Write On!

Prolific provost Peter Stearns reaches major milestone with his 100th book

By Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95

Isaac Asimov has done it. So has romance writer Barbara Cartland. But few authors, particularly scholarly ones, achieve such a milestone. With Revolutions in Sorrow: The American Experience of Death in Global Perspective published by Paradigm Publishers in September, George Mason University provost Peter Stearns joined this elite group. It is no surprise that he is delighted by the accomplishment.

“When I realized I was getting close to 100, I took on a few projects to help boost the numbers,” he says.

“It is a frivolous target, but I thought it would be fun.”

As frivolous as the target might be, Stearns is particular about how he counts the books he has published. The tally for 100 includes books he has written, cowritten, and edited. He doesn’t count new editions unless there have been significant changes to the volume, and he doesn’t count translations at all.

One reason Stearns is published so widely is that he chooses topical subjects. For example, Anxious Parents: The History of Modern Childrearing in America is about helicopter parents, but it was written before the term was even coined.

“I don’t use the term in the book because I didn’t know it then, but that is what that book is about,” he says. “I am really interested in picking topics that involve current behaviors that are interesting and how history can help us understand them.”

Over the years, he has provided a historical perspective for dieting with Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West; the post-September 11 world with American Fear: The Causes and Consequence of High Anxiety; and jealousy with Jealousy: The Evolution of an Emotion in American History.

A large portion of his scholarly work also focuses on world history. Among the topics receiving Stearns’s analysis from a global perspective are Global Outrage: The Impact of World Opinion on Contemporary History, Growing Up: The History of Childhood in a Global Context, and Gender in World History.

Of all the volumes, Stearns doesn’t really have a favorite, but if he were to single one out, it would be American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style, published in 1996.

“I think American Cool was my most significant single contribution,” he says. “I have had a number of books that have been reasonably widely cited and used, but that’s the one that most fundamentally shaped the field in emotions history.”

Of course, the first question most people ask is, How does he do it? That question naturally makes the provost chuckle. “People seem to want to believe that I don’t sleep much,” he says, but he insists that isn’t true.

He says he writes during odd moments, summers, and sometimes parts of weekends. Since moving into administrative work, he has used research assistants for some tasks, but what it comes down to is his ability to focus.

“I can concentrate, and this helps me use odd chunks of time. And [writing] gets easier with time. My first couple books took me as long as they would take anybody, but you develop greater facility over time,” he says.

“The nicest thing is when you’ve finally thought it all through and you have to get it on paper, then it really goes fast. Sometimes it is even uncomfortable until you get it all down.”

Ultimately, the key to Stearns’s success is probably that he actually enjoys the work.

“I find it fun,” he says. “History is relevant and useful. I find it immensely engaging, which I suppose is the biggest reason why I’ve tried to do so many topics.”

And it doesn’t hurt that he can type really fast.