At around 2 a.m. Tuesday morning, I finished writing A Conservative History of the American Left. This follows four years of work, which included reading almost 400 books, interviewing scores of activists and a dozen or so celebrity activists, researching archived material at Harvard, Wellesley, UMass, Syracuse, Catholic, UVA, Michigan, NYU, and the Library of Congress, and pouring through such forgotten journals as The Harbinger, Appeal to Reason, The New Masses, and Liberation. The books I read and own, which occupy a dozen or so shelves in my new attic library, include my first cover-to-cover reading of Big Black, otherwise known as the Bible. When you read the book, you will understand why it was so important for me to read The Book.

In addition to copious reading, there has been, unsurprisingly, writing and more writing. I wrote in Prague, in Krakow, in Salzburg; on trains and on planes; on my old condo's porch in Washington, DC; in my attic in the company of a bat; and, finally, on Monday evening, in a bar in College Park, Maryland along historic and ugly, and historically ugly, Route 1. My hand hurts worse than Bart Simpson's does after school. Before edits, I probably wrote 200,000 words or so. The final version is more book than Why the Left Hates America and Intellectual Morons combined.

The actual book will be shorter than that, but its scope necessarily makes it the longest of my three books. I hope readers will think it the best, too. What it has going for it, methinks, are the amazing characters that make up the history of the American Left and the American Left's penchant for forgetting the past, which makes so many of these characters fresh to readers--even if they lived more than a century ago. It's very much a biography-driven book, whose stories interweave and intersect. I'm fortunate to have such a gripping subject matter.

Writing has finished, but that doesn't mean the book will come out next week. Seven months from now is more like it. Copy edits, galley proofs, reviewer copies, printing, dust-jacket blurbs, indexing, and layout are among the tasks ahead. I get my name on the book as the author. But there's a good reason, as the aforementioned list indicates, that the publisher--in my case Crown Forum--gets its name on there too. It's been a sizable chunk of my life, but for the payoff--seeing, feeling, and even smelling (on old friend always smelled new books) an actual hardcover--I'll have to wait a little longer.

After four years of obsessing over the history of the American Left, including the last two years of doing so without a day job to distract my monomania for a few hours, and after one day to exhale, I am left with the question: What now?

A Liberal History of the American Right.

Congratulations!

See if Chris Matthews will let you put his description of you as the "new voice of Massachusetts conservatism" (or w/e he called you) on the dust jacket.

New Topics for you to write about . . .

1) Conservatism Is Not An Ideology (an examination of the conservative movement and why it has gone awry, focusing on the unholy and ideologically radical alliance of the Religious Right and the Neocons w/ their National Greatness mission). You can defend a Burkean/Kirkean conservative movement.

2) A study of the American penchant for "immanentizing the eschaton" from both the left and right "progressives."

3) Intellectual Morons Redux: Hollywood Style. Focusing on the idiocy of movie stars and their misuse of their own celebrity. A special focus could be done on propaganda in American film.

4) Something to help promote Ron Paul's candidacy, maybe a campaign trail biography.

And lastly:

4) Confessions of a Fenway Park Hot Dog Vendor.

I am always awed by how much time, commitment, talent and intelligence it takes for one to write a book. From one of us lesser mortals to you, congratulations! Looking forward to reading it.

I think you're going to Disney World.

Seriously, congratulations. I am in awe and completely envious.

Speaking of celebrity politico drones....

Question: now that Hugo Chavez has outlawed smoking and drinking in Venezuela, will Sean Penn be able to satisfy his three pack a day smoking and one bottle a day drinking habits when visiting and kissing Chavez’s a$$?

That's quite an accomplishment. Congratulations.

Looking forward to it, Dan. What now? Grill some Brats, get a six pack of your favorite brew, and watch the Red Sox. Sit around in your shorts, fart and scratch yourself in a manly fashion. Do this until the wife stops talking to you. Then, get a job at Walmart! I hear they're hiring! lol

Maybe you should start a book on the neo-conservatives.

I think you should take your wife out to dinner and celebrate. Congratulations.