GDG- Re: magazines with errors

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Dave Schultz writes:

>>>>>With that said, I have completed two manuscripts  concerning horse 
artillery, i.e., "Brandy Station" and "Aldie to Upperville."  I am not a cavalry 
expert nor do I suggest I am a horse artillery expert, thus  both works were 
sent to the two most formable cavalry experts I know ... Eric  Wittenburg and J. 
D. Petruzzi. I would not even consider publication without  revising whatever 
it is they suggest. If they in fact suggest neither be  published it was time 
well spent.>>>>>
Any good author should/would do that I think.  I am no slouch when it  comes 
to Civil War flags but the books that I am writing will not be published  
until Howard Madaus and a couple others sign off on them!  You can always  miss 
something yourself and peer review is a great way to make sure that the  bases 
are covered as well as they can be.  There are some CW flag books out  there 
that were not sent to any of the flag experts that I know and they are  full of 
errors because of that.
 
At the CW conference in Illinois on Saturday, I went to dinner with some  
attendees, the conference organizers (Decatur, ILL CWRT), a retired professor  
from Illinois State who was also a presenter and Fred Ray, the  author.  We 
discussed how books often come out these days without peer  review and thus 
contain errors because of that and that some university presses  are at the top of 
the list for failing to do this.  One of the other  speakers, a book author who 
wrote a decent book on what I consider a critical  phase and town of the 
early war in the West that pertains to the start of the  river campaigns, gave a 
program that contained the same errors in it that the  book also contained - 
which I reviewed for the Clarksville CWRT  newsletter.  While speaking with the 
author, I was in a quandary as to how  to handle this and decided just to not 
broach the errors at all but instead gave  praise to a couple chapters that 
were very good and poignant.
 
This book, as the author explained in the program, was sent to peer review  
by "some subject matter experts", but if that was the case, then they did not  
know their subject whatsoever!  I am an expert on this campaign and lead  
tours to the place the book covers.  I also know a couple other experts who  were 
not contacted about the book either.  My review noted several glaring  errors 
(two of which, as I said, were in the program) as well as several errors  of 
ommission.  Not only was I in a quandary in dealing with the author (the  book 
was published by a university press), but quite a few copies of the book  were 
sold at the conference and now there's a lot of people that will read it  and 
think everything is A-OK.  Those that get the Clarksville CWRT  newsletter 
knew where those errors were when they bought the book (we meet at a  Borders 
book store) and they did so because I also stated the good parts  that still 
made it a worthwhile purchase.
 
I did mention to the author that if they were going to do a revised edition  
at some point that I would he very happy to share a bunch of my research with  
them while also politely mentioning one critical ommission that I thought was 
 key to much of the book's story.  The author did state that they would like  
me to give them a detailed tour at some point, in which case I will have to  
inform them of some of the errors just because of the tour itself.  There's  
just no way around it at that point.
 
I probably have let a number of people down in some ways who bought the  book 
- which was/is still worth getting - by not going into any of the things  
that I noted in it.
 
I think that if a publication runs an article such as being  discussed here 
that the experts should write in and make them known via a  letter.  I think 
that's a duty actually.  It happens all the time in  these CW magazines anyway.
 
Greg Biggs







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