KETCHUM, Richard M(alcolm) 1922-

PERSONAL: Born March 15, 1922, in Pittsburgh, PA; son of George (an advertising executive) and Thelma (Patton) Ketchum; married Barbara Jane Bray, April 24, 1943; children: Liza, Thomas Bray. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1943.

ADDRESSES: Home—Dorset, VT 05251. Office—Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal, Box 870, Manchester Center, VT 05255.

CAREER: Charles F. Orvis Co., Manchester, VT, assistant to the president, 1946-48; owner of advertising agency in Manchester, and partner in Vermonters Ltd., 1948-51; U.S. Information Agency, Washington, DC, staff member, 1951-56, chief of Visual Materials Division, 1956; American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., Book Division, New York, NY, editor, 1956-64, editorial director, 1964-67, managing director, vice-president, and director of company, 1967-74; Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal, Brattleboro, VT, editor and cofounder, 1974—. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1943-46; became lieutenant junior grade.

MEMBER: Coffee House, Century Association, Yale Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Special Pulitzer citation, 1961, for American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War.

WRITINGS:

What Is Communism?, Dutton (New York, NY), 1955.

Male Husbandry, Dutton (New York, NY), 1956.

American Heritage Book of Great Historic Places, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1957.

The Battle for Bunker Hill, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1962.

Face from the Past, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1970.

The Secret Life of the Forest, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1970.

Will Rogers, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1973.

The Winter Soldiers, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1973.

The World of George Washington, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1974.

Decisive Day, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1974.

Second Cutting: Letters from the Country, Viking Press (New York, NY), 1981.

The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941: America on the Way to War, Random House (New York, NY), 1989.

Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War, Holt (New York, NY), 1997.

Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York, Holt (New York, NY), 2002.

editor

What Is Democracy?, Dutton (New York, NY), 1955, new edition, 1968.

American Heritage Book of the Revolution, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1958.

American Heritage Book of the Pioneer Spirit, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1959.

American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1960.

Horizon Book of the Renaissance, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1961.

Four Days, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1964.

American Heritage Cookbook and Illustrated History of American Eating and Drinking, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1964. John James Audubon, The Original Water-Color Paintings for the Birds of America, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1966.

(With Irwin Glusker) American Testament: Fifty Great Documents of American History, American Heritage (New York, NY), 1971.

Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Richard M. Ketchum is a highly acclaimed historian who has penned and edited many volumes on American history. He worked for nearly two decades for the American Heritage Publishing Company before becoming a full-time independent author in 1974. Though Ketchum's 1989 volume The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941: America on the Way to War deals with the United States in the years before World War II, much of Ketchum's more recent work has focused on the American Revolution. These titles include Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War and Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York.

As the subtitle suggests, in Saratoga Ketchum asserts that the Battle of Saratoga marked the turning point in the American Revolution. Because the American revolutionary forces managed to hold off the British, they were able to attract help from France. As Tom Claire noted in Country Living, however, Saratoga is not merely an ordinary historical account. "Especially appreciated are [Ketchum's] portraits of the antagonists and his thumbnail sketches of the supporting cast and the telling incidentals often overlooked in more general textbook histories," Claire explained. The reviewer also felt that Ketchum achieves the perfect balance between painstaking historical accuracy and the interest level of Hollywood's best historical films. "If this were a movie I'd pay to see it!" Claire maintained. More reservedly, David B. Mattern in Library Journal called Saratoga is "a careful, detailed, and spirited narrative account."

In 2002's Divided Loyalties Ketchum focuses on the colony of New York and how the years leading up to the American Revolution affected and formed the positions of its leading families. To make his point he examines the Livingstons—who joined the Revolution, and the DeLanceys—who wound up returning to England. Bryce Christensen in Booklist praised the book as "a much needed corrective to the melodramas of patriotic pageantry" that he predicted "will give readers a new appreciation for the humanity on both sides" of the Revolutionary War.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American History Illustrated, July-August, 1990, review of The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941, p. 175.

Booklist, September 1, 2002, Bryce Christensen, review of Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York, p. 50.

Country Living, April, 1998, Tom Claire, review of Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War, pp. 50-51.

Foreign Affairs, spring, 1990, Gaddis Smith, review of The Borrowed Years, p. 175.

Journal of American History, September, 1998, James Kirby Martin, review of Saratoga, p. 656.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2002, review of Divided Loyalties, p. 1011.

Library Journal, October 1, 1989, Boyd Childress, review of The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941, p. 106; September 15, 1997, David B. Mattern, review of Saratoga, p. 87.

Publishers Weekly, August 25, 1989, Genevieve Stuttaford, p. 54; July 8, 2002, review of Divided Loyalties, p. 38.

Sewanee Review, winter, 1992, Hans A. Schmitt, review of The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941, p. 141.

William and Mary Quarterly, July, 1998, Joseph R. Frischer review of Saratoga, p. 466.*