To get updates of this Blog, email Norm to let him know.

We are pleased and excited!

Third Mind Bookstore, on Washington Street in Downtown Ann Arbor, is currently displaying all 6 books we have authored and published. Stop in and say Hi to owner Arthur Nusbaum and check out Third Mind’s special books and other items.  And Thank You, Arthur, for your support of local authors.

To get updates of this Blog, email Norm to let him know.

From Norm,

   I have completed the final draft of a book on the life of Harriet Quimby. No Reason to Be Afraid: The indominable spirit of Harriet Quimby is narrative nonfiction relating the life story of a captivating “New Woman” with a turn-of-the-last-century spirit of independence and freedom. Harriet Quimby achieved many firsts during her life–one of the first American women with a driver’s license and her own runabout; a popular international journalist and the first to use a camera on her many trips; a silent-film actress who wrote screenplays for D.W. Griffith; the nation’s first woman to earn a pilot’s license; the first woman to fly solo over Mexico and who gained international celebrity as the first to fly across the English Channel; and a pilot paid a handsome $100,000 in 1912 to be the featured flier in the Boston Air Show.

   Raised on an isolated Michigan farmstead, she matured into a vibrant and audacious young woman who gained special status, first in the artistic community of turn-of-the-century San Francisco, and then in New York as a popular writer and adventurous pilot. The tragedy of her all-too-brief life story encompasses much of historical interest and mirrors one of the most interesting eras of American history.

   I would share a .pdf of this book with anyone interested in being a reader and providing thoughts for me on the narrative. Let me know if you are interested.

History is filled with the stories of Autocrats. Thomas Durant managed construction the Union Pacific’s transcontinental railroad. As described in my new book, Crossing the Continent, his character was typical of this autocratical style of leadership.

“His manner of dealing with a complex situation was not to thread his way through the maze of possibilities but rather to sweep along with him everyone and everything that might be useful, leaving conflicts and choices to be sorted out later. Action, and not direction, was his forte. He longed to be at the center of events, barking orders to and demanding absolute obedience from subordinates whom he kept in ignorance of his true design. Often, he did not know himself what his ultimate design was. Like an inept monarch, he was more certain of his authority than of his policy and had a tendency to heed the last voice that advised him. The result was a pattern of frenzied activity riddled with false starts, wasted motion, confusion, and contradiction followed by hesitation, uncertainly, and delay. Fueled by nervous energy, Durant was a whirlwind blowing furiously, wreaking havoc in its wake before dying away.”

   Maury Klein. Union Pacific: Volume I, 1862-1893