Lamb, Chris 1958-

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LAMB, Chris 1958-

PERSONAL: Born 1958. Education: University of Tennessee, bachelor's degree, 1980, master's degree, 1984; Bowling Green State University, Ph.D., 1995.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Communication, College of Charleston, 5 College Way, Charleston, SC 29424. E-mail—lambc@cofc.edu.

CAREER: Author, educator, and journalist. Old Dominion University, assistant professor; College of Charleston, associate professor of communication, 1998–; Florida Humanities Council, scholar-in-residence, 2000.

AWARDS, HONORS: Award for Best Research, Society for American Baseball Research, 1999, for journal article "L'affaire Jake Powell: The Minority Press Goes to Bat for Segregated Baseball"; Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award for best research in minority and ethnographic studies, 2005, for Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training.

WRITINGS:

Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2004.

Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Has published widely in professional journals, including Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, Journalism History, Newspaper Research Journal, Communication and the Law, Telecommunications Policy, and Journal of Sport History. Has also written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Petersburg Times, Sports Illustrated, and USA Today.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book about segregated baseball.

SIDELIGHTS: A professor of writing and journalism, Chris Lamb is the author of books about racism in baseball and editorial cartoons. In Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training Lamb tells the story of the legendary Robinson's initial encounter with major league baseball. The book is set in the year 1946, when Robinson is about to step out onto the field as the first black baseball player in the major leagues. Lamb recounts the indignities the not-yet-famous Robinson had to face in silence and relative isolation. "This is not just a baseball biography but also a marvelous piece of history," wrote Randall L. Schroeder in Library Journal. Wes Lukowsky, writing in Booklist, noted that "Lamb's detailed and annotated research provides an in-depth examination of an important step in the integration of baseball."

Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons looks at the history of editorial cartooning, including how cartoonists responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The author also discusses the current state of affairs in editorial cartooning. Due to the downsizing that occurred at many newspapers as the result of falling circulation and the rise of alternative media, there were fewer than one hundred editorial cartoonists in the United States by 2005. Lamb's research for the book included archival newspaper and magazines stories and interviews with a number of these cartoonists. The book also contains more than 150 illustrations. "I hope it will make a difference—even if just one newspaper hires an editorial cartoonist because of it," Lamb said to Dave Astor in Editor & Publishers. Commenting on Lamb's view of editorial cartoons, James Boylan wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review that the author is "a believer in their worth and vitality."

Lamb told CA: "My oldest brother was a sportswriter in Chicago. He once sent me a book of columns by the great Chicago columnist, Mike Royko. When I first began writing columns in college, I tried to write like Mike Royko and became a fourth-rate Mike Royko. Then I stumbled across Woody Allen's short stories and became a fourth-rate Woody Allen. I then read a lot of James Thurber. I remember reading that Thurber said it took him ten drafts of anything before he could show it to anyone. That made me feel better about my writing. My friends would hand in their first drafts of something and it would be pretty good. It takes me six drafts to come up with a decent grocery list. This explains my writing process. I write draft after draft after draft. I wasn't a very good deadline writer when I was writing for newspapers. I've learned that I need a lot of time. This requires a real investment of both time and energy. Now I don't get involved in something unless it really resonates with me.

"I've learned to trust my instincts when writing. Writing sometimes is like playing poker. I've also learned to trust my ear. I've also learned that it takes me a long time to write anything. Writing comes easier than it once did, but it still doesn't come particularly easily. I'm a very determined writer. I try to write two to three hours a day, three or four days a week. As I've gotten older, I've realized that whatever success I've had as a writer has come because I work very hard at it.

"A lot of people want to be writers but they don't want to do the required work. Then there are of course the people who appeared to have been touched by the gods. Their stuff seems to flow naturally and beautifully out through their fingers and onto the computer keyboard. I avoid these people; they're bad for my inferiority complex.

"My favorite book is whatever I'm working on at the moment. This, I might add, is also my least favorite book. I just finished editing an anthology of Midwestern humor. Now I'm going back and working on a book on the decades of segregated baseball.

"I'm drawn to subjects because I'm interested in learning more about them. I'm interested in examining them in the context of bigger issues—whether it's Jackie Robinson and the civil rights movement or editorial cartooning and the American democracy. Therefore, I hope that anyone who reads one of my books reacts similarly. For instance, I want readers to appreciate Jackie Robinson as a civil rights leader before the civil rights movement had a name. I want readers to understand the importance that social criticism, in general, and editorial cartooning, in particular, have in our society and in our history. Editorial cartoons are as American as the founding fathers and as irreverent as the Boston Tea Party. Editorial cartoonists are dying off in this country. I'm concerned about this; I want readers also to be concerned about this."