"In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all." Richard Hofstadter
Ray E. Boomhower
@rboomhower.bsky.social
Fact writer. Biographer of Ernie Pyle, John Bartlow Martin, Richard Tregaskis, Malcolm Browne, and Robert Sherrod, among others. Bio about journalist Wallace H. Terry available October 2026: https://www.unmpress.com/9780826370150/wallace-terry/
OTD in 2019, I was exploring the papers of World War II correspondent Richard Tregaskis at the American Heritage Center on the campus of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The Center has quite the interesting design. My biography of Tregaskis was published in 2021 by the @unmpress.bsky.social.
"It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat." Richard Hofstadter, born on this day in 1916
Before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on this day in 1945, war correspondent Robert L. Sherrod of "Time" magazine planned on accompanying Major General Graves B. Erskine’s Third Marine Division in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.
"The thing is awful. It is terrifying. Unless man does something to regulate it, and regulate it soon, there is a possibility, yes a probability, that mankind will just destroy itself.” outrider.org/nuclear-weap...
The Reporter and the Atomic Bomb
Wayne Guthrie and the Bikini Tests
outrider.org
And the hits keep on coming.
Drafting the Past@draftingthepast.bsky.social · 2d agoWe're back! @brettrushforth.bsky.social and Chris Hodson joined me to talk about two decades of collaborating on BEYOND THE OCEAN, using visual and material culture to tell a different story, and more. Plus a cameo by Eminem! Listen here: player.captivate.fm/episode/f2ca... 🗃️
"The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain." Conrad Aiken, born on this day in 1889
"Could anyone fail to be depressed by a book he or she has published? Don't we always outgrow them the moment the last page has been written?" Mary Ritter Beard, born on this day in 1876
“Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.” Guy de Maupassant, born on this day in 1850
"Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts." Wendell Berry
"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer." Neil Armstrong, born on this day in 1930
"To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival." Wendell Berry, born on this day in 1934
“I went to where the action was because I felt that’s the only way I could fully tell the story." indianahistory.org/blog/from-sh...
From Shortridge High School to Vietnam - Indiana Historical Society
Raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, by his mother, Nancy, and stepfather, Frederick G. Schatz — whose interracial marriage had shocked both the city’s Black and white communities — Wallace H. Terry was u...
indianahistory.org
"What does a writer need? Well, he needs to read good writing. He needs to write. And he needs to rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite his own sentences until they say as precisely and as economically as he can make them what he intends them to say." John Bartlow Martin
“I write from the actual documents. It’s clumsy, it’s awkward, it’s slow—it takes a lot of time—but you don’t make many mistakes this way. And that’s the whole purpose.” rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-...
The Biographer and the Governor: John Bartlow Martin and Adlai Stevenson
On July 14, 1965, Adlai Stevenson II , two-time Democratic presidential candidate and diplomat, was in London following a speech in Geneva, ...
rayboomhower.blogspot.com
"The writer serves truth. He is needed." John Bartlow Martin In honor of Martin's birthday, a free copy of my biography about him to the first person who can name the post he served in during the John F. Kennedy administration.
"A writer has only one responsibility, and that is to tell the truth . . . in clear, accurate, precise sentences which will communicate to the reader what he wants to say. This is the highest purpose of a writer." John Bartlow Martin, born OTD in 1915 rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2024/05/john...
John Bartlow Martin: A Writing Life
During the 1940s and 1950s one name, John Bartlow Martin , dominated the pages of the “big slicks,” mass-circulation magazines, especially t...
rayboomhower.blogspot.com
In honor of Hoosier birthday guy Ernie Pyle, a free copy of my Pyle biography to the first person to name the Indiana newspaper he worked for after leaving Indiana University.
"War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, Secretly armed against all death's endeavour; Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall; And if these poor limbs die, safest of all." Rupert Brooke, born on this day in 1887
"When you've lived with the unnatural mass cruelty that mankind is capable of inflicting upon itself, you find yourself dispossessed of the faculty for blaming one poor man for the triviality of his faults. I don't see how any survivor of war can ever be cruel to anything, ever again.” Ernie Pyle
“Only three things matter. Number One, who can you trust? Number Two, who can get peace? Number Three, who can hold this country together?” rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-...
"The Politics of Joy": John Bartlow Martin and Hubert Humphrey's 1968 Presidential Campaign
In late August 1968 John Bartlow Martin , a former Indiana newspaperman, freelance writer for national magazines, and speechwriter for a num...
rayboomhower.blogspot.com
“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.” Joseph Conrad, who died on this day in 1924
On this day in 1943, a Hoosier private, Charles H. Kuhl, was admitted for evaluation into the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital. Unfortunately for Kuhl, General George Patton visited the hospital the same day. rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-...
The GI and the General: Charles H. Kuhl and George S. Patton
When Private Charles H. Kuhl of the Twenty-Sixth Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, checked himself into an aid station in Sicily, ...
rayboomhower.blogspot.com
“Listen, you bastards, I’ll take a drink over every one of your graves.” indianahistory.org/blog/the-las...
The Last Assignment: Ernie Pyle on Okinawa - Indiana Historical Society
In early April 1945, while covering the American invasion of Okinawa, an island located only 330 miles from Japan, two war correspondents, one a veteran of the Pacific War and the other a newcomer to ...
indianahistory.org
“I’ve lost the touch. This stuff stinks. I feel stale and just can’t seem to get going again.” rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2019/07/erni...
Ernie Pyle and Captain Waskow
In December 1943 war correspondent Ernie Pyle , columnist for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate, returned to the safety of the rear lin...
rayboomhower.blogspot.com
“Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.” P.D. James, born on this day in 1920
"I like gentle people, because there are so many in the world who are not gentle." Ernie Pyle
"I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities.” Ernie Pyle, born OTD in 1900 rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2017/04/erni...
Ernie and Me: An Appreciation
Each August thousands of high school graduates from the Hoosier State and around the country descend upon Bloomington to begin their colleg...
rayboomhower.blogspot.com