Scenes from an antique auto convention in Philadelphia

Spent three days in Philadelphia at the 80th annual convention of the Antique Automobile Club of America, foremost such group in the world, signing copies of CAR CRAZY: The Battle for Supremacy Between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age, presenting a seminar, and meeting a lot of great people. Totally enjoyable!

The AACA is a class organization, and they ran this thing as smooth as velvet. A special shout-out to AACA executive director Steve Moskowitz and communications and marketing director Stacy Zimmerman for keeping the trains -- cars?! -- running on time. Thanks again to Steve Chris Ritter and others at the AACA for their help in writing Car Crazy.

My trip coincided with an op-ed piece, "Time, Again, for Electric Cars to Take Center Stage," that I wrote for the Friday, February 12, 2016, Philadelphia Inquirer. Worth a read.

Herewith some photos from the convention and the city:

1935 Buick. Sweet.

'35 Chevy. Look at that mirror shine.

Chris Ritter and crew from AACA Library. Great guys, great help on the book.

Yes, folks in Philly were Car Crazy!

Cars across America.

1934 Pierce Arrow.

Vintage car clothing.

Today: A 2016 Corvette. Wanted to leave in this one!

Dain King presents a judging seminar. Dain has led a most interesting life.

The light fades as night nears in a city in winter.

Philadelphia 30th Street train station.

A cold sparrow.

A colder platform.

The city recedes. Heading home to Providence - and Valentine's Day!

Hardy Hendren, legendary children's surgeon, turns 90

I was delighted to join many good friends of Eleanor and Hardy Hendren on Sunday, February 7, at their Duxbury home to celebrate Hardy's 90th birthday. Ninety! And this now-retired giant of surgery is still going strong, if no longer picking up the scalpel at Boston Children's Hospital, where he was Chief of Surgery for many years, while also holding a surgery professorship at Harvard Medical School, among many other titles. He is emeritus at both institutions.

Eleanor asked me to say a few words, and I was honored to pay tribute to a man who has done "more good for more people over more years," as I phrased it, than anyone I have ever known. In the tens of thousands of patients he healed, in the countless young doctors he trained and mentored and who went on to heal so many more, and quietly with his generous contributions to individuals and causes, this is demonstrably true.

I met Hardy more than a quarter of a century ago, and his invitation to immerse myself in his world without precondition or limitation was not just a stroke of luck -- it was a watershed in my non-fiction writing career. For some two years, I followed him outside and inside Children's, during office visits and lectures and Grand Rounds and hundreds of hours in his operating room, where surgery on his most complicated cases -- separating conjoined twins, for example -- often lasted for more than 24 hours. I had my own Children's ID and locker in the surgeons' quarters. I received signed permission for every adult patient and the guardians of children whose operations I observed, but still, this would not be possible today with contemporary privacy-patient rules.

The resulting 1991 Providence Journal newspaper series, "Working Wonders," and the 1993 book THE WORK OF HUMAN HANDS: Hardy Hendren and Surgical Wonder at Children's Hospital (since updated and republished in several editions), launched me into my non-fiction book-writing career. Interestingly, THE WORK OF HUMAN HANDS was the very first book purchased by a then-junior editor at Random House, Jon Karp. I did three more books with Jon: COMING OF AGE, TOY WARS and KING OF HEARTS, which began when I met open-heart pioneer Dr. C. Walton Lillehei at a lecture and dinner sponsored by Hardy at Children's. Jon is now president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, where a couple of years ago he published my co-written book, TOP BRAIN, BOTTOM BRAIN.

But I digress. The point is, Hardy helped make all this possible, and I am deeply indebted. He has been a dear friend for all these many years, and I am grateful for that, too. He and the lovely Eleanor have welcomed me into their family. What more could a writer -- and friend -- want?! Thanks Hardy and Eleanor. Here's to many more.

Hardy and Eleanor at start of the party.

Surgical humor!

Hardy, Eleanor and me.

He blew 'em all out in one breath!

Hardy's son David, center, and his dad.

WATCH A VIDEO OF HARDY'S 90th-BIRTHDAY REMARKS:

A later edition of the book.

Join me on another visit to Hardy's, three years ago.

KING OF HEARTS: Still standing after all these years

Sixteen years after publication, my fifth book, KING OF HEARTS: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery, continues to be read, sold, and receive reader acclaim on Amazon, with a 4.8 of 5 stars rating.  This, in addition to the extensive praise by critics when it was published. I thank them all! KING OF HEARTS remains, shall we say, very dear to my heart. I was privileged to be able to tell this story.

I regularly receive email from readers, most recently from a high school student in Minneapolis who is writing a History Day project on the invention of open-heart surgery, chronicled in KING OF HEARTS. This is a tribute to the late Dr. C. Walton Lillehei -- and his courage and conviction.

The student who reached out to me asked several spot-on questions, and here are two, with my answers:

1. How do you think Lillehei’s discoveries transformed Minnesota’s medical industry and the world? What was the reaction like from people at the time?

Here was a man who with surgical genius, iron will, extraordinary perseverance and an inability to take no for an answer conquered the last great surgical frontier of that time – one could argue, of all time. Truly, open-heart surgery was the Wild West when he began, and it was a civilized place, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, when he was done. The transformation was revolutionary, far-reaching, and the root of many industries and professions we now take for granted.
 Reaction? Some though he was crazy, even murderous (I get into this in King of Hearts in some detail). Others – the parents of dying and previously doomed kids – thought him a savior, even God, almost literally. Some colleagues envied him, others tried to thwart him and the smart ones wanted to be on his team, or at least study with him. The media? Went wild. I chose the chapter 10 title deliberately: “Lourdes in Minneapolis.”

 5. How did he deal with pressure from the medical community and the pressure of when he ran into deaths of patients?

Having faced death himself – first, during combat in the Second World War and then with his own cancer – Walt was fearless. He really was. He knew that the road he had chosen would be filled with danger and loss, but he had to travel it to get to a time, a set of techniques and a technology where millions of lives would be saved. So, he just kept going. Got up every morning and fought the dragon, as it were. Eventually, it was slain.

'It could have been any one of us'

A shorter version of this ran on the op-ed pages of the January 10, 2016, Providence Journal.

UPDATE, July 18, 2019: 
The man I describe further into this essay as "another brother who lived among them in one dorm – and they told stories of him inviting them to his room for illicit cigarettes and requests to shower naked with him in his private bathroom" has been publicly identified as being credibly accused of sexually abusing minors abuse. So I now have more to say. To read, jump to the end.

Watching Spotlight, the Oscar-bound movie about The Boston Globe’s investigation of Massachusetts clergy who raped children, and reading about employees of St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, who sexually abused students has prompted memories of my 1960s and ‘70s childhood.

Only luck, I have concluded, spared me and my friends the fate of these many victims here in New England and others like them across America.

Back then, we were youngsters in a world where authority was accepted without question, and where certain authorities with sanctioned access to children – clergy, teachers, coaches and scout leaders among them – were almost god-like in stature. In the case of priests, they may as well have been God, at least in the view of adults like my mother, a daughter of Irish immigrants who was born and raised in Boston and who brought up her children with the Baltimore Catechism. You won’t find a hint that clergy could be anything but pure in that book.

It was a world of blind obedience and absolute trust of elders. And it was a world where monsters cloaked in authority roamed free, although no grownup warned us of that.

A resident of Wakefield, Mass., a suburb of Boston, from birth until college, I spent eight years at Saint Joseph parochial school and was an altar boy during much of that time at the parish church, which was under the control of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The priests I knew best at St. Joseph were good stewards, and one remained an acquaintance for decades. But another, William F. Maloney, who I saw only at Mass, was later publicly accused of sexually abusing someone in the late ‘60s at another parish in North Reading, four miles from my home.

A ten-minute drive would have brought me to another church, St. Patrick’s in neighboring Stoneham, where my parents could just as easily have settled when buying their first house outside the city. I would have been an altar boy there -- with Bryan Schultz, who was repeatedly and grotesquely abused by Paul R. Shanley, one of the worst serial pedophile priests, assigned to St. Patrick’s for seven years in the 1960s. Father James R. Porter, another monster, was briefly with Shanley at the Stoneham parish in 1967.

As the investigative reporter played by Mark Ruffalo declares in Spotlight: “It could have been you! It could have been me! It could have been any one of us!”

We did not need religion to be near an apparent molester. A local journalist who regularly visited schools, the YMCA, youth athletics and other places was said to have a creepy interest in boys, touching them inappropriately and sneaking into their tents after nightfall on scouting trips. Neither I nor my close friends were scouts, but we heard these stories so frequently we held them to be true. We never told an adult, for who would have believed a kid with such a story?

In eighth grade, I won a scholarship to St. John’s Prep, in Danvers, Mass., an all-boys school run the the Xaverian Brothers where I would receive a superb education. I remember meeting with headmaster Brother Ricardo before I enrolled; he wanted to personally share his delight at my good fortune with me and my parents. He seemed a warm, charming man who was devoted to God and the well-being of children. And that remained my perception during my years at St. John’s.

I was a day student, and thus never saw Brother Ricardo outside the classroom context. But boarders did. They saw also another brother who lived among them in one dorm – and they told stories of him inviting them to his room for illicit cigarettes and requests to shower naked with him in his private bathroom. To my knowledge, this man was never formally accused of sexually abusing a student. [UPDATE, July 19, 2019: He now has been, and his name was Brother Rudolph, born Thomas Holihan; for more, jump to end.] But Brother Ricardo, whose given name was Richard Kerressey, was.

In 1994, a former student accused Kerressey of sodomizing him in the school infirmary in 1966, after the headmaster had brought him back to campus following hospital treatment for injuries sustained when another student bullied and beat him. After the rape, according to the former student, Kerressey threatened to keep him, a senior, from graduating if he told anyone. The grown man claimed his life had been ruined, with suffering from “…depression, affective disorder, rage attacks, sleep apnea… attention/concentration deficit… is unable to hold a job or even at this point work… has a poor self-image, and has been through three divorces,” according to a Sept. 22, 1994, letter by the law firm of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, which represented victims of Porter and Shanley.

From the 1969 St. John's Prep yearbook

Did Kerressey have more victims? The letter, available on bishopaccountability.org, states: “Mr. [redacted] informs us that it was well known among the students at St. John’s that Br. Ricardo favored certain people. Br. Ricardo’s favoritism was based upon the student’s availability to be sexually abused by Br. Ricardo. If one succumbed to Br. Ricardo’s abuses, one was more successful at St. John’s.”

I look very differently now at Brother Ricardo’s smiling face in my Prep yearbooks.

As with other cases, we likely will never know the full truth, since some of an abuser’s victims take their secrets with them to the grave. Indeed, it is possible that some of my childhood friends and classmates were abused but have never disclosed it. If so, I hope they, together with all victims, can find peace in their later years, and if their healing involves reporting long-ago abuse to law enforcement, I encourage them to do so. It is never too late.


The record is unclear on what action, if any, was taken against Kerressey, who left St. John’s in 1971 after my junior year and died 26 years later. To its credit, St. John’s in a more recent time moved responsibly against another brother and a priest chaplain who were accused of abusing students. And the Archdiocese of Boston -- headed now by a holy man, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who succeeded the unholy and unrepentant Cardinal Bernard Law, in charge when many of the more than 800 known victims allege they were abused -- has apologized, paid damages, sought justice and enacted real protections.

We say this must never happen again. One way toward that goal is never forgetting what happened, and what didn’t. Luck is not enough to protect children.

POSTSCRIPT: In August 2018, Xaverian Brother Robert Flaherty was placed on indefinite administrative leave from St. John's after allegations he abused a child in Baltimore years ago. This follows the release of the grand jury report showing the horrific abuse in Pennsylvania of more than 1,000 victims by more than 300 priests and the church-wide cover up for decades.

UPDATE, July 19, 2019:

The late Brother Rudolph, born Thomas Holihan, is the person I referred to without name in my original essay. Among my classmates, he was held to be “creepy,” in the way adolescents describe someone they do not trust and who they suspect -- with a child's sixth sense of such things -- might use adult authority for ill purpose. Inviting boys to come up to his residential suite for an illicit cigarette, which Holihan might follow with a request to get naked and shower with him, for example.

Brother Rudolph, born Thomas Holihan.

I was a day student, not a resident, but I did once visit in his room. In 1971-72, Holihan was the faculty adviser for a small group of seniors, including me, who would be spending the spring semester off-campus (I as an intern in a microbiology lab near Harvard Medical School). In the late fall of 1971, I, like the others, had to meet with him to go over my spring plans.

He could have conducted this session in an office, but he did not; he told me to meet him in his suite, in Ryken Hall, which, according to the prep history, “housed 150 students both in private rooms and in an open dormitory.” A paradise for a predator such as him.

I remember vividly being anxious climbing the stairs to his suite, being let in, and then sitting facing him, the smell of old cigarettes filling the room. I had already formulated a plan were he to try to touch me or more: I would run for the door, hoping he could not stop me and that the door did not have a double lock.

And of course, this being almost a half century ago, I would have told no one but perhaps a close friend.  I certainly would have told no school official, nor made a report to police.

I can only imagine the horror of those boys who were sexually molested. I hope now, as always, that they have been able to heal and find peace. And I believe naming this monster may help in that regard, if only to confirm what they could not then tell the authorities. For Brother Rudolph, superficially, was revered: a so-called man of the cloth and longtime legendary campus figure, at St. John’s already some three decades when I arrived.

And in that, lay the sick power of these despicable people.

In a posting long before the Xaverian Brothers last week to their credit publicized Thomas Holihan’s true nature, St. John’s quoted him from his own writing:

“I tried to remember, sometimes desperately, that the boy is more important than the student; learned to realize that most college professors of adolescent psychology never had to teach adolescents; felt compensated for all teaching traumas by the glimmer of wonder I was lucky enough to awaken in a few students’ eyes; fell in love with most of the poetry I taught, both English and Latin; reached a point as the years went by when the sound of the bell in September that signaled the beginning of another school year was a joyous sound that spoke of happy hours and happy days to come.”

I have read and re-read that passage, taking in every word. They speak, hypocritically and diabolically, of evil.

To its credit, St. John’s with the revelation of Holihan and others at the school in years past, sent a message to the large and far-flung prep community. Below is what headmaster Ed Hardiman, a good man with whom I have an acquaintance, wrote. My hope is that opening the windows and letting in the fresh air will be cleansing, so that in the future, other children will not be victimized at any school, church, or anywhere.

I was one of the lucky ones: I received a wonderful education at St. John’s, and it instilled values I still hold and launched me to a long and successful career. My life would have been very different had I been unlucky.

"As a school community, we humbly acknowledge the pain this information may cause for victims of abuse as well as for the larger Prep community as we continue to grapple with feelings of betrayal, anger, and grief about the suffering of victims of sexual abuse and the cover-up by members of the church hierarchy, clergy, and religious orders," Ed Hardiman wrote. "We are grateful for the transparency and efforts to promote healing by the Xaverian Brothers."

The Boston Globe published a story listing Holihan and other brothers at Xaverian Brothers schools in Massachusetts: http://bit.ly/2XZOYwJ

Providence Journal staff writer and author G. Wayne Miller graduated from St. John’s Prep in 1972 and Harvard College in 1976. 

Read Horror at St. Georges, a Providence journal editorial on the unfolding scandal at that school.

More media, a giveaway, & another Amazon spike for #CarCrazy!

The holiday season was kind to Car Crazy: The Battle for Supremacy Between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age.

-- On January 2, 2016, CSPAN rebroadcast my remarks, and audience question-and-answer, on writing and automobiles at the launch party, at the Pell Center in Newport, Rhode Island.

-- Rhode Island Monthly in its January 2016 issue named Car Crazy a "Rhody Read."

-- The Australian motoring bookshop Pitstop featured the book on its home page.

-- On January 1, 2016, we began an Amazon giveaway for the book!

--  And on January 3, 2016, Car Crazy spiked -- again -- on Amazon Kindle.

CAR CRAZY Appearances: National and Regional, Right Now and Upcoming...

Opportunities abounding now and in the future for media and in-person appearances for CAR CRAZY. 

To wit:

This weekend, Dec. 19 and 20, C-SPAN2 Book TV re-broadcast my talk about writing and the early days of the auto industry that was first broadcast on December 14. The broadcast was from the taping of the book launch party to a full house at the Pell Center in Newport, Rhode Island, last month. View the broadcast.


Also this weekend, the national PBS show White House Chronicle aired my discussion of the birth of the automobile, the revolutionary nature of Henry Ford's Model T, and more with host LLewellyn King. The episode was also on Voice of America Television and Sirius XM Radio's Channel 124. King said, and I thank him: "Absolutely extraordinary... Get this book! Fascinating."


Coming soon: a podcast about the cultural & economic impact of the motor vehicle, with Pell Center head Jim Ludes asking the questions. I am a center fellow & director of the Story in the Public Square program.


I will sign books and present a seminar, "Barney Oldfield, Henry Ford and the Birth of American Auto Racing," at the annual meeting of the Antique Automobile Club of America, the nation's leading classic- and vintage-car group. The meeting will be held in Philadelphia the weekend of Feb. 11, 2016. Come join us!

There is much more to come, of course, as we continue to schedule events. Among the places we have been already:

-- Drive Thru Radio, AM-790, Providence, with the Zangari brothers.

-- Barrington Books Retold, a signing; Barrington Public Library, a presentation. Details here.

-- Steve Klamkin's Saturday show on WPRO-630 am and 99.7-FM.

-- The launch party in Newport, R.I., where we had four classic cars, each more than 100 years old, running and giving rides. Watch great video of the cars in action.

My Dad and Airplanes

Author's Note: I wrote this three years ago, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of my father's death. Like his memory, it has withstood the test of time. I have slightly updated it for today, December 11, 2015, the 13th anniversary of his death. Read the original here.
  

Roger L. Miller as a boy, early 1920s.

My Dad and Airplanes

by G. Wayne Miller

I live near an airport. Depending on wind direction and other variables, planes sometimes pass directly over my house as they climb into the sky. If I’m outside, I always look up, marveling at the wonder of flight. I’ve witnessed many amazing developments -- the end of the Cold War, the advent of the digital world, for example -- but except perhaps for space travel, which of course is rooted at Kitty Hawk, none can compare.

I also always think of my father, Roger L. Miller, who died 13 years ago today.

Dad was a boy on May 20, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh took off in a single-engine plane from a field near New York City. Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, he landed in Paris. That boy from a small Massachusetts town who became my father was astounded, like people all over the world. Lindbergh’s pioneering Atlantic crossing inspired him to get into aviation, and he wanted to do big things, maybe captain a plane or even head an airline. But the Great Depression, which forced him from college, diminished that dream. He drove a school bus to pay for trade school, where he became an airplane mechanic, which was his job as a wartime Navy enlisted man and during his entire civilian career. On this modest salary, he and my mother raised a family, sacrificing material things they surely desired.

My father was a smart and gentle man, not prone to harsh judgment, fond of a joke, a lover of newspapers and gardening and birds, chickadees especially. He was robust until a stroke in his 80s sent him to a nursing home, but I never heard him complain during those final, decrepit years. The last time I saw him conscious, he was reading his beloved Boston Globe, his old reading glasses uneven on his nose, from a hospital bed. The morning sun was shining through the window and for a moment, I held the unrealistic hope that he would make it through this latest distress. He died four days later, quietly, I am told. I was not there.

Like others who have lost loved ones, there are conversations I never had with my Dad that I probably should have. But near the end, we did say we loved each other, which was rare (he was, after all, a Yankee). I smoothed his brow and kissed him goodbye.

So on this 13th anniversary, I have no deep regrets. But I do have two impossible wishes.

My first is that Dad could have heard my eulogy, which I began writing that morning by his hospital bed. It spoke of quiet wisdom he imparted to his children, and of the respect and affection family and others held for him. In his modest way, he would have liked to hear it, I bet, for such praise was scarce when he was alive. But that is not how the story goes. We die and leave only memories, a strictly one-way experience. 

My second wish would be to tell Dad how his only son has fared in the last 13 years. I know he would have empathy for some bad times I went through and be proud that I made it. He would be happy that I found a woman I love, Yolanda, my wife now: someone, like him, who loves gardening and birds. He would be pleased that my three children are making their way in the world, and that he now has three great-granddaughters, wonderful girls all. In his humble way, he would be honored to know how frequently I, my sister and my children remember and miss him. He would be saddened to learn that my other sister, his younger daughter, Lynda, died this year. But that is not how the story goes, either. We send thoughts to the dead, but the experience is one-way. We treasure photographs, but they do not speak.

Lately, I have been poring through boxes of black-and-white prints handed down from Dad’s side of my family. I am lucky to have them, more so that they were taken in the pre-digital age -- for I can touch them, as the people captured in them surely themselves did so long ago. I can imagine what they might say, if in fact they could speak.

Some of the scenes are unfamiliar to me: sailboats on a bay, a stream in winter, a couple posing on a hill, the woman dressed in fur-trimmed coat. But I recognize the house, which my grandfather, for whom I am named, built with his farmer’s hands; the coal stove that still heated the kitchen when I visited as a child; the birdhouses and flower gardens, which my sweet grandmother lovingly tended. I recognize my father, my uncle and my aunts, just children then in the 1920s. I peer at Dad in these portraits (he seems always to be smiling!), and the resemblance to photos of me at that age is startling, though I suppose it should not be.

A plane will fly over my house today, I am certain. When it does, I will go outside and think of young Dad, amazed that someone had taken the controls of an airplane in America and stepped out in France. A boy with a smile, his life all ahead of him.

VIDEO: More classic cars in action. PLUS: another great review by a car lover!

At the bottom of this post, you will find links to more classic cars, including 1 1904 Oldsmobile and a 1912 Packard, running at the launch party for CAR CRAZY. Fun stuff!



First though, a glowing endorsement from Just a Car Guy, aka Jesse Bowers, who writes, in part that CAR CRAZY “Does the best job of teaching you everything about the 1st decade of American car-making (1900 – 1910) that I think we are ever likely to get. If you want to learn how the Ford, Olds, Reo, Chevrolet, Buick and GM got started, this book is indispensable. It’s really that good.”

READ THE FULL REVIEW!




And here are the videos -- quick views, definitely worth the quick clicks!

-- 1904 Olds drivin' by!

-- 1912 Packard!

-- The '04 Olds heading out!

-- Starting an '04 Olds was NEVER easy!

Talking cars on national PBS and worldwide VOA TV, plus a nice new review

Spent a wonderful half hour talking old cars -- and new cars -- and looking at photos of same -- with the distinguished LLewellyn King, host of the national PBS Show White House Chronicle, which is also broadcast on AMG TV, and worldwide on Voice of America Television and Sirius XM Radio's Channel 124. Llewellyn, whose car days go back to his father's Ford Model A, was kind enough to praise Car Crazy, calling it "Absolutely extraordinary... Get this book! It is very, very readable. Fascinating." You can watch the episode here or watch for it to be be-broadcast soon.

And on a related note, the Newport Mercury on December 2, 2015, published a nice story about the book (and the writing of it). "Fascinating," the weekly wrote. "It was a time of off-the-wall characters, eager-to-corner markets and run competitors off the road. We meet the ruthless Frederic Smith, the CEO of Olds Motor Works, and, of course, Ford." Read the story.

Scenes from a signing

Spent a fine hour and a half at Barrington Books Retold in Garden City, Rhode Island, on Sunday, November 29. A great store run by great people -- and we pulled in many Car Crazy folks. Of course, having Viv, my beautiful baby granddaughter, on hand was really the trick to interesting buyers!

Viv loves a red pen, too!

Joy to the world!

Car Crazy and King of Hearts.

Learn more about the rest of my books, non-fiction and fiction, at Gwaynemiller.com

Busy weekend for #CarCrazy!

The Thanksgiving weekend will bring thanks-worthy things for Car Crazy and I invite you to participate. From 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 29, I will be signing books at the newly opened Barrington Books Retold store in Garden City. How cool is this great new independent store? They actually have a French Citroen 2CV auto inside! I may sit in it to sign. Join us! Details here.



And on Saturday and Sunday, the PBS program White House Chronicle will broadcast my interview with Llewellyn King,  award-winning journalist, author, HuffPost contributor and host of the show. White House Chronicle airs nationwide on some 200 PBS, AMG TV, and other stations; and worldwide on Voice of America Television. An audio version airs Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. ET on Sirius XM Radio's POTUS (Politics of the United States) Channel 124. In southern New England, the show airs Sundays at 11:30 a.m. on Rhode Island PBS and again at 7 p.m. on PBS Learn, among other Cox, Verizon and Comcast channels. Elsewhere, see the full station list and check your local schedule! Broadcasts are archived on the WHC site shortly after airing.



AND, at 7:50 a.m. on Saturday, November 28, talk ‪#‎CarCrazy‬ with radio legend Steve Klamkin and me on WPRO-630 am and 99.7-FM. Listen live or on the web! 

Listen to a fun hour talking old cars on Drive Thru Radio!

On Saturday, Nov. 14, I was the guest on Drive Thru Radio, AM-790, Providence, R.I., hosted by Paul Zangari and his brother John, who have loved cars sicne they were teens. We spent a full hour talking Car Crazy and the many people featured in the book: Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, Billy Durant (creator of General Motors), and more. Also, the many cars: Oldsmobiles,  Model Ts, REOs, Packards and others. Listen to the podcast.

Enjoy the ride!

John and Paul Zangari, crazy about cars!

Appearances and signings. And a reading with photos of very old cars!

As we enter the second week of publication for CAR CRAZY, the schedule of events is taking shape. And there's a lot on tap. I invite you to participate. Join the #CarCrazy fun!

-- On Saturday, November 14, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. EST, I will be the in-studio guest of Drive Thru Radio, with hosts Paul and John Zangari (below), car-lovers and experts extraordinaire. Drive Thru is broadcast on AM-790 (Providence, R.I.) on the radio dial, and available live on the web through the AM-790 site. Listen to the podcast through the link here.

-- On Sunday, November 29, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. I will be signing at the new Barrington Books store in the Garden City mall, 176 Hillside Road, Cranston, R.I. Details at the Barrington Books Retold site. This will be fun -- as you can see from this photo of the new store, they love cars -- that's a Citroen you see through the window!

-- On Tuesday, December 1, I will be reading, speaking, signing, and showing photos of many old cars (including the early Model T and the 1904 Oldsmobile, two of the main cars in Car Crazy) at the Barrington, Rhode Island, Public Library. Evening starts at 7 p.m.

-- Still to be scheduled, but coming soon (check back here for updates): 

>>> C-SPAN BOOK TV broadcast of the November 1, 2015, launch party at the Pell Center in Newport, Rhode Island. 

>>> The half hour I taped with wonderful host LLewellyn King on White House Chronicle.

>>> The January book tour to Detroit and Michigan.

In My Merry Oldsmobile (and Model T, Packard and Duryea)

"In My Merry Oldsmobile" was one of the hit songs of 1905, a huge year for the automobile industry -- and a huge year in many of the stories told in CAR CRAZY. That's the year two of these Curved Dash Oldsmobiles raced from Manhattan to Portland, Oregon, one of the adventure I chronicle in the book. The winner took... 45 days.

Courtesy of the Audrain Automobile Museum, we had one of these merry Oldsmobiles -- an original 1904 model -- at the November 1 launch party. Also on hand, and running: a 1912 Packard, a 1912 Ford Model T Speedster, and an 1893 Duryea replica.

Herewith is a photo of the the cover of the original "In My Merry Oldsmobile" (risque, for the era, lyrics below) and some photos from the party. And if you'd like to watch a cool video of the cars in action, watch here.

More about the book at the CAR CRAZY site. As always, enjoy the ride!

Hit song of 1905

That same model Olds, at Newport party, 2015.

Miller at wheel of 1912 Model T Speedster. 1893 Duryea in back.

Even babies love a ride in a 111-year-old merry Olds!

Take a ride yourself in this video, shot from inside a 1912 Packard, the merry Olds puttering by...!

Remarks, rides and a reading at the 11/1/15 launch party, Pell Center, Newport, RI

On a glorious fall day, we packed the house at Salve Regina University's Pell Center in Newport, R.I., for the launch party for CAR CRAZY: The Battle for Supremacy between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age. C-SPAN BOOK TV taped the event for broadcast soon, and we had four antique cars on hand, courtesy of Ambassador Bill Middendorf and the great Audrain Automobile Museum. The 1904 Oldsmobile, 1912 Model T Speedster, the 1912 and the 1893 Duryea ran, and our donors gave guests rides. Watch them in action on YouTube.

Pell Center executive director Jim Ludes have introductory remarks and then I spoke, read and took questions, and then signed many books. Below are my remarks. Enjoy the ride!

Author Miller speaking.

Part of the crowd, C-SPAN BOOK TV cameras rolling.

Good afternoon. Let me join Jim in welcoming you. And let me thank the Pell Center, Salve Regina University, The Providence Journal, and my publisher, PublicAffairs. This is my third book with them, and they are the best. Gratitude also to Salve President Sister Jane Gerety, who would have attended if she hadn’t already planned to be out of town.

Two folks have travelled a distance to be here today and I’d like to acknowledge them. Editor Lisa Kaufman, who has played an important role in my writing since my book about NASCAR, Men and Speed, published in 2002, is here from New York. Lisa took a draft of Car Crazy and performed her editing magic, greatly improving it.

Drew Smith, my screenwriting partner and longtime friend, has come from the West Coast.  Drew knows better than most about motoring from driving the 405 near his home in southern California. Welcome to Newport, Drew.

And there are many other good friends and relatives who have travelled shorter distances, from Rhode Island and elsewhere in New England.

In a moment, I will read from Car Crazy. But first, an observation about writing.

The truth is, writing is about the most rewarding and most miserable calling, wrapped into one, that I can imagine. Good that I’m part Irish.

As my writer friends here today can testify, you spend untold hours alone at your keyboard, hoping the dog won’t need to go out, or someone won’t knock on the door, or the phone won’t ring, or there won’t be any other interruptions – at least until you finish this passage that has been haunting you, sometimes even in your sleep.

All this as you obsess – and I do mean obsess -- over the choice of a word, or the smoothness of the narrative arc, or whether this is too much or too little detail, or which character should have a starring role and which belongs on the cutting-room floor.

You endeavor to be judicious with every word, understanding that dialogue is crucial and nouns and verbs are the best tools in your kit. Stephen King’s adage -- “the road to hell is paved with adjectives” -- echoes in your head, and yet you still use them and their evil twin, the adverbs, too freely. Which is when it would be nice if your editor – or better yet, Stephen King himself -- were on hand at that moment to save you.

And despite your focus, you sometimes check your email, social media, or phone.

Go figure.

The alone part and the crankiness that accompanies it when that passage still frustrates you or the narrative arc has imploded is unfair to those you hold dear. Yet they tolerate it -- most times, anyway -- which is probably more than I would in their shoes.

“All this over a word? Really? Really?” is what I imagine I would say.

The rewarding part, by the way, is a day like today -- when your work is finally published and you can forget word choice, at least for a few hours, and just have a good time with family and friends and readers.

So what can I say to someone who knows this obsession intimately: my wife, Yolanda, who beyond being understanding could almost have written Car Crazy herself, since another thing about writers is that when break away from their writing, they like to blab. Sometimes about trivial matters, such as how long it took an automobile to drive from Manhattan to Portland, Oregon, in the spring of 1905, for example.

Forty-five days, two hours and thirty minutes, in case you were wondering.

What I can say is: thank you, Yolanda, for everything.

Thanks also to my children who are here today: Rachel and Kate, who lived with my passion for many years, dating back to my first book, the horror/mystery novel Thunder Rise, published in 1989, when they were little kids. They are why I began getting up at 4:30 or 5 to write, a schedule I still keep, so that I could be present when they began their days. And to think they now have children of their own! A special shout-out to Bella, Livvie and Vivienne!

Before I read from Car Crazy, indulge me in some informal market research. I have four quick questions. Please respond with a show of hands.

-- How many people here today did NOT arrive in a motor vehicle?

[One hand went up]

-- How many of you have ever been stuck in traffic?

[All hands went up]

-- How many of you have ever loved a car -- your own or someone else’s?

[All hands went up]

-- How many think you could live – happily or unhappily -- without ever riding in a motor vehicle of any kind again?

[One hand went up]

As we have just unscientifically demonstrated, the motor vehicle dramatically transformed society -- unlike any other technology in history, I would assert, with the exception of the printing press. The factory, the steam engine, the railroad – and today’s computer, internet, and iPhone -- do not quite compare.

There are more than 250 million motor vehicles registered in America in 2015, and an estimated 1.2 billion or more worldwide. This ubiquitous machine continues to power major sectors of the domestic and international economies. It helped create suburbia. Except for the Northeast, it all but ended American inter-city passenger rail. It injures and kills in still-horrifying numbers. The gas-powered version contributes to global warming -- and its thirst for petroleum has sparked wars. It has been the subject of some of the ugliest corporate scandals in history, most recently with General Motors and Volkswagen.

The automobile, of course, has also been loved and cherished. I myself felt my first crush as a teenager at the wheel of an old black Ford sedan -- and I got a twinge again today driving across the Jamestown and Pell Bridges. I shouldn’t have been but I was speeding. It felt great!

And as we all know, the car is the protagonist or a principal character in countless songs, books, and movies. The Great American Road trip still mesmerizes us.

The automobile was born more than a century ago during a frenzy of invention and contention as the horseless carriage proliferated and the traditionalists, who hated it, took aim. Literally, they took aim: stonings of motorists by mobs armed with rocks, sticks, tea kettles, tin cans and metal pails regularly made the front page of The New York Times.

Stonings were only one front in a war that pitted manufacturers and motorists against those who opposed “the automobile evil,” as a New York state senator called the car in 1902. In legislatures, municipal councils, courts and the press -- in cities and in the country, where farmers sometimes used guns to chase drivers away -- the sides battled over speed limits, traffic control, licensing, registration and taxes. They argued liability and penalties for the mounting numbers of injuries and fatalities. They debated whether horns and lights should be mandated, and whether motorists should be jailed for terrifying horses.

It all began with people like the farm boy from Michigan whose name is on some of the cars, old and new, parked outside today.

[READ beginning of Chapter One]

In closing, let me express my gratitude to the people who brought those incredible classic cars parked outside. Ambassador Bill Middendorf and his motor men Mitch Morin and Kyle Santos brought the 1893 Duryea replica and the 1912 Model T Speedster. The Audrain Automobile Museum, right here on Bellevue Avenue – I highly recommend a visit -- brought the 1912 Packard and the 1904 Oldsmobile, the model that crossed from Manhattan to Portland, Oregon, in 1905, one of many adventures I chronicle in Car Crazy. Museum executive director David de Muzio and mechanics Joe Lanuez and Bill Meteraud are in charge of those great cars.

I will be signing books in the board room, off the main lobby, in a few minutes. And, at 3:30, we will have a running of all of the cars.

Right now, I’d be happy to take a few questions.

[several questions followed]

Last Call for Classic Cars in Newport, R.I., 11/1!

You still have time -- but not much! -- to register for the free Car Crazy launch party, 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 1, at the Pell Center, 518 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. These four classic cars, in photo below -- from 1893, 1904 and 1912 -- will be there. Register here and hope to see you in Newport. The forecast is for runnin' weather...

Like Kirkus, Library Journal gives CAR CRAZY two thumbs up!

In another pre-publication review, Library Journal on Oct. 1, 2015, praises the book, calling it "engrossing and well-written" and "offering engaging asides" that will appeal to many different readers. Library Journal follows Kirkus Reviews' similarly praiseworthy critique (see below). Here is the full Library Journal review:

"Miller (Toy Wars; King of Hearts) looks at the impact on tradition, national infrastructure, legal precedent, and cultural change affected by the introduction of the automobile into America's landscape, detailing the battle for brand recognition and sales dominance that existed between car manufacturers such as Ford and Oldsmobile in the early 1900s.

"Contrasting car makers that embraced the freedom and power of the car against those that saw elegance and ease of use as an opportunity to profit greatly, Miller demonstrates the impact the burgeoning industry had on American society and laws. Offering engaging asides, the author shows how the cultural divide between those who were auto aficionados and others who were not led to antagonism, occasional violent outbursts, and ultimately a redefinition of societal norms and legal standing.

"VERDICT: Engrossing and well-written, Miller's study of the cultural impact of the automobile is also a testament to the elements of the vehicle that car enthusiasts find endearing. This work will attract fans of motor sports as well as entrepreneurs and anyone interested in the power of technology to enact social change."

Here's what Kirkus said, on September 3, 2015:

"A chronicle of the frantic, ultracompetitive, and heroic early days of automobile manufacturing.

"The turn of the 20th century witnessed some of the most profound technological advances in human history. Chief among them was the development of the automobile as a mass-produced consumer product. Beginning with the first commercial enterprise founded by brothers Charles and J. Frank Duryea in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1893, Americans quickly grew infatuated, skeptical, and outright hostile to this novel contraption. 

"In his buoyant and charming narrative, Miller (Drowned: A Different Kind of Zombie Tale, 2015, etc.) sets the foundation for the American century by charting the intense competition, rivalries, successes, and failures of the early automotive industry. The author profiles many of the titans and personalities of the era such as Henry Ford, Oldsmobile founder Ransom Olds and his famed Curved Dash, General Motors creator William C. Durant, driver Barney Oldfield, and others. 

"Aside from the industrial upheaval caused by auto manufacturing, Miller also highlights the drastic social changes it caused. Catering to young adventurers and the wealthy elite, mostly from urban centers, the automobile inspired enthusiast groups like the League of American Wheelmen all across the country. Not all reactions were positive. Rural communities, dependent on horses, viewed the new mode of transportation as a direct affront to their way of life and threatened to sabotage cross-country racers passing through their towns. From cottage industry to mass-production assembly lines, the development of the automobile represents a quintessentially American story of industrial capitalism and the fiercely driven personalities that carved their fortunes and legacies out of seemingly nothing. 

"Capturing the energy and ambition of a time when optimism in the American spirit was unparalleled, Miller also shows that despite the car’s profound effect on American culture, it was not the modern panacea some predicted. A must for car lovers and plenty of interesting material to keep other curious readers flipping pages."

Indies like CAR CRAZY!

Enjoyed meeting independent booksellers, friends, authors and some of the Perseus Books sales folks at the annual October New England Independent Booksellers Association convention in Providence. Here I am with Pamela Fenner of Michaelmas Press, one of many nice people I met!

Talk and signing at the Barrington Public Library

Please join me at 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 1, for a talk and signing at the Barrington (R.I.) Public Library! More details here.

And don't forget -- the book launches with a party 2 p.m. Sunday, November 1, at the Pell Center, 518 Bellevue Ave., Newport, R.I. Free and open to all, with displays of rare old cars -- and we do mean old, as in a 1904 Oldsmobile and a Model T. Learn more.