Once upon a time, an author looking for information had to advertise in the paper. She or he would place a notice in the New York Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement, saying that he or she was working on biography of so-and-so and would like to speak to anyone who knew him or her. I tried to get a notice like that printed when Sophie Mumford was 96 and we were starting to put her notes and memories together for a book. It was 1996 and I [...]
The company I own, Berkshire Publishing Group, conducts a lot of business in China, so I
A year ago I wrote one of my monthly e-letters about how I've moved between literature and science, and I'm glad now, as I revisit the Eliot story after the death of Valerie Eliot, that I recorded some ideas about my work on the Eliot letters and about the "two cultures." I was quoted in a number of articles last week:
I just went back to something I wrote four years ago in Shanghai, working on a letter about my early days in publishing and how they shaped what Berkshire Publishing Group is becoming today, and found that I was writing then about community as well as about my October letter's subject: the "two cultures" and how we are working to bring this great divide through interdisciplinary collaboration. I've also been thinking about the protests near Wall Street in New York, only a couple miles from where I sit on a [...]
Last month, I suggested that we schedule a staff canoe trip and picnic for this afternoon, knowing it would be Day 2 of my return from China and planning to use the occasion to nap outside. The weather cooperated perfectly. I dozed in the sun on a grassy bank by a mountain lake, with a Berkshire blue sky and huge glossy clouds to look at when I occasionally opened my eyes. I made sure to get plenty of sun on back of knees. That's an old military trick for curing [...]