His Name Is Mudd

[L Verge]

(12-19-2018 04:46 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(12-18-2018 04:54 PM)L Verge Wrote:  As for Bob Summers, I have high regards for his work also, especially because he works very hard at toeing a center of the line approach to his ancestor's history.

Yet, you don't carry his book The Fall and Redemption of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd (2007) at the Mary Surratt House Museum's gift shop.

Nor do you carry former FBI agent John McHale's book Dr. Samuel A. Mudd and the Lincoln Assassination (1995) at the gift shop.

Another book that one would think the museum's gift shop would carry is The Case of Mrs. Surratt, written by Guy W. Moore (B.A, M.A.) and published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Moore's book is one of the best defenses of Mary Surratt's innocence that I've read so far. It is far better than Elizabeth Trindal's book.

Just a quick reply to your know-nothing comments: We carried both of the first two books that you mentioned for years. Take a look at the publication dates for both, however.

Bob's has been out there for 11 years and John's (basically a child's book) fir 23 years. At some point, a good shop realizes that they have likely sold as many as they are going to sell and does not reorder in order to make room on the shelves for new entries into the field. A first-year business manager could figure that out.

Build us a gift shop the size of just one at the Smithsonian, and we'll be happy to stock as many as we can still get our hands on.

And speaking of obtaining older books. Guy Moore has been a member of the Surratt Society for about forty years and has contributed articles to the Surratt Courier during that time. He and Betty Trindal were good friends.

Once again, I agree with you (don't expect this to be a habit, however) that his work was very well-researched -- likely because it started life as his Master's thesis at the urging of his wife, who firmly believed Mary Surratt to be an innocent victim of an angry government. I think one of its few drawbacks is that it still reads like a Master's thesis in many spots.

As to why we don't carry it in the gift shop? It has been out-of-print for decades. The museum bought the last of the stock along about 1980 because it was the only book out there related solely to the Surratt story (except for Helen Jones Campbell's book, which was/is hard to interpret as to what is fact and what is fiction).

Another suggestion, since Guy Moore may still be alive, why don't you buy his rights to the book and republish it? As long as you did not edit, revise, or insert your own questionable comments, our museum would consider purchasing it for resale. Why not do DeWitt's book also - under the same restrictions?

May I make a suggestion before you make a suggestion? Find out the current status of many of the books that you are pitching. I have spent many hours, many years, and many dollars acquiring my own private collection of Lincoln-assassination-related books, so I know how difficult to find many of them are (and how costly). I have perhaps 300 or more such books; how large is your personal collection?