How to Research Nonfiction: Step 2

Last week I wrote about the kind of research I do when I get an idea. I have to answer two key questions: Is it kid-friendly, and is it a new idea or new slant on an old subject?  Henry Ford's plastic soybean car fits the bill, so I move to question number three: Will there be enough information about the subject to make the project viable?

I have run into dead ends before. Getting my hopes up about some arcane topic only to discover that the little tidbit that tantalized me initially was all there was. No historical records existed.  I suppose I could have made it my life's work to scrape together the few remnants that remained and built on it so that I became the expert, but my heart, and my attention span, was just not that into it. I'll leave that to some grad student looking for a dissertation topic.

But my gut feeling is that there is more to my plastic car story than what I have uncovered so far. After all, Henry Ford is one of the most famous innovators of the 20th century. So, my first task is to read as many biographies as I can about the man. Doing research for a nonfiction book is like creating backstories for fictional characters. You need to find out what makes them tick. Where did they come from? What and who influenced them?  There are a lot of biographies about Ford, so I select the ones written by reputable researchers; ones with lots of end notes and a big bibliographies that will direct me to other sources.  I start to build my own working bibliography.

Your real characters need to be grounded in a time and place. You need to know about the world they lived in. For this project that means reading about the Roarin' Twenties, the Great Depression, and about life in Michigan.

I also read up on ancillary topics, too, like soybeans (Did you know there are more than 300 kinds?), and about the Ford company (FYI: The ill-fated Edsel was named after Ford's son, who was named after Ford's best friend, who was a food chemist at the plant.)

My working bibliography grows exponentially, and I know that there is more than enough information out there to make my Henry Ford story a go. And that's a good thing, because my editor already approved it. :)

Next Week: Step 3 -  Looking for those Primary Documents

Secondary sources for guidance and understanding: Researching Thomas Jefferson

I spent two days at the Thomas Jefferson library near Monticello cruising through the bound transcripts of his Papers, and browsing the stacks.  Although primary sources are the gold standard, I find equally precious gems in secondary sources. Gasp! Did I really say that? Yes, I did, and here’s why.

                Unless you are a veteran scholar of TJ and have spent your career steeped in his work, then you need some guidance to the immense amount of writing the man left behind. Jefferson wrote some 18,000 letters (compared to his contemporaries who wrote about 5000), and then there are the letters he received, political missives, declarations, summaries, essays, financial memorandum, travel journals, daily notations in a farm book, garden book, and  meteorological data covering more than 60 years. That’s a lot of stuff to plow through.  Thankfully scholars have done much of the shoveling for you. Some clear a better path than others, and that’s where a great librarian is invaluable showing you who to trust and what to steer clear of.  Anna Berkes at the TJ library is one of those librarians.

               Besides the sheer volume of Jefferson’s legacy, you also need help understanding what he and others of his time meant.  The overly polite courtesies of 18^th century letter writing can be tedious to slog through. Several times I found myself thinking, “Get on with it, already.”  On the other hand they were conscientious enough to future readers to note which letters they were referring to. They had to – after all, letters took days and weeks to reach their destination.  

               It's harder to 'get' 18 ^th century sarcasm.  When were they being snarky? When were they joking?  Thomas and one of his college buddies often wrote letters of their great adventures trying to top the other one. So, some of the adventures TJ wrote about never happened.  How would I know that if Kevin Hayes, author of Road to Monticello, hadn’t told me? 

               So, thank you Anna and Jack at the Thomas Jefferson Library for locating documents for me, and thank you to Betts, Boyd, Padover, Hatch, Peterson,  Meacham, Hayes, Thomson, Wulf, Dugatkin, and all the writers who have come before me who are helping me understand one of the most amazing men in history.