Klingaman, William K.

PERSONAL:

Married; wife's name Janet (a science teacher).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Columbia, MD. Office—Centennial High School, 4300 Centennial Ln., Ellicott City, MD 21042. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Centennial High School, Ellicott City, MD, history teacher.

WRITINGS:

1919: The Year Our World Began, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1987.

1941: Our Lives in a World on the Edge, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1988.

1929: The Year of the Great Crash, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1989.

The First Century: Emperors, Gods, and Everyman, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1990.

Turning 40: Wit, Wisdom, and Whining, Plume (New York, NY), 1992.

APL, Fifty Years of Service to the Nation: A History of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, The Laboratory (Laurel, MD), 1993.

Turning 50: Quotes, Lists and Helpful Hints, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1994.

GEICO: The First 40 Years, GEICO Corp. (Washington, DC), 1994.

J. Harvey Willkinson, Jr.: Virginian, Banker, Visionary, Crestar Financial Corp. (Richmond, VA), 1994.

Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, Facts on File (New York, NY), 1996.

(With others) Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in World Civilizations, two volumes, Dushkin/McGraw-Hill (Guilford, CT), 1998.

Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian William K. Klingaman is the author of a number of books, including 1919: The Year Our World Began, a history that focuses on a year that had a dramatic impact on the future of the United States. In 1919 World War I was coming to an end, and Woodrow Wilson was unsuccessful in his attempt to form a League of Nations. In countries that included Germany and India, leaders both bad and good began to catch the attention of the people. Prohibition became law. United Artists was formed by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith, and the White Sox threw the World Series. Klingaman does not analyze so much as he reports the facts. "But as a detailed record of twelve extraordinary months," wrote Nicholas A. Basbanes in the New York Times Book Review, "his lively chronicle achieves immediacy and sustains attention."

In The First Century: Emperors, Gods, and Everyman, Klingaman studies the parallels between the East and West within the history of the first century, including the reigns of approximately twenty leaders, including Augustus Caesar and Wang Mang of China, both of whom felt themselves to be saviors of their people. Publishers Weekly contributor Genevieve Stuttaford noted that at the center of this study is "itinerant preacher Jesus, waging a cataclysmic holy war to liberate Israel from its state of sin."

Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era is a history of a period beginning in the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy led an attempt to purge the United States of communists. McCarthy targeted many citizens, particularly those in the entertainment industry. Actors who included Katharine Hepburn and Lillian Hellman, as well as directors, producers, and writers, were frequent targets of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the McCarthy hearings. A chronology traces the establishment of the Communist Party in the United States in 1919, and the work contains entries covering the years through the presidential election of 1960. Extensive appendixes include documents, transcripts, and well-known speeches and Senate debates on the censure of McCarthy.

Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865 is Klingaman's well-reviewed study of Lincoln's evolving position on slavery while he served as president. He notes that Lincoln, who opposed slavery, considered solving the issue by offering compensated emancipation or colonization, an idea opposed by Frederick Douglass; then the author studies the effect of the pressure by slaves who had fought in the Union army. Lincoln, whose primary goal was to save the Union and who viewed the slavery issue as important primarily for its ability to serve this end, abolished slavery on January 1, 1863. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: "Klingaman fairly sets forth the evidence for his thesis (emancipation as a war measure), drawing on Lincoln's writings, including the Emancipation Proclamation itself." Klingaman's primary focus in his book is the last years of the war and the postwar period, during which many blacks were still enslaved. He also discusses the difficulties encountered in passing the Thirteenth Amendment. Patience Essah wrote in the Journal of Southern History: "Readers interested in popular culture will find Klingaman persuasive, for he firmly roots the historical events surrounding the emancipation of slaves in detailed and fascinating backgrounds." "He deftly sets the scene," commented Max J. Skidmore in White House Studies, "describing the Washington, DC that existed on the eve of the Civil War so powerfully that a reader can easily imagine being there."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Enterprise, October, 2001, Timothy Sandefur, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 54.

Booklist, September 1, 1996, review of Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, p. 165; February 15, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 1098.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2003, Patience Essah, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 193.

Kliatt, May, 2002, John E. Boyd, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 41.

Library Journal, January 1, 2001, John Carver Edwards, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 130.

New York Times Book Review, February 7, 1988, Nicholas A. Basbanes, review of 1919: The Year Our World Began.

Publishers Weekly, August 17, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of The First Century: Emperors, Gods, and Everyman, p. 59; January 29, 2001, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 74.

White House Studies, winter, 2002, Max J. Skidmore, review of Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 115.*