. Walter taught me how to draw a boat from the bow on, and he took me on expeditions to buy military relics (a World War I helmet, a Civil War saber) at junk shops in New York City. On most Saturday mornings in the fall of 1962, my parents put me on the train to New York (it was a more trusting era), and I met Walter at Penn Station, where we embarked to the game on the Princeton Special—a bar car full of old Tigers. I drank Cokes while Walter drank bourbon; we were both buzzing by lunch. I cared very much about those games. Walter sent my parents a photo of me, dressed in head-to-toe Princeton regalia, stand- ing on the stadium steps. The photo is captioned, THE GOOD LOSER. Harvard 20-Princeton 0. | am trying not to cry. Walter told me many stories on those trips, about the sinking of the Titanic and the fall of the Alamo, about big college games and sports and war heroes. He made it all romantic and fun. | learned that history need not be dull and I got some sense of how to tell a story. As the years went on, Walter remained my friend. He had a whimsical sense of humor and he was non-judgmental about teenagers, though realistic about their foibles. He had a wonderful, infectious laugh when he told a story about someone doing something slightly ridiculous. Later, when I became a jour- nalist and began writing popular histories, I realized how much those times meant to me. Walter wrote history from a very human perspective. I don't think he was as interested in grand strategy or power politics as he was in the experience of ordinary humans caught up in ex- traordinary events. He did not try to psychologize—nothing so heavy. But he had an acute appreciation of human nature. He could be fussy at times, but more often forgiving. He had a knack for saving you from feeling too sorry for yourself, and he could prick pomposity. He was a boyish adult in some ways; he related easily to a sixth grader. I recall that we both hated vegetables and preferred to subsist on hamburgers and cookies. As I grew older, and Walter became ill with Parkinson's, I could detect a touch of melancholia (he was a permanent bachelor and, I suspect, a little lonely). But he was brave. He could well have been a character from one of his books. Walter is not as well remembered as he should be as an his- torian or writer, but he had an enormous impact. His style of you-are-there-narrative and eye for telling detail, combined with his prodigious researching abilities, made him a model or inspi- ration for later popular historians, including David McCullough. He certainly has been an inspiration for me. My friend and News- week editor Jon Meacham teases me about it. Sometimes, when Meacham wants to get me in the mood to write a narrative about some event in the news, he will call me on the phone and pre- tend to be the lookout at the masthead of the Titanic on that cold night to remember. “Ding, ding!” Meacham will cry, pretending to ring the lookout's bell. “Ice!” When I feel a rush of joy and ex- citement as I write about a moment in history, I often pause and think of Walter. Evan Thomas, Newsweek EX LiBris Ex LIBRIS Walter designed his own bookplate sometime in the 1950s. Clockwise from top left panel: his life as a writer; his time as an OSS operative; a student at Gilman, Princeton, and of the Civil War; a New Yorker, composer, photographer, and collector ofp olitical buttons. Note the iceberg atop the panels, as well as Walter's distinctive signature beneath them, and the glasses hooked below.
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