David Haward Bain

Last updated

David Haward Bain (born February 23, 1949) is an American writer of nonfiction, a lecturer, an editor, and was a longtime instructor in literature and creative writing at Middlebury College. Bain has been affiliated with the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference since 1980. He is also a lifelong musician. Bain is primarily known for his work of narrative history, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad; a historical travel memoir, The Old Iron Road: An Epic of Roads, Rails, and the Urge to Go West; and an earlier braided historical/travel work, Sitting In Darkness: Americans in the Philippines. He is a fellow in the Society of American Historians.

Contents

David Haward Bain, American writer, editor, lecturer. David.Haward.Bain1.jpg
David Haward Bain, American writer, editor, lecturer.

Work overview

External video
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Booknotes interview with David Haward Bain on Empire Express, March 5, 2000, C-SPAN
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Presentation by Bain on The Old Iron Road, May 19, 2004, C-SPAN

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad has been reviewed positively by Wall Street Journal, Washington Post Book World, Kirkus Reviews, Denver Post, and Hartford Courant. It has been named A New York Times Notable Book; one of Library Journal Best Books 1999; Main Selection, Book of the Month Club, History Book Club; Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Award; Finalist, Francis Parkman Prize; National Railway & Locomotive History Society Award; [1] New England Historical Association Book Award; The American Experience: Transcontinental Railroad documentary, PBS.

The Old Iron Road: An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West has been reviewed positively by Los Angeles Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times Book Review, and Chicago Tribune. It was named a Book Sense Travel Literature Bestseller.

Sitting In Darkness: Americans in the Philippines has been reviewed positively by New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Philadelphia Inquirer, and was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize, 1985.

Bitter Waters: America’s Forgotten Naval Exploring Mission to the Dead Sea, 1848 has been reviewed positively by American Library Association Booklist, Roanoke VA Times, History Book Club, and Kirkus Reviews.

Early life

Bain was born in Camden, New Jersey, last home of Walt Whitman (Bain wrote about it in a long-form essay, "Camden Bound: Going Home After a Lifetime of Absence.") [2] His parents were David Bain, a sales manager for RCA (Radio Corporation of America), selling broadcasting equipment after pre-war years in radio engineering and announcing across the South, and Rosemary Haward Bain, who gave up a career in on-air radio in her native Kansas City to concentrate on marriage and family. They had four children; David Haward Bain was the eldest. He and siblings Terry Bain, Christopher Bain, and Lisa Bain, were raised in Haddonfield and Westmont, New Jersey; Takoma Park and Chevy Chase, Maryland; and finally in Port Washington, Long Island, New York. Bain graduated from Boston University in 1971, majoring in journalism and political science and writing for three campus newspapers. His most influential professors were Norman B. Moyes and Howard Zinn, and he received a Hearst Award for Excellence in Newswriting on the topic of anti-war protests in the Vietnam era. [3]

Work history

In 1973 in New York City, Bain began working in the editorial departments of several book publishers, including Alfred A. Knopf (during the early Robert Gottlieb years), Stonehill, Crown Publishers/Harmony Books (when it was still a downtown family business), and Houghton Mifflin (New York), as well as doing projects at Macmillan Inc. and other firms and on staff at the first American Book Awards. Among the writers with whom he worked in these apprentice years were Alistair Cooke (America), Richard Kluger (Simple Justice), Robert Caro (The Power Broker), Jonathan Spence (Emperor of China), Martin Amis (The Rachel Papers), Shere Hite (The Hite Report), and Carolyn Heilbrun (Lady Ottoline’s Album). [4]

Writing career

Bain became a full-time writer in 1978, beginning his first book, Aftershocks, and thereupon contributing many articles and reviews to The New York Times, the New York Times Book Review (to date, 32 reviews), Newsday (15), the Philadelphia Inquirer (22), Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and articles and essays in Smithsonian, American Heritage, TV Guide, Glamour, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and a number of travel magazines. [5]

Books

Forbidden City: Family Secrets, Covert Love, and a Mysterious Death and Cover-Up on Legation Street, Peking, 1940. Forthcoming.

Big Payoff: The Kidnapping of Mary McElroy: A Kansas City Chronicle of Greed, Corruption, and the Power of Love in the Great American Depression. Forthcoming.

The Girl Widow Unveiled: Unraveling Dark Secrets in an American Family, longform personal/historical essay, Ebook, BookBaby, released under colophon of Gideon Abbey Press, 2013.

Mighty Good Road: Writings on Railroads, the West, and American History, ebook. Thirty-seven essays, talks, and reviews. Ebook, all platforms, released under colophon of Gideon Abbey Press, 2011.

Camden Bound: Going Home After a Lifetime of Absence, long-form stand-alone essay. Ebook, all platforms, released under colophon of Gideon Abbey Press, 2011.

Bitter Waters: America’s Forgotten Naval Mission to the Dead Sea, 1848 (Overlook Press, 2011; ebook, 2012).

The Old Iron Road: An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West (Viking Press, 2004; Penguin, 2005; ebook forthcoming from Gideon Abbey Press)

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (Viking Press, 1999; Penguin, 2000; ebook, 2010).

The College on the Hill: A Browser's History for the Bicentennial, Middlebury College Press (cloth), October 1999.

Whose Woods These Are: The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, 1926–1992 (The Ecco Press, 1993).

Sitting In Darkness: Americans in the Philippines (Houghton Mifflin, 1984; Penguin, with new material, 1986; Ebook, with newer material, 2013, BookBaby under colophon of Gideon Abbey Press). Received a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize, 1985.

Aftershocks: A Tale of Two Victims (Methuen, 1980; Penguin, with new material, 1986). FN {http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/enam/faculty/node/40761]

Selected essays

"Camden Bound: Going Home After a Lifetime of Absence." Personal/literary essay about Camden, NJ. (Walt Whitman death place; present author's birthplace). Prairie Schooner , Fall 1998. Selected for The Best of Prairie Schooner Essays (ed. Raz & Flaherty), U. Nebraska Press, 2000. Ebook, released under colophon of Gideon Abbey Press, 2013.

"The House on Hemenway Hill," essay, Prairie Schooner, Winter 1996. [6] Reader's Choice Award, 1997. Among year's top 100 essays selected by series editor Robert Atwan for consideration in The Best American Essays 1997.

"A House and a Household: Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson," Kenyon Review, Summer 1989. [7] Reprinted in Pack and Parini (eds.), The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Essays, University Press of New England, 1989.

"Augusto Sandino: The Man Who Made the Yanquis Go Home," American Heritage, August–September 1985. Reprinted in Andrew C. Kimmens (ed.), Nicaragua and the United States, H.W. Wilson, 1987. Reprinted in Bain, Mighty Good Road: Writings on Railroads, the West, and American History, 2011 ebook.

"Joseph Battell," chapter in A History of Ripton, Vermont: The Story of a Green Mountain Town, 1781–1981, by Charles A. Billings. Niche Arts, 2019.

Series of 5 "place" essays in Middlebury Magazine, 2012–2013, 2018. "The Observer: Inside the Halls of Science," Middlebury Magazine, Summer 2012; "The Observer: Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey," Middlebury Magazine, Fall 2012; "The Observer: Davis Library," Middlebury Magazine, Winter 2013; "The Observer: Mahaney Arts Center," Middlebury Magazine, Spring 2013; "The Observer: Gamaliel Painter Hall," MiddWire, Fall 2018.

"Frost at Bread Loaf," Burlington Free Press, June 29, 2012.

"Letter From Manila: How the Press Helped to Dump a Despot," Columbia Journalism Review, May–June 1986. COVER.

"Frederick Funston: The Acerbic Warrior," Smithsonian Magazine, May 1989. FN

Selected authored reviews

"Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West" (Stephen Fried), review, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 2010.

"American Massacre: The Tragedy of Mountain Meadows (Sally Denton)," review, New York Times Book Review, September 27, 2003.

"Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America (Henry Kisor)," review, New York Times Book Review, 20 March 1994.

"The Civil War in the American West (Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.)," review, New York Times Book Review, 8 March 1992.

"In Our Own Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (Stanley Karnow)," review, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 1989. FRONT PAGE.

"Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effect on the Cold War (Christopher Simpson)," review, Newsday, May 1988.

"Union Pacific: Birth of a Railroad (Maury Klein), Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 December 1987.

"Waltzing With a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (Raymond Bonner)," review, Newsday, 17 May 1987. FRONT PAGE.

"Corazon Aquino (Lucy Komisar)," review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 10 May 1987. FRONT PAGE.

"War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (Fred Dower)," review, Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 July 1986. FRONT PAGE.

"The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (Studs Terkel)," review, Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 October 1984. FRONT PAGE.

"The Spanish War: An American Epic, 1898 (G. O'Toole)," review, St. Petersburg Times, 21 October 1984.

"Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (Jonathan Kwitny)," review, Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 October 1984.

"The Passionate War: Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War (Peter Wyden)," review, Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 July 1983. FRONT PAGE.

"Widows (Ariel Dorfman)," review, Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 July 1983. FRONT PAGE. FN

Teaching career

Following his fellowship year (1980) at Middlebury College's annual Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference on its Ripton campus in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Bain was named to the conference faculty for ten subsequent years, thereafter serving terms on the admissions board and other committees; designated the Bread Loaf Historian in the mid-1980’s, he has lectured annually at the conference for many years. [8]

In 1987, Bain joined the faculty at Middlebury College in Vermont, with the Creative Writing Program in the English and American Literatures Department, as lecturer, part-time, and ultimately as senior lecturer, for 32 years. Also, he was an affiliate with the Environmental Studies Program. Bain retired in June 2019.

Personal life

Bain married the painter Mary Smyth Duffy in 1981; she died in 2002. He has two children. He is partnered with Linda Fotheringill.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middlebury College</span> Private college in Middlebury, Vermont, US

Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,773 undergraduates from all 50 states and 74 countries and offers 45 majors in the arts and humanities as well as joint engineering programs. In addition to its undergraduate liberal arts program, the school also has graduate schools, the Middlebury College Language Schools, the Bread Loaf School of English, and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, as well as its C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad international programs. It is among the Little Ivies, an unofficial group of academically selective liberal arts colleges, mostly in the northeastern United States.

The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is an author's conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1926, it has been called by The New Yorker "the oldest and most prestigious writers' conference in the country." Bread Loaf is a program of Middlebury College and at its inception was closely associated with Robert Frost, who attended a total of 29 sessions.

Craig Arnold was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, Shells (1999), was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His many honors include the 2005 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature, The Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, an Alfred Hodder Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a MacDowell Fellowship.

David Milofsky is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction. He is the author of six novels and a collection of short fiction: "A Milwaukee Inheritance," "Managed Care,"'A Friend of Kissinger, Playing from Memory, Eternal People and Color of Law. In addition to writing fiction, he works regularly as a journalist. His short stories, articles and reviews have appeared widely in a variety of national periodicals, including the Milwaukee Journal, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine. He worked as a script editor on the National Public Radio drama project, Earplay, and has also served as editor of the literary journals Denver Quarterly and Colorado Review. He founded the Center for Literary Publishing and was the founding editor of the Colorado Prize in Poetry. Since 2002 he has written the "Bookbeat" column for The Denver Post. In 1992 he was one of the founders of the Evil Companions Literary Award, which recognizes the contributions of writers who either live in the West or write about the region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reetika Vazirani</span> American poet

Reetika Gina Vazirani was an Asian Indian-American immigrant poet and educator.

Beth Kephart is an American author of non-fiction, poetry and young adult fiction for adults and teens. Kephart has written and published over ten books and has received several grants and awards for her writing. She was a National Book Award Finalist for her book "A Slant of the Sun: One Child’s Courage." She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and son. She is a writing partner in the marketing communications firm, Fusion Communications, and occasionally teaches and lectures at the University of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Collier (poet)</span> American writer and academic

Michael Robert Collier is an American poet, teacher, creative writing program administrator and editor. He has published five books of original poetry, a translation of Euripides' Medea, a book of prose pieces about poetry, and has edited three anthologies of poetry. From 2001 to 2004 he was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. As of 2011, he is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park and the poetry editorial consultant for Houghton Mifflin.

April Ossmann is an American poet, teacher, and editor. She is author of Event Boundaries and Anxious Music, and has had her poems published in many literary journals including Harvard Review,Hayden’s Ferry Review,Puerto del Sol,Seneca Review,Passages North,Mid-American Review, and Colorado Review, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse, and Contemporary Poetry of New England. Her awards include a 2000 Prairie Schooner Reader's Choice Award. Her essays have been published in Poets & Writers, and by the Poetry Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonia Raiziss</span> American poet

Sonia Raiziss Giop was an American poet, critic, and translator.

Sydney Lea is an American poet, novelist, essayist, editor, and professor. He was the founding editor of the New England Review and was the Poet Laureate of Vermont from 2011 to 2015. Lea's writings focus the outdoors, woods, and rural life New England and "the mysteries and teachings of the natural world."

Eugene Gloria is a Filipino-born American poet.

Jason Schneiderman is an American poet.

Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (2010), and the essay collections, Abandon Me (2017) and Girlhood (2021).

Robert Pack is an American poet and critic, and Distinguished Senior Professor in the Davidson Honors College at the University of Montana - Missoula. For thirty-four years he taught at Middlebury College and from 1973 to 1995 served as director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is the author of twenty-two books of poetry and criticism. Pack has been called, by Harold Bloom, an heir to Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson, and has himself published a volume of admiring essays on Frost's poetry. He has co-edited several books with Jay Parini, including Writers on Writing: A Breadloaf Anthology.

Shann Ray is an American poet, novelist, and scholar of forgiveness. He writes poetry and literary fiction under the name Shann Ray in honor of his mother Saundra Rae, and social science as Shann Ray Ferch. He is the author of the novel American Copper, American Masculine: Stories, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke: Stories, Sweetclover: Poems, Atomic Theory 7: Poems and Balefire: Poems. He is also the editor with Larry C. Spears of Conversations on Servant Leadership: Insights on Human Courage in Life and Work and The Spirit of Servant Leadership, and the editor with Jiying Song of Servant Leadership and Forgiveness: How Leaders Help Heal the Heart of the World. His work has appeared worldwide in literary magazines and scientific journals, including Poetry (magazine), McSweeney's, Poetry International, Narrative Magazine, the Journal of Counseling and Development, the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, and the Voices of Servant Leadership Series.

<i>Empire Express</i> Mughal empire Muhmmad shah(1719-1747AD)

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad is a book written by David Haward Bain, published in 2000. It follows the initial conception of the idea of a transcontinental railroad, during the two decades before the Civil War, to the work of the engineers and entrepreneurs who fixed the route, assembled financing, drafted a work force and launched the two lines toward the eventual meeting point at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869. The story alternates between the Union Pacific driving west from Omaha and the Central Pacific blasting through the mountains from California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitchell S. Jackson</span> American writer

Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Jackson (poet)</span> American educator and poet

Gary Jackson is an American educator and poet. He had received a Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellowship and was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2009.

Elise Juska is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is as an associate professor at the University of the Arts, where she received the 2014 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

References

  1. "Railroad History Awards". Railroad History (185): 144–146. 2001. ISSN   0090-7847. JSTOR   43524095.
  2. Prairie Schooner, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Fall 1998), pp. 104-144
  3. "Bain, David Haward 1949," Encyclopedia.com, updated 25 September 2019. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/bain-david-haward-1949; "College Chronicler," by Ed Barna. Rutland Daily Herald (VT), December 16, 1999, pp. C1, C8-C9. https://rutlandherald.newspapers.com/image/535167252/?terms=David%2BHaward%2BBain; http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/enam/faculty/node/40761; "In Person: David Bain," by Kevin Kelly. Rutland Daily Herald Aug 6, 2006, p. 47. https://rutlandherald.newspapers.com/image/536145323/
  4. "Bain, David Haward 1949," Encyclopedia.com, updated 25 September 2019. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/bain-david-haward-1949; "College Chronicler," by Ed Barna. Rutland Daily Herald (VT), December 16, 1999, pp. C1, C8-C9. https://rutlandherald.newspapers.com/image/535167252/?terms=David%2BHaward%2BBain; http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/enam/faculty/node/40761; "In Person: David Bain," by Kevin Kelly. Rutland Daily Herald Aug 6, 2006, p. 47. https://rutlandherald.newspapers.com/image/536145323/
  5. "David Haward Bain". Middlebury. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
  6. Prairie Schooner, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Winter 1996), pp. 66-115
  7. The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), pp. 86-99
  8. "Bread Loaf: A Writers’ Place," by Sally Pollak. Burlington Free Press (VT), November 7, 1993. https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com/image/201956592/?terms=David%2BBain