|
“They are entirely amenable to my suggestions, ‘This isn’t quite
right,’ or ‘I think this needs to be explained,’” Atkinson told
The Associated Press. “With the drawings, I pointed out that
John Adams, at the time the revolution began was a relatively
young man. And they had made him look like the paunchy, bald
John Adams of the vice presidency. And they fixed it.”
Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his World War II book “An
Army at Dawn,” has been working on his revolutionary trilogy for
a decade and published the second volume, “The Fate of the Day,”
this spring. Widely regarded as among the best living military
historians, he was a featured commentator in Ken Burns' “The
American Revolution” documentary and has made numerous joint
appearances with the filmmaker. He is currently working on the
final book of his trilogy.
The author says that he was initially skeptical about the new
project. With early memories of Superman comics, he wondered how
any illustrator might adapt deeply-researched books that run
longer than 500 pages. But the graphic format has been used on
everything from “The Odyssey” to the drafting of the U.S.
Constitution. Atkinson changed his mind after Ten Speed Graphic,
a Penguin Random House imprint, sent him several adaptations,
including of the life of Frederick Douglass and Timothy Snyder's
“On Tyranny.”
“I saw that the comic books of my youth have evolved
considerably and I was enthused about it,” Atkinson said. “They
said, ‘We acknowledge this is serious history that you do. We
don’t intend to dumb it down. Our ambition is to widen the
audience, to pitch this story of the American founding to an
audience that perhaps might be intimidated by a 560 page book.'”
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
|
|
