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Philip White Well, I’ve done it, and I’m pretty pleased with myself. I finally finished the remaining three chapters of my next book. Well, kinda. In fact, what I really did was send the rest of the first draft to the two generous souls who are reviewing my manuscript. Now for the fun part. And by fun, I mean death-to-the-ego-and-all-my-hopes-and-dreams. Unfortunately for me, some editors just want to watch the world burn . You see, soon enough my inbox will light up with e-mails, containing page after page of edit afflicted prose. And with each new comment, redline and question, I will die a little. Or at least my ego will. In a perfect, pain-free world, writers could just churn out a bunch of words, revise them ourselves and then fling them out to the unsuspecting public. Oh, wait, we can. I keep forgetting about self-publishing. But alas, those of us who go the traditional route of talking an academic or trade press into publishing our portable monuments to how smart we think we are...

Philip White  When we think about the budget mess in Washington, it’s easy to focus on how it affects what’s now and what’s next. But what’s often overlooked is how bu dget cuts impact the study of the past. Or, how those cuts might shape history for current and future generations. Harry S. Truman's farm home in Grandview, Missouri In the past year, I’ve spent many a Saturday morning at the Harry S. Truman Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., merrily panning for research gold sifting through umpteen boxes and folders. Thankfully the museum and the researcher’s reading room/library will not be closing. But as of March 24 , Truman’s old white-board home in Independence (which he far preferred to the other White House he lived in, dubbing the latter, “ the great white jail ”) will be closed on national holidays, Sundays and Mondays. The Noland house across the street, which once belonged to Truman’s cousins, is being shuttered for good. And though visitors can still mosey around t...

Philip White . Philip White signing copies of his book, Our Supreme Task , at Well Read, March 2012 The commonly accepted narrative about bookstores is that they’re doomed. People simply won’t go to bricks-and-mortar spaces to buy hardbacks and softcovers when they can pull up a web browser, click or tap a couple of times, and boom! Either an e-book is on their screen or that supposedly archaic bundle of paper is on its way. But while certain undeniable facts—the closing of Borders and the rise of Amazon as the alpha dog in the bookselling industry among them—prove this impression to be true-ish, there are other signs that cast doubt on it. Some of these are factual and some anecdotal. In the case of the latter, Half Price Books is always jam packed when I go into one of the four Kansas City locations to buy more books I probably don’t need. Also, I recently read The Atlantic ’s feature on Ann Patchett , who is not only bankrolling a bookstore in Nashville but also got a spot on the Co...