Book Launch New Hooker Biography

[Saint Jude]

I'll be interested in what the author has to say (if anything) about Hooker's drinking before, during, and after the Battle of Chancellorsville.

 

[35th MA InfRegt]

Thanks for noticing the book announcement. I hope everyone enjoys what I've done when it's released. I completed what I think will be seen as a "balanced" appraisal of Hooker's life. I also hope people learn some new things. My perspectives will be somewhat controversial in certain areas but I promise I haven't made anything up. Hooker's life was filled with controversy, after all.

Best to all,

Darin

For myself, I have no ax to grind concerning Hooker. My knowledge of his life and career is, I admit, not deep. In terms of biography, I try to avoid both hagiography and apologia but I am always up to learn something new. I am looking forward to your book.

 

[milhistbuff1]

I'm curious to see what new information/sources have been unearthed since the last bio of Gen. Hooker.

 

[MDcivilwarbuff]

I'm curious to see what new information/sources have been unearthed since the last bio of Gen. Hooker.

Is guess it's probably mostly an update to medical scholarship surrounding his concussion at Chancellorsville, or maybe some additional info about his marriage to Olivia, if the bio is presenting his whole life and not just the military exploits.

 

[LibertyAndUnion]

I'm curious to see what new information/sources have been unearthed since the last bio of Gen. Hooker.

I don't wish to give too much away, but my bibliography will be twice as many pages (give or take) as Hebert's.

 

[Belfoured]

For myself, I have no ax to grind concerning Hooker. My knowledge of his life and career is, I admit, not deep. In terms of biography, I try to avoid both hagiography and apologia but I am always up to learn something new. I am looking forward to your book.

I agree. And there's a difference between (1) revision driving the research/facts and (2) research/facts driving the revision. Eighty years is a very long time and as we know massive amounts of information have emerged or been located since. When the Hooker bio was written digital access to records was a futuristic fantasy.

 

[LibertyAndUnion]

I agree. And there's a difference between (1) revision driving the research/facts and (2) research/facts driving the revision. Eighty years is a very long time and as we know massive amounts of information have emerged or been located since. When the Hooker bio was written digital access to records was a futuristic fantasy.

Excellent points. Historical research is a science, thus facts gleaned from observation must drive conclusions. Logically then, new conclusions should challenge orthodoxy when prevailing wisdom can't be sustained through an analysis of sources. Regarding your last point, having written four Civil War books in the Internet age, I don't see who it could have been done way back in the day. Research can and should be a long and continuing process, even as writing goes forward, but writing books without digitized records must have been incredibly difficult. And making an index without great word processing software? How was that ever done? I wonder how many human work hours were required to make the index for just one book in the Official Records.

 

[Belfoured]

Excellent points. Historical research is a science, thus facts gleaned from observation must drive conclusions. Logically then, new conclusions should challenge orthodoxy when prevailing wisdom can't be sustained through an analysis of sources. Regarding your last point, having written four Civil War books in the Internet age, I don't see who it could have been done way back in the day. Research can and should be a long and continuing process, even as writing goes forward, but writing books without digitized records must have been incredibly difficult. And making an index without great word processing software? How was that ever done? I wonder how many human work hours were required to make the index for just one book in the Official Records.

Good points. I mentioned the two revision options because Civil War history is occasionally the subject of a book or article where it appears that revision is the goal and - consciously or not - the research is shoehorned to fit it. Where the research/facts warrant, of course, revision is legitimate history. And it's always valid to question "conventional wisdom" by going back and looking at what it was based on. Sometimes sources were missed or just misread. But other times it's "conventional" because it was right all along, even if there might be some tweaks.

I think paleontology is a good analogy. In the past decade or so some of the "recently-discovered"/"new" dinosaur species are actually a reclassification of fossils that were found several years ago and were stored away based on what was known at the time as "just another Species X" maxilla or middle cervical centra. Then somebody takes a new look based on more recent finds and discovers that it was wrongly classified. Of course, for others they still fit the original classification after being re-examined.

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

@LibertyAndUnion curious to know your opinion of the Jack Ballard dissertation about Hooker, I think from the 1990s. It is quite lengthy despite only covering through the end of Chancellorsville. It was supposedly going to be turned into a published biography, but that never happened.

 

[Belfoured]

@LibertyAndUnion curious to know your opinion of the Jack Ballard dissertation about Hooker, I think from the 1990s. It is quite lengthy despite only covering through the end of Chancellorsville. It was supposedly going to be turned into a published biography, but that never happened.

I read a USMC C&S College paper a ways back which used it as a source. Based on the source notes I recall that it was at least 1300-1400 pages. That's a lot of effort to re-work/collapse into something a publisher would look at, especially if it's not a complete biography.

It would be nice if some of these universities digitized this stuff. One of the most frustrating is Leon Tenney's 1992 thesis study of the opposing strengths during the Seven Days. He did it under Harsh at GMU and it's been cited by Harsh in a few books but to read it you have to head to GMU and get allowed through the gates. I'm lucky because I got Tenney's limited, self-published 2012 follow-up study reassessing each side's losses and some of his 1992 work is in there. It should be more widely available.

 

[LibertyAndUnion]

@LibertyAndUnion curious to know your opinion of the Jack Ballard dissertation about Hooker, I think from the 1990s. It is quite lengthy despite only covering through the end of Chancellorsville. It was supposedly going to be turned into a published biography, but that never happened.

Excellent question. I really enjoyed Ballard's work. He was very thorough, although he didn't say much about Joe after Chancellorsville. I disagree with Dr. Ballard on some key points, but he did a fine job.

 

[Belfoured]

Excellent question. I really enjoyed Ballard's work. He was very thorough, although he didn't say much about Joe after Chancellorsville. I disagree with Dr. Ballard on some key points, but he did a fine job.

It's interesting that he limited the scope that way, given Hooker's significant roles in the Chattanooga Campaign and in the Atlanta Campaign (at least until he decided on July 28 to collect his toys and go home.). It's not as though after Chancellorsville he finished the war in a backwater - like, say, McClernand after Vicksburg, Pope after 2BR, or McDowell after 1BR.

 

[milhistbuff1]

I don't wish to give too much away, but my bibliography will be twice as many pages (give or take) as Hebert's.

I'm more than willing to wait and thank you for taking the time to research/write. Look forward to adding to tbr from the bibliography in due course.

 

[milhistbuff1]

Is guess it's probably mostly an update to medical scholarship surrounding his concussion at Chancellorsville, or maybe some additional info about his marriage to Olivia, if the bio is presenting his whole life and not just the military exploits.

Look forward to reading about those aspects and many others.

 

[gjpratt]

I believe a trove of personal documents emerged in the 1980s from the estate of one of his last living descendants. I acquired a tranche of documents from the dealer who handled their disposition (I am pretty sure that copies of the entire set of documents were made and archived).

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

It's interesting that he limited the scope that way, given Hooker's significant roles in the Chattanooga Campaign and in the Atlanta Campaign

I have a feeling Ballard got in so deep (history dissertations aren't normally 1000+ pages) that he bailed out at a reasonable stopping point. Perhaps he envisioned a two-volume biography?

 

[Belfoured]

I have a feeling Ballard got in so deep (history dissertations aren't normally 1000+ pages) that he bailed out at a reasonable stopping point. Perhaps he envisioned a two-volume biography?

That could be. Obviously I haven't seen it but - subject to that important caveat - a very rough calculation for 1400 pages would be 700 in book form. That's based on a few others I know of that later were pretty much re-published "as is" in books. That's a big biography on a figure like Hooker that isn't a full bio. And turning out two sizable volumes on somebody like him will have limited takers. Purely my opinion.

 

[SWS]

Ah, Joe Hooker, the man who would have driven Lee back to Hanover Junction a year in advance, and perhaps to Richmond. Always found him charismatic and memorable in appearance.

Can you imagine an Overland Campaign with Butterfield managing logistics?

 

[rbasin]

It's interesting that he limited the scope that way, given Hooker's significant roles in the Chattanooga Campaign and in the Atlanta Campaign (at least until he decided on July 28 to collect his toys and go home.). It's not as though after Chancellorsville he finished the war in a backwater - like, say, McClernand after Vicksburg, Pope after 2BR, or McDowell after 1BR.

He tried to rescind his resignation, but Sherman didn't accept it

 

[MDcivilwarbuff]

Look forward to reading about those aspects and many others.

Hooker's introduction to, courtship of, marriage of, and life after the death of his wife show us a much different picture of him than we typically see. I'll leave it at that and let the book reveal the rest.