I just typed in the final revisions to my Custer biography—before my editor sees it and I go back at it—and I decided to look up one of my mentors, a historian who profoundly influenced me. I wouldnt be writing if it werent for him. I learned that Richard Maxwell Brown, a pioneering historian of violence in America and of the nineteenth-century American West, passed away on September 22 at the age of 87. His ideas brought my mind back to life after the wreckage of my abandoned academic career. His generous support made it possible for me to start writing, and helped keep me going through some difficult periods. Most of all, his profound decency and humanity stay with me always. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 03:17:20 +0000