Colin Powell recalls Joe Persico in today's Gazette

Gloversville native Persico's work, friendship recalled

Author died Saturday at 84

Bill Buell, Schenectady Gazette

GUILDERLAND — Colin Powell didn’t need a second meeting. As soon as he and Joseph Persico shook hands for the first time, something told the general he had found his man.“We had gone through numerous candidates and no one had clicked,” said the former U.S. secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was looking for a collaborator to write his autobiography in 1993. “I was actually getting a bit desperate. Then my agent said, ‘We have one more guy, this Persico guy,’ so I said, ‘OK, let’s meet him.’ Well, we hit it off pretty well. He became my collaborator, and it was one of the best choices I ever made in my life.”

More in the Gazette:   http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/sep/04/gloversville-native-persicos-work-friendship-fondl/

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More on Joe Persico in the Times Union

Two community treasures lost: An appreciation

Paul Grondahl, Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Joe was an acclaimed historian and the author of 12 books. You may have seen him as a "talking head" expert in History Channel documentaries or as a guest on "Face the Nation" and "Morning Joe." His books had reached the best-seller list and "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial" was made into a TV movie. The Gloversville native was among a troika of the region's most famous authors alongside Albany natives Andy Rooney and Bill Kennedy.

Yet he was always willing to write a blurb, celebrate literary successes of friends and offer pragmatic advice to writers like myself. He called me "young fella" even after I turned 55 this summer. He said there were no shortcuts to success. He had a small sign in a book-lined study at his Guilderland apartment that was a kind of mantra: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

He worked hard to the end.

More:  http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Two-community-treasures-lost-An-appreciation-5729437.php

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Lincoln Fans are "Just Nutty"

The TU's Paul Grondahl writes about David W. Blight's current project, a new biography of Frederick Douglass based on newly discovered sources, as well as Blight's opinion of people who are obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. Blight visit Albany tomorrow, 7:30 p.m. at the State Museum.

[Blight] is currently immersed in writing a biography of Frederick Douglass, scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2013, a subject he has been researching since his doctoral dissertation 23 years ago.

"You have to make a subject an obsession to write seriously about it, although I have moments I'd like to get Frederick Douglass out of my life," Blight said. What spurred him to sign a book contract for a biography of the abolitionist, orator and writer was his discovery three years ago of nine personal scrapbooks kept by Douglass' sons, mostly newspaper clippings that documented the final 35 years of the life of their father, who died in 1895. The scrapbooks are owned by a collector in Savannah, Ga., who made them available to Blight.

"I figured if there can be more than 11,000 books on Lincoln, I can write the fifth or sixth biography of Douglass," Blight said.

He added, "I've only written essays on Lincoln, but I've encountered a lot of Lincoln people and their obsession is crazy. They need a shrink. They're just nutty."

More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Civil-War-historian-to-speak-4021294.php

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Civil War Historian David Blight in the Times Union

Civil War historian David W. Blight will visit tomorrow to speak about the Civil War in the American imagination at the New York State Museum, 7:30 p.m., Clark Auditorium.

Paul Grondahl wrote an article about Blight this past Sunday in the Times Union:

"Even after 150 years, the Civil War exerts a powerful and conflicting hold on the collective American imagination unlike any other event in the nation's history."

"David Blight, a professor of American history at Yale University and author of two books on the Civil War that have been called 'memory studies,' will present a lecture titled 'America Divided, Then and Now: The Civil War in our National and Local Imagination.'"

More:  http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Civil-War-historian-to-speak-4021294.php

More on the event:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/blight_david12.html

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