Bookshop.org links are affiliate links.

Subscribe for free to the Drafting the Past newsletter for podcast updates, book reviews, and more. Paid subscribers get ad-free episodes and exclusive content.

In this episode, Kate interviews Dr. Thomas Andrews, a historian who cares deeply about the writing—and revision—process. Thomas is a professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder and is also the faculty director of the Center for the American West. He’s the author of three books, including the Bancroft-award winning Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies, and his newest book, The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Pandemic and the Fate of Reconstruction America. In addition to his own writing, he has interviewed historians as part of the Writer’s Studio feature in the journal Modern American History, which is a series of terrific interviews about how some of the most highly regarded American historians work. As you might imagine, Kate and Thomas had a great time talking about the writing process and especially Thomas’ love of revision. This one also includes a treadmill desk, a harrowing publishing tale, and why he might have taken Bill Cronon’s dissertation advice a little too seriously.

Mentioned in this episode

• Thomas Andrews, The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Pandemic and the Fate of Reconstruction America
• Thomas Andrews, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies
• Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War
• Susan Orlean, “The Walking Alive,” on using a treadmill desk
• Writer’s Studio feature archives in Modern American History journal
• Linda Gordon
• William Cronon
• Richard White
• Donald Worster
• Patricia Limerick
• Curb Your Enthusiasm

Welcome to the Drafting the Past podcast. I'm

Kate Carpenter, and in each episode, I interview a historian

about how they research and write history. My guest in this

episode is a historian who cares deeply about the writing

process, and I'm delighted to have a chance to talk with Dr.

Thomas Andrews.

Thanks so much for having me, Kate.

Thomas is a professor of history at the

University of Colorado Boulder, and is also the faculty director

of the Center for the American West. He's the author of three

books, including the Bancroft Award-winning *Killing for Coal:

America's Deadliest Labor War*, *Coyote Valley: Deep History in

the High Rockies*, and his newest book, *The Great Horse

A Forgotten Pandemic and the Fate of Reconstruction

America*. In addition to his own writing, he has interviewed

historians as part of the Writer's Studio feature in the

journal Modern American History, which is a series of absolutely

terrific interviews about how some of the most highly regarded

American historians work. As you might imagine, we had a great

time talking about the writing process and especially Thomas's

love of revision. This one also includes a treadmill desk, a

harrowing publishing tale, and why he might have taken Bill

Cronon's dissertation advice a little too seriously. Here's my

conversation with Dr. Thomas Andrews.

I think my trajectory has been kind of

chaotic. Like I look back on it, and I'm— sometimes I wonder what

I was thinking. You know, it's a little bit, it's a little bit

haphazard, I guess is probably the single word that best

describes it. You know, I mean, my first book, Killing for Coal,

was really, you know, I mean, it was really driven by a desire to

use environmental—to show how environmental history could help

to explain a set of historical events where it didn't seem like

nature had any like clear cut, ostensible role, and so you know

that was a book that was in a lot of ways was sort of driven

initially by a kind of conceptual or theoretical

problem, but then you know I got so immersed in the story and I

had the opportunity to do basically, you know, full day

trips to the archives for several years, and so I was so

immersed in the stuff of that story that I got to go really

deep, and it had like a you know that that one had like a very

satisfying story arc. You know, I felt like I could that was

kind of like I think the most literary of of my books in some

ways, and then the second one, Coyote Valley: Deep History in

the high Rockies. That one, you know, I mean, to the point of

like randomness, it came out of a project for the National Park

Service that just sort of fell into my lap. It wasn't really

something I was I was looking to do, and you know, it was

initially a report for the Park Service, but then I I spent

enough time on it, got sufficiently committed to it

that I decided that I needed to turn it into a book, and it had

a much different timetable. You know, I mean, that book really

runs from like the last ice age to the present. It's about a

place that few people know, and it's not like the it's not an

obvious place to pick for doing a long term environmental

history. You know, so the the impetus for it really came out

of what the Park Service needed, rather rather than from you know

some sort of story that I really wanted to tell, and then this

this new book, The Great Horse Flu, is you know again had had

kind of a a strange trajectory where it started out as kind of

emerged from this big ambitious kind of crazy idea of writing an

animal's history of the United States, and I hit a point where

I just it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I

was going to go crazy if I kept trying to write that book. Every

chapter wanted to be its own book, and finally I just decided

that I had to give in and do that. Turn one of the chapters

into a book, and this was the, you know, this was the chapter

that I picked because it was the one that sort of it seemed most

manageable, which in retrospect may not have been true at all.

But that's kind of how I ended up on it. So yeah, I mean, I

think that you know when I sort of, you know, when I look back,

I I do, I mean the trajectory like I don't even know how I

would plot it. It's sort of it's been pretty strange, and I think

maybe moving forward, that's one thing I want to try to do is

have a bit more, you know, give a bit more forethought to what

types of projects I'm seeking out.

All right. Well, first, I want to know some about

how you work. When and where do you like to write?

Yeah. So I'm a morning person. You know, I'm

one of those people who kind of like wakes up, you know, way

too. I mean, I wake up way too early. I don't necessarily get

up way too early, but I wake up and my mind is just kind of

going. And I've long since realized that I do a lot of

background processing. And so, what works best for me is

writing really regularly, you know. So I try to write every

day or almost every day, I don't always pull that off, but I

would say probably for like you know eight or nine months of

most years, I'm writing almost every day, and then my goal is

to put in like 30 to 60 minutes, usually in the morning, usually

before other stuff starts intervening and demanding my

attention, you know. And then as far as where I write, my main

place to write is actually where I am right now, which is my home

office. So I have like a detached garage, and I used

actually used some of the prize money for my first book, I used

my Bancroft prize money to finish my garage and turn it

into an office where I could get away from my kids and actually

be able to to concentrate pretty reliably. And then to be a

little bit more specific, the place I do most of my writing is

actually on a treadmill desk. So I became a big fan of the

treadmill approach to doing work. From a, I think actually

the first time I knew that there was such a thing was from a

Susan Orlean article in the New Yorker, and I immediately was

like, oh yeah, I definitely need to experiment with one of those.

For quite a long time now, that's been like my main

workstation is I, you know, I walk and I write and I find that

the walking really helps. It keeps I think just like trying

to not fall off the treadmill keeps some of my more anxious

parts of my brain just like busy with something, and so they

don't like impinge on me as much as they used to. They have kind

of a, they have a job which is to just kind of keep me moving,

and then I feel like it kind of frees up my brain a little bit.

So that's kind of like my drafting mode, and then for

revision I can do in bigger chunks. That tends to be a lot

more random, so I'll do that, and you know, I'll do that in a

bigger variety of places.

How do you organize your research and your

writing?

Yeah, this is probably an area where I really

could learn some new things. I would say that I suffer from a

fair amount of disorganization. I mean, the basic way I tend to

write is I I take notes mostly within Endnote, sometimes just

in like Word documents, and then I usually just try to write up a

a really terrible initial draft. Yeah, I mean, often just on like

a really simple principle, like something that's chronological,

usually a combination of chronological and thematic. And

so, what I'm going for in a first draft, and you know, I

didn't realize this for a while, but I think it's what I've

always done. What I'm really going for in a first draft, I've

realized it's just an account. I'm just looking for like a

basic account of like here's what I think happened, here's

why I think it happened. Here's why I think it matters. And so

my, you know, my first drafts are really thick with evidence.

They're you know quote heavy. Like I'm just starting to try to

get my head around the material, and I'm beginning to try to

provide just some basic ligatures. And so you know, like

I think it's a way of drafting where I'm pretty like, for

better and for worse, it means that I'm pretty beholden to the

evidence in early drafts. And so one of the things I've realized

then is that like one of my main tasks as I revise is to, like,

my first draft, I always feel like my main obligation is to

the evidence and to the sources, but no reader should really care

past a certain point about that stuff, and so as I go through

successive drafts, what I'm, one of the things I'm really

consciously trying to do is to shift that, is to sort of shift

that burden of who or what the draft is for from the evidence,

and then eventually try to bring it over to the reader without

obviously compromising the evidence, or you know, making

anything up, or pulling off any of those sorts of historian's

no-nos.

Is there a point in the research process where

you know you're ready to start writing?

I love research, and I can research for a really

long time. Research never really feels done to me. It just, you

know, I think there's a point where there's definitely a point

in a project where I feel like it's really unlikely that I'm

going to find something tremendously important. Like I

feel like I've established the basic patterns. I've kind of

constrained the subject enough, but I start writing long before

that. I really, I get impatient, and I like to write. Writing is,

you know, I mean, I just think writing is fun, and I also just

get super anxious if I'm researching something for too

long without, I mean, it just starts feeling kind of aimless

if I do too much of it, and so I'm a pretty big fan of like

researching and writing at the same time. I'll work up

sections. I mean, especially for the Great Horse Flu, like I

didn't—It took a long time for me to even figure out what

chapters were going to look like for that book, and so I kind of

built it from the ground up, sort of like section by section

in a lot of ways, and then built the chapters out of collections

of sections that seemed to talk to each other. So you know, for

that project, that worked pretty well. I mean, I would say that

that's not an efficient way to work. That's sort of the

downside, because I think I, you know, like I appease my anxiety

in the short term, but over the long run, I almost certainly

make more work for myself because I end up, I end up

discarding just huge amounts of material. So I overwrite in a

pretty massive way.

I have to imagine though you're doing a

lot of thinking and working through things that is not

wasted in that writing process.

Yeah, totally. I think you're, I think you're

right. You know, I mean, there's—it's so non linear. You

know, and there's, I mean, that's one of the things that I

find really just like enjoyable about it all is kind of some of

the mysterious ways that it works, and just trying to kind

of, you know, there's all these like sort of ineluctable

processes where it's like, you know, you just kind of, I'll

like bang my head against the wall for a while, just really

painstakingly trying to come up with a basic account of

something, and then I get to a certain point, I'm not sure that

anything's really come of it, but then when I put it in

conversation with another section, then something emerges

that I didn't see before. I mean, when I'm, you know, when

I'm working with grad students, they, like me, understandably

want kind of like a straight path. They want to know what the

best way to do things is, with best usually having some

component of efficiency, and I'm just like I'm, I'm either the

wrong person to ask, or that's the wrong question to ask.

Because, yeah, my processes, my processes are pretty—they're in

no way a straight line. They're pretty shaggy.

So the Great Horse Flu is your third book.

You've obviously written many other things in your career as

well. Have you changed your approach to writing in that

time?

I think, in some ways, yeah. I think that there's

when I think about it, there's a few big changes that I notice.

One is that when I was in grad school, you know, I mean, I

sought out—I mean, I really cared a lot about writing and

what made me want to become a historian, it was really about

some of the landmark works that really inspired me, and so you

know I really wanted to work with Bill Cronon at Wisconsin,

and I was lucky enough to get to work with Bill. You know, one of

the ways that Bill taught grad students was to really think

about their dissertations as a book, and I think I overdid

that. So I think I was, I think I was sort of like too consumed

in trying to write like a first draft that had literary

qualities, and I didn't really understand because I hadn't

really done a lot of revision before I got to my dissertation.

I didn't really understand how many more go-throughs my work

would have. You know, I mean, by the time I finished Killing for

Coal, I would say that most of that, most parts of that book

were probably in like a, you know, a 12th draft, a 16th

draft. It was intensively revised from beginning to end. I

mean, there, you know, there's a few parts where like by that

point I pretty much knew what I needed to say, and so those

didn't get quite as much reworking. But I, you know, I

just didn't understand what that looked like, and so one big

change then is that at this point, I just I'm full on with

Anne Lamott. Just you know, first draft is just something to

be endured. I have no expectations that it will be at

all good, and that has been super liberating. And then I

think the other thing that I've, you know, the other thing that

sort of emerged for me over time is that, and it's a sort of like

a, you know, it's a difficult truth and then a nice thing. The

difficult truth is that first drafts are always going to be

awful for me. They're always just going to be really hard and

unsatisfying, and you know it's always going to be unclear to me

like how I'm actually going to turn any of it into something

that a person might ever want to read, but the other, you know,

the nice part of it is that the part of writing that's gotten

easier for me over time is revision, and so I feel like at

this point, like once I can get that first draft out, it's not

like revision is going to be easy, but it feels you know like

I know what that path looks like, and it doesn't have as

many of the, I mean, doesn't have the kind of like yuck

quality that drafting often has for me. So I think I just, I can

do it more confidently, and you know I just, I feel like I know

what I'm doing with revision at this point.

So I want to talk more about revision because

you told me ahead of this that you you love revision

strategies. You're not the first person to tell me that they love

revision, but often I find that people have a hard time sort of

articulating what they do in the revision process. Would would

you talk to me about your strategies? What's your approach

to revision?

I have a core approach or a core strategy,

core tool, whatever you want to call it. That you know, again,

this is something that Bill Cronon initially taught me, but

it was, it was, it's just reverse outlining. And so I, you

know, I outline everything that I ever write. I reverse outline

everything that I write. I'm not actually a great outliner

upfront. My, you know, my drafts are kind of accidental. You

could probably guess that from what I said earlier, but they—I

don't have a really clear sense of like where where a draft is

going to head. But once I have a first draft, I'm pretty

religious about reverse outlining it, and then I'll do

that actually for every subsequent stage of it. And so

you know the way I reverse outline then is I really like to

use Microsoft Word for it just because it has that outline

view, and that outline view can help me represent the

hierarchical organization within the chapter, and it can also

help me, you know, you can hide. It's a sort of like tree format,

and you can you know you can hide, you can sort of like

reduce it to like, okay, what are the sections in this

chapter, or you know, what are the subsections, or if you want,

you can look at the entire thing paragraph by paragraph. And so

it allows me to kind of get my head around how the chapter is

currently working at several different levels. You know, and

so my practice then with the reverse outline is is I create

it, and just in the process of creating it, I usually learn

some important things. And so sometimes, you know, like the

initial go through is just about like paragraphing. So if I see

that what I'm trying to say one paragraph is about the next

paragraph, I have to use the exact same descriptor. Then

those probably shouldn't be two different paragraphs. Or if I

really can't decide what a paragraph, you know, how I can

represent a paragraph in a phrase, then that paragraph has

more than one idea, right? Which is usually kind of a no-no as

well. So there's just, you know, like just trying to create the

reverse outline. I usually learn a few things, but the bigger

things that emerge from it really happen when you know my

next step is that I'll go to a place like a coffee shop and you

know just try to kind of get into like a a bit more of an

open minded space. This works best if I've, if I haven't done

anything with the draft in several days or even you know a

week or something like that. And then at that point, I just

really look at the, you know, I try to get as far from I try to

basically look at the reverse outline as just kind of like a

curiosity, you know, right? I think that like non attachment

is a crucial revision skill, and so I look at the reverse outline

and I just try to get a sense of like, wow, like what did I do

here? You know, how is this draft working? Like, what is the

flow? How does one thing lead to another? What's the sort of

order of operations in the argument? What's the chain of

events in the narrative, you know, and then every now and

then, very very rarely, but every now and then, I realize

that I've nailed something, and I'm like, okay, that that that's

perfect. That really really works. That almost never

happens. What what almost happen, what almost always

happens instead is I look at it, and you know, I can usually

start to see things that aren't working, you know, things that

don't flow, or section that really requires knowledge about

something that I haven't introduced to the reader yet.

You know, or leaps of logic. All these sorts of things will come

out from that. And so, you know, I basically sort of like subject

the reverse outline to kind of an analysis. You know, what is

this doing? How does it work? What would happen if I move

things around?

That's another thing I like about about using Word to do

this is I can just like take an entire section and move it to

another place, and then I can just kind of go through the

thought experiment of like, well, what if I started this

story at the end? What does that get me? What does that cost me?

You know, and so I can I try to be like, you know, I try to just

sort of be really kind of strategic and like hard nosed

about each aspect of the, of whatever, you know, whatever

level the thing that I'm reverse outlining it is. You know, like

eventually I'll do it for the entire book, and you know then I

try to learn from it. I try to implement what I, you know, what

I think I've understood from the process, and then I'll go

through that whole exercise again, and I find that it really

helps me zero in. You know, as I said earlier, like I really, I

really do tend to overwrite, and so a lot of my writing, like a

lot of what I need to do in revision, is is a huge amount of

cutting, and it helps me figure out, you know, sort of like what

the minimum I can say about various things will be, and also

you know, of course, like how the parts can fit together

better.

Once you have your reverse outline and you've

sort of looked at what you can learn from it, how do you go

back into the draft? Then do you just, I mean, do you make

yourself like a to-do list? Do you just kind of wade in and

start cutting? What's the approach?

It's usually a bit of both. I don't come up

with like a detailed revision plan that I write down. I

usually like scroll a few notes, and they're sort of like my main

priorities, and then I just kind of dig in. And I think that's,

you know, that's another thing that I think has sort of changed

over over time. You know, part of like why I feel more

confident about revision now, is I think I've learned how to like

hold more of it in my head. You know, it's sort of like once I

get clarity on it from the reverse outline, like I'm kind

of good to go. You know, it's not a lot of stuff that I like

really need to write down or I'll forget. It's stuff that I

like at that point. I, it's kind of like undeniable for me, and

so you know, usually a few notes are all I really need. Yeah, and

then I dig back in, you know, and at that point, like I try to

be, I try to be as fearless as I can be. I think that when I

revise, when I find myself revising, and I'm like worried,

if my revision is about trying to not make mistakes or trying

to not mess something up. Then I get, like, it's no fun. It

doesn't work very well. I feel like revision is much more about

trying to have some boldness. It's sort of like, I don't know,

it's a little bit. I don't know what the metaphor I would use

for it is, but it's, there is like a kind of imposition. You

know, like I'm becoming increasingly aware that I'm

trying to impose something on the story, on the material,

whereas like in an early draft, I'm sort of trying to, I'm

trying to do a lot of listening, a lot of just like getting, as I

said earlier, just trying to kind of like get get the basics

down.

Well, I want to talk more about the Great Horse

Flu. Speaking of of revision, because, you know, you started

with this much larger scope, as you mentioned earlier, and then

kind of dialed down to just the story of the Great Horse Flu,

rather than an entire animal history of America. What did

that make the process like for you? Did you sort of just start

over again at that point, or or did you have material that you

focused on?

Yeah. So what I had at that point was, I mean,

first of all, I had hundreds and hundreds of pages of drafts of

various chapters, and you know, I mean, I think there was one

chapter that I probably had like 180 pages drafted for, you know,

so I, you know, there's all this stuff that just like is never

going to see any kind of light of day, which is which is a

little bit hard to handle. I had a chapter on the Great Horse Flu

that was in really just kind of like in a first or a second

draft. It was really kind of broad scope and jumped around a

lot. What that chapter had, though, was it had some of the

key stories that then I could dig down into more deeply in the

book, and so you know, I knew about the Great Horse Flu's kind

of complicated relationship with the Great Boston Fire. I'd also

come across, you know, the sort of like pretty limited evidence

that gets into everything that ensues in San Francisco when

Anglo business owners start hiring Chinese American men to

pull wagons and drays and other conveyances, so you know I was

beginning to get like these little, there were these little

clusters. There were things that I could see had the capacity to

grow into into chapters of their own, and then you know I also

had like enough of a sense of the topic to know to know some

of the things that I could make more of. You know, so for

instance like I knew that I I was already aware of like what I

think is the you know I mean historians have written about

this event before people the time called it the epizootic

urban historians have written several you know it's in several

of the books on horses in the 19th century and then there's

sort of like a a little teeny cottage industry of like you

know the great horse blue comes through a particular part of the

world or a particular part of North America. So you know

there's like a literature out there, but I think what what

that previous literature hadn't fully brought to light was that

for the outbreak to behave the way in which it did, you know I

mean this thing this thing infects like 90 to 90 99% of

horses, donkeys, and mules across North America, but

influenza was already present and you know commonly infected

equines by this time. It had to be a novel influenza virus, so

you know I knew that there was a sort of story to be told about

why this new form of the virus would have emerged in the place

and time where it did. So you know, I had kind of like I had I

had some building blocks, but I I was not really aware of what

the what the ultimate book would end up looking like, and there

there are huge chunks of it that I hadn't researched at all. I

had no idea what happened in Mexico, Cuba, you know, all that

came later.

Did you have a book contract when you decided

to change direction, or or what was the publication process

like?

Well, this is a whole story. So, so when I was

so when I when I was finishing Killing for Coal, I started

teaching a class on animal history, and back then I was at

Cal State Northridge, and it was it was just an incredible class

to teach. I love teaching it, and it came out of you know

there's a section of Killing for Coal that focuses on what I call

the mine workscape, and it goes, you know, there's I kept coming

across all these oral histories in which old mine workers in the

1970s and 1980s were talking about, and they were recalling

like the relationships they had with mice and with mules, and it

was it's like one of my favorite parts of the book, and it was

one where like when I when I gave talks to public audiences.

They always they they always seemed fascinated by that part

of the book. So that's what that's what spurred me to take

the to to start teaching the class. Teaching the class made

me think like that there wasn't really a a book that I could use

and assign across the entirety of the semester. And so then

then I thought, well, why not you know why not write that

book? And I had this kind of like post Bancroft bump of of

interest in my work, and so you know I sort of took advantage of

that bump to get a contract for an animal's history of the

United States with Harvard University Press. And so then

when I decided that I couldn't follow through on the version of

the book that I had originally. Envisioned, then it became like

a whole thing, and I was hopeful that I could, you know, complete

the book and give it to Harvard, and that things would be okay.

And that's not what happened. I had a quite a quite a rough

experience, and and had to, you know, they they basically they

basically refused the book, and then we had to get into lawyers

and all that good stuff. And yeah, not really at liberty to

divulge the details of what happened after that. But I was

really lucky to to find a you know really really welcoming new

home for the book with with UNC Press. So yeah, that was that

was that was one of the really you know tough parts about the

whole kind of trajectory with the Great Horse Flu. You know,

but I also try to I I always try to you know after I after I go

through you know after I go after I get really pissed off

and you know grieve and go through those like various

stages. Once I've kind of like worked through something that

that is really difficult in life, you know, I usually try to

find ways to to turn it into something that I can look back

on in the future as a positive. And so, you know, in the case

the great horse flu, you know, what went down with that allowed

me to go through an an entire new revision of the book, and I

think that that really made it significantly better, more

coherent. You know, helped me find an overall argument for the

book. So you know, it wasn't it wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't

you know, none of none of that was pleasant. I wish none of it

had happened, but I'm hoping that in the end, you know, the

results a better book for it.

You mentioned to me that one of the challenges in

this book is figuring out how to tell stories about non-human

animals, subjects like viruses, geography. They play a really

significant role, but of course, they don't speak in in archives

in the same way as humans. How did you think about balancing

those stories and including them?

Yeah, I mean, this is you know this this book

was really, you know, I think about like Olympics, like

gymnastics or like ice skating, how how you have like the degree

of difficulty quotient that they use sometimes in some of those

sports that are judged. And when I you know when I look at this

book, I'm like this this book had a serious seriously high

degree of difficulty. First of all, it's a book about an event

that, in some ways, is a non-event. Like it wasn't like

it. You know, it existed at the time. People usually referred to

it as the epizootic, but it was sort of diffuse, and it you know

there's not like a there's not a huge center of gravity in the

moment. There's not like a big national discussion, for

instance, so it doesn't doesn't lead to some landmark change in

policy. It yields no huge epidemiological breakthrough.

You know, it's so even just at the start, then it's a book

where like the the central event doesn't really have the quality

of like the other events that I've written about in the past.

You know, something like the Colorado Coalfield War or the

Ludlow Massacre, or you know, kind of like anything I've ever

written about before, the the creation of Rocky Mountain

National Park. There's like a you know, there's a clear thing

that happens, and and everybody can recognize that it happens.

So yeah, this book first of all just has that kind of it's a you

know it's it it has that weirdness, yeah. And then it's

you know in a lot of ways its central character is is a virus,

and you know non human animals mostly, and the virus, you know

how to how to treat that as a character, or or even how to

treat that as a phenomenon was definitely made doubly

challenging by the by the fact like people at the time don't

necessarily think of it as I mean they certainly don't think

of it the way that we do, occasionally people would

actually refer to it as a virus, but they meant a much older

meaning of virus, right? I mean, the sort of like current usage

of virus doesn't really start until the 1890s, so they, you

know, they just mean something that causes disease in a in a

certain kind of way, you know. So there's sort of like like I

had to kind of kind of have it both ways. I would use, you

know, I would use current science to understand the

phenomenon, and yet I also had to try to, you know, do that in

a way that didn't violate what people at the time understood

about that. That's always a difficult balance. I think with,

you know, with with a huge disease outbreak, it doesn't

have intentionality, right? There's not like a purpose that

the virus is trying to achieve. Really, viruses are extra weird

because they're not even necessarily alive. So a lot of

the you know a lot of the sort of arguments you might want to

ham-handedly pull from like evolutionary biology for why

this is even going on doesn't really work. Because like if a

virus isn't really alive, why does it want to expand its

range? There's a lot of like kind of chaotic, random,

stochastic things happening, and then with the other human, the

other than human animals that are like the main victims for

the for the disease, there's obviously the problem of like

you know they like viruses leave no direct sources, and I you

know I like I like I didn't want them to I didn't want it to be a

book that was just about like how humans perceived horses. At

the time, I really believed that there was an actual thing

happening. You know that that like real horses were were

becoming very very sick, and and like one one to 4% of cases

ending up dying from the whole thing. And and so I you know I I

didn't want the horses to completely disappear as like you

know sentient affective beings who had some kind of, you know,

some kind of like control in their lives.

So it was an interesting book to try to work through and to try

to find like to try to find sources that would allow me to

get into the things I wanted to get into. Like, you know,

journalists mostly just describe symptoms, but every now and then

they would pay visits to library stables, and you know,

occasionally there'd be a really sensitive journalist who would

provide a really detailed account of where I could really

get a clear sense and really help you know convey to my

readers the suffering that these animals experienced as a result

of of the disease, you know. And I think that like I had I was

able to piece together enough evidence about how the virus

behaved that you know I could at least talk about that in in a

fair amount of detail. So I could talk about it as like a at

least as an agent, even if trying to figure out how to

characterize it, you know, was something that I don't think I

ever fully got my head around.

One of the things you do in this book is,

of course, you're telling the story of a flu outbreak, but you

also are expanding beyond that in order to sort of establish

the context so that we know why this is a big deal, right? Not

just that it happened, but what were the conditions that allowed

it to happen or made it worse, and then what what kind of

effects might it have had? And that means you kind of have to,

as as you put it to me, that you have sort of a narrative spine,

but then you kind of have to go off in these different

directions to give us these other stories, which seems

effortless in the book. But I imagine takes takes a lot of

work to figure out how to kind of weave those together. How did

you think about doing that?

Yeah, I mean that's you know like I didn't

have the one can certainly write a book about a large scale

disease outbreak that doesn't do so much contextual stuff, or

that does the contextual stuff very differently. But I had, I

think, I had particular constraints with this outbreak

because it focused on other than human animals. That gives a

certain limitation because it doesn't kill that many of them,

doesn't create an obvious event in its own right. Then that

created further limitations, and so I went into the book knowing

that it would, you know, really kind of knowing that it would

have to be both. It would have to be both a story of the

outbreak, but also, you know, like like a story of the

outbreak as a phenomenon in its own, but also a book that would

repeatedly, you know, change the lens, expand it, go back in

time, you know, do those other sorts of like cinematic moves

because otherwise there wouldn't really be enough of it there.

There, you know, just sort of like narratively and

argumentatively. But it was also, you know, like I, you

know, some of the things that the outbreak ended up exposing

over time, I learned were like so interesting and important in

their own right that I, I think it maybe it helped me not get

exhausted with kind of the core topic itself, because I could,

you know, gave me like permission to go off on these

side trips and, you know, get into all sorts of things that I

didn't didn't expect I would find fascinating, like how, you

know, sort of like story of kind of like the environmental

history of Ontario agriculture from the from from native times

through loyalist settlement through sort of the arrival of

progressive agriculture, or you know, sort of like early phases

of anti-Chinese agitation in San Francisco, that would set the

stage for the Chinese Exclusion Act, but that historians haven't

paid a huge amount of attention to outside of Asian American

historians, California historians, you know. So I think

it it gave me a nice scope. Then I guess as a historian, for you

know, for just sort of like I'm I'm I'm super curious, and I and

I part of why I want to do this is so that I'm always learning

new things, and so it ended up being a project that was pretty

well suited for that because I you know there are these like

little kind of I don't know what you'd call them almost like side

trips that I got to go on that were that end up being really

fun for me, and that I learned a lot from, and that hopefully,

you know, hopefully the book makes worthwhile for readers.

It's funny. I was saying to someone the other

day that there's a phenomenon right now where you can tell

someone a story about your life and be like, "Well, we were

planning to you know go on a trip to to Europe or open our

new restaurant, and that was in February of 2020, and everyone

understands the significance of that statement, right? But that

at some point that will fade. Like you won't be able to just

sort of allude to the start of the COVID pandemic in that way

anymore. And I kept thinking about that reading this book,

right? That there must have been a time when you could be like,

oh, well, I was starting a you know warehouse delivery business

in at the beginning of 1872, and everyone would know why that had

not gone well for you. But that this too is kind of like a I

don't want to say forgotten, but we don't hear a lot about the

horse flu, even though it must have it was hugely impactful for

the people and horses who lived through it. Anyway, I say all

that to say that obviously when I read this book, and you think

about it even just the phrase "novel virus outbreak," it has a

lot of relevance to to today, to COVID 19 pandemic. But I also

imagine that you didn't want the book to feel very much like just

of the moment, and then be kind of dated immediately. That it

wasn't wasn't just a COVID 19 book. How did you think about

kind of that balance of including the present day

relevance, so it has that element of it, but that it's

much broader perspective.

I mean, first of all, probably worth saying a

little bit more about how COVID, you know, how COVID shaped the

book, you know, and how it how it influenced it, because you

know, it really did in all sorts of ways. I really made the

decision to turn to the Great Horse Flu. Looking back, I think

it was at some point in 2018. I'd certainly made that decision

by 2019. And so, you know, when COVID broke out, I mean, first

of all, I I was in a really I was really lucky to be working

on this project because the book relies almost entirely on

digitized sources, and so you know, it really the the pandemic

did not slow me down in the way that it slowed down so many

historians. I didn't really need to go to archives for for much

of the book, and most of the archival trips were, you know,

were really for much more focused research, and I could do

them later on. You know, during COVID too, I was I was you know

I mean George Floyd, everything that goes down, you know,

starting in May of of 2020, that entire summer, you know, I mean,

I live in I live near downtown Denver. I mean, we could smell

tear gas in our front yard. You know, was in a lot of protests

and and all of this and and that, you know, that that set of

events, you know, the ways in which like the relationship

between racial justice movements on the one hand and the pandemic

on the other, you know it's not clear cut. You know, like I

don't have a simple way of saying like, well, here's here's

what those two things had to do with each other. They happened

at the same time. There were clearly relationships, but the

relationships were were difficult and submerged. And you

know, I sort of like I I thought that that understanding or that

kind of that sort of framework applied to what I was trying to

do in the book as well, with the you know the central focus on

the disease itself, but then these chapters that were going

to be deep dives into things like racial justice in San

Francisco at the same time, right? Where like you know I

didn't I was not interested in trying to make an argument about

how the great horse blue like brought about all these things.

I was aware that it was sort of it was more about like exposure

or intersection. You know, there's a relationship, but not

a not a direct one, not a causal relationship between the

outbreak and these things that happen at the same time. And so

that's what I really tried to bring into the book. And so I

think with that with that sort of thinking driving everything,

I and I also just, I mean, to this day, like I, and I'm, I'm

sure most or or all listeners can sympathize, like I don't

have my head around COVID, right? So, like, the idea that I

would write a book about an event in the 1870s that was

really sort of like deeply informed by my understanding of

these really recent events, like I don't understand what happened

recently very well. I'm still working. I'm still working

through it. So then, I think that the like the you know the

relationship between between COVID and and my book then is it

helped me to. It sort of like opened up more questions for me

to look at, and also left me more more like interested and

committed to like a kind of level of indeterminacy that I

might not have otherwise had. And on top of all that, I also

had like I had readers who were pretty stern in reminding me not

to like not to try too hard to make connections between the

two. So you know, and with kind of like the usual concern that

like, well, that'll that'll recede at some point. You know,

what you're assuming people think about COVID in 2023 won't

apply in 2028 or whatever. So you know, I I often had

encouragement to or sort of reminders to to try to take a

pretty light hand on that. I don't know. I think that's what

the book ultimately does. I mean, you know, COVID. I

mentioned COVID explicitly a few times.

I try to draw some connections between the great horse flu and

COVID. I think that there, I think there are a few that that

matter. You know, I mean, there's there's this similarity

in that they're both emergent zoonotic viruses. So you know,

viruses that circulate between human and other than human

hosts. You know, and I think that there's I found I found the

timing of the outbreak important. It's in the early

1870s, right? Which like in the history of disease, is often

held up as like this is when Koch and Pasteur are starting to

make these big discoveries, and it's everything's pointing

toward the you know toward the bacteriological revolution and

vaccines and the conquest of disease. And now I think having

grown up in the '80s during the AIDS crisis, looking at COVID,

Zika, Ebola, so on and so forth, not to mention influenza. We now

know that there that arc is important. We should completely

keep telling versions of that story, probably. But that

there's also, you know, there's there there are these other

types of of diseases that do not follow that trajectory and that

probably never will adhere to that kind of narrative of human

dominance and and human.

Well, I want to shift away from the book a

little bit because I want to ask you oversee the Writer Studio

feature in Modern American History, the journal, which is

so great, and and I wish more people knew about it. So this is

my my moment to say, please go read the Writer Studio feature.

Also, I those interviews stick with me all the time, especially

the Richard White one. I'm curious what what you have taken

from from working on that feature about writing. What have

you learned?

It's been been a real privilege to get to do that. So

you know, big shout outs to modern American history and to

Brooke Blower really kind of got that rolling with me. And then

Darren Dochuck has taken it over. So it's been just been

super fun to work with them, and it's been you know fabulous to

get to do interviews with all of the historians that we've

featured over the years. I think that I don't know. I mean, I I

can't point to like a lot of real specific things that I've

taken from those interviews, but I think that I don't know. I

mean, this maybe on just kind of like a basic, slightly cheesy

level. I think that those interviews have really helped me

understand how different different historians are and how

different their circumstances are. And so, like you know, like

I, I mean, you know, so for instance, like talking to a a

really senior historian who, at this point in their lives, you

know, they don't have kids at home, they've got an endowed

professorship, they don't necessarily teach that often, or

have that many grad students. You know, it's like I'm, I can,

you know, sometimes in the course of those interviews, one

of the things I've learned is is simply like I'm in a pretty

different situation, and um, and so it's just that that thing

that people have told me across my life, right? Like, do your

own work, um, you know, figure out figure out what works for

you. But I think it's really reinforced that that there's

that there's not there's not sort of like big default answers

laying out there about how to do this. It's it's really about

trying to figure out what is going to work well for you given

who you are and given you know sort of the realities of the

other parts of your life and how this fits into it. So I

definitely you know I think I've taken that. I mean, just a huge

amount of like admiration. I think none of them say it's

easy. Get it? You know, you look through those interviews, and I

get a sense of just like the the attentiveness and the the the

passion and the care that these really renowned historians put

into their work. And so I, you know, like I always find that

inspiring. That always helps me to to try to like ask more of myself.

Has anything really surprised you about that

feature?

I mean, it was it was a small thing, but like

one of the little surprises that I that I hold on to is Linda

Gordon talking about you know rolling up a spliff. I thought

that that was I thought that that was hilarious, and you know

I just sort of like loved her her her blase you know attention

to that. I don't know. Just like you know, there's sort of like

a. I guess I liked it as kind of like a way of getting out of

like excessive seriousness or like being too prim and proper

about what you're doing. You know, I think that like there's

certain things that can you know we're like a bit more of like a

rock and roll approach can be can be appropriate. So I

appreciated that.

I just want to close with a couple kind of

broader questions about influences. So, so the first I

love to ask people is, what's the most influential writing

advice you've ever gotten?

The best writing advice I've ever received. I

can't think of like a single like a single version of it. I I

can think of sort of like similar guidance coming from

multiple people that was all about some version of get over

yourself and remember the reader, you know, and that's

that's really hard for me. But I think that that's that's

probably the most important piece of advice to try to kind

of sublimate the like you know showy tendencies or the oh look

how clever I am or you know all those sorts of impulses that

that I unfortunately have, and to you know to to really try to

make what I'm doing about the you know whoever it is who might

actually eventually read the thing. So yeah, I think that's I

think that's what the most important writing advice for me

is ever. You know, it's all kind of gravitated toward that. I

mean, you know, some important things on technique. Just the

you know Bill Cronon teaching me about reverse outlining has been

especially important. And then just some like basic you know

kind of Strunk and White repeated endlessly to like be

really good with nouns and verbs and leave most other parts of

speech aside when I can.

Are there any books or authors that you

particularly look to as sort of inspiration for your writing,

books you recommend to people?

I think it depends. I mean, you know,

there's, I mean, I just, you know, really, I continue to, I

continue to love, you know, that kind of like spectacular

generation of environmental and Western historians. You know,

your Bill Cronon, Richard White, Don Worster, Patty Limerick. I

mean, those books are all fantastic and kind of enduring

classics for me, and just just so well written. I think so,

such a great combination of argument and storytelling.

Almost always so considerate of the reader, and there's sort of

like an edge and an urgency to how they do things. So I

appreciate all of that. Narrative, I mean, I really go.

I really go fiction, and even just. I mean, I love you know

some of like my favorite TV shows. What I love about them is

what I what I really aspire, but undoubtedly you know never quite

measure up to in terms of like the elegance of a story. And so,

like I'm a. I mean, you know, he's a reprehensible character,

but I love Curb Your Enthusiasm, and like your good Curb Your

Enthusiasm episodes are just masterpieces of of elegance in

the storytelling. Nothing is wasted. Nothing's extraneous.

Everything belongs, you know. And so that's especially as

somebody who has a real proclivity for overwriting.

That's something that I really think about when I'm revising.

Is like what's the what's the minimal version of this story,

where like everything, everything needs to be there.

You know, I don't get there, but just having that as an ideal, I

think, is is hugely helpful.

Before I let you go, I do want to know you. You

mentioned wanting to sort of have a have a clearer direction,

maybe in the future for the types of projects you tackle. Do

you have another project that you're looking toward next? Is

there another chapter of animal history that you have?

I don't know. I'm I'm giving myself a little

time to to think about it, and also giving myself some

permission to like probably think about it more expansively.

Because at this point, you know, at this point, I feel like I

really should just you know make like a more considered decision.

But there's a few things that I've. I mean, there's a few

things that have like been on my mind for a long time. One thing

that I feel like I'll probably do a version of at some point is

of is I love the high country in Colorado, especially the areas

above timberline, and I think that they're fascinating because

they're these landscapes and ecosystems where there's still

very very few permanent human inhabitants, and they've

actually kind of always been that way. You know, they're

really only inhabitable for certain seasons, and and they're

they're still unlike almost any other ecosystem I can think of.

They're still not like as humanized. You know, they're

also places, of course, that are like you know under urgent

threat with climate change and its consequences. And so I think

that there's maybe something interesting to do along those

lines, but I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I, you know, I might

also turn back to one of the other chapters that I was

envisioning for an animal's history. So I don't know. I'm

going to kind of let it sit for a while and and and and sort of

see what emerges.

Dr. Thomas Andrews, thanks so much for

joining me and and talking about your writing process and about

the Great Horse Flu.

Ah, thanks so much, Kate. I've really

appreciated getting to chat with you about all these things, and

thank you so much for all the fabulous questions.

Thanks for joining Dr. Thomas Andrews and

me for this conversation. Find a link to his new book, The Great

Horse Flu, and all the other books we mentioned in this

episode in the show notes or at draftingthefast.com. While

you're there, sign up for the newsletter to get podcast

updates, book reviews, essays, and more. You can sign up for

free, but if you would like to support Drafting the Past and

access exclusive content, not to mention ad-free podcast

episodes, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Until next time, all together now. Friends don't let friends

write boring history.