Will Rogers; His Life and Times

New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1973. Deluxe Edition. Hardcover. very good in slipcase. 26 cm, 415, illustrations. This is an American Heritage Biography. Richard M. Ketchum (1922-2012) was an American historian and magazine editor. Historian Douglas Brinkley has said that Ketchum was "the finest historian of the American Revolution." Ketchum owned an advertising agency until 1951 and worked at the U. S. Information Agency. In 1956, Ketchum was hired by American Heritage Publishing Company in 1956 and worked there in various capacities until 1974. He wrote 33 articles for American Heritage Magazine according to his author page. Ketchum was the author of numerous books. The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941 (1989) described the events leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Mr. Ketchum was particularly interested in the American Revolution. His last book, Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution was a definitive account of the battle and unlikely triumph that led to American independence. One of those noted American Heritage biographies, featuring a veritable archive of colorful photographs -- a rare shot of a Cherokee ""inauguration"" in 1843, sad mementos from the fated Alaskan flight, etc. -- and a compendium text which accurately traces Rogers' life without really touching the man. Rogers was an adventurer of enormous energy -- from a frontier boyhood he traveled from home "Indian Territory" to the East Coast, to South America, Europe and South Africa. From Wild West shows he graduated to the stage, then via Ziegfeld to Hollywood, radio, newspaper columnist and on to a popular pedestal as Sage -- a kind of hybrid of Artemus Ward, and Mr. Dooley. There are handsomely mounted congeries of Rogers' remarks on politics, aviation, foreign affairs, etc.