Joseph Crespino is an associate professor in the History department. He is currently working on a political biography of J. Strom Thurmond, former U.S. senator and 1948 presidential candidate, set to be published in 2011.

1) Why Strom?

Aside from being a colorful, enigmatic, fascinating figure he is also the symbol of one of the most dramatic transformations in American political history — white Southerners’ precipitous switch in political loyalties following the civil rights movement from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Writing about Thurmond allows me a narrow little strip of ground where I can put the story of modernization in the twentieth century South alongside the rise of modern American conservatism — and consider how those two histories did and did not intersect.

2) So where in the book process are you now?

Well. I’ve been doing research for three years, and thanks to a leave this year I’m able to write about three and a half weeks of every month and still get some quick trips in to various archives to follow up on particular subjects or explore new ones that come up as I write.

3) What are some of your own favorite political biographies that you’ve read?

Sam Tanenhaus’s book on Whittaker Chambers; Alan Brinkley’s joint biography of Huey Long and Father Coughlin; a great little book by Nicholas Dawidoff called The Catcher Was A Spy, about a journeyman baseball player named Moe Berg who also had a covert career with the OSS spying on Germany’s atom bomb program — not exactly a political biography, but kind of. And though I have so many problems with them, I still love Robert Caro’s books on LBJ, particularly the most recent, Master of the Senate.

4) Has your research turned up any real surprises or unexpected insights?

Thurmond hated the name Dixiecrats — he never used it and tried to correct people whenever they did. Historians today use the term unthinkingly, but it’s important to consider why Thurmond disliked it so much and why the actual name of the party, States Rights Democrats, was so important to him.

Another thing is that Thurmond was one of those politicians who lived in perpetual campaign mode, and I’ve found great evidence of how his concern about various potential challengers prompted him to take certain political moves that came to define his career.

5) Has the process thus far been more difficult, or easier, than you imagined?

It’s gone pretty smoothly so far. I’m relatively early in the process — I’ve drafted about four out of 12 chapters and will revise thoroughly the material I’ve already written – but so far, so good.

6) Are there any specific lessons you learned from writing your first book that shaped the way you approached this project?

Having written a book before I’m able to think through more clearly now how individual chapters should work and how they fit together as a whole. I also have a lot more confidence now than I’m embarking on a project that someone might actually be interested in reading — which is hardly a given when one starts a dissertation.

More than anything, however, this second project has confirmed for me how important it is just to write and think about my project every day. My father was a professional athlete and my wife is a musician, and I’m struck how similar being a writer is to those two professions. You’ve got to work out or practice daily, otherwise you lose your chops. For me that means not waiting until I have every piece of information lined up on notecards. Writing history is not like science where you gather all the data and then run the experiment. For me, it’s much more an artistic process: I’m putting ideas and analysis together as I read volumes of primary and secondary sources, and those insights can come in the archives or just at random times during the day (the iPhone voice memo application comes in handy in this regard).

7) How does the approach to writing a biography differ from other historical writing?

The story is right there for you laid out already: a person is born, they rise to some prominence or they do something that makes them notable, and then they die. The hardest part of writing conventional histories is trying to figure out what your story is, when it should begin and when it should end.

8) Feel free to take this opportunity to trash any and all previous biographies of Strom Thurmond:

Pass.

9) If you could ask Strom Thurmond one question, what would it be?

It would probably have something to do with his secret of having an African-American daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Though to be honest, while I think Thurmond was a smart man and a very able politician, he was not at all self-reflective. I’ve read lots of oral histories that other people have done with him, and they are never that revealing. So I could think of many specific factual questions to ask him but on the bigger, broader questions about life and motivation and meaning I don’t think I’d trust his answers, because ultimately I don’t think he knew himself all that well.

10) Do you think Strom would be proud of his former staffer, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson?

Not at Wilson heckling the president. Thurmond loved the traditions and decorum of the Senate, and he was a military man who had a deeply felt respect for authority. He would have recognized the outburst as undignified and improper.

BONUS: After this project is over — do you have an idea of what you’d want to move on to next?

I want to write a broad book on politics and religion in the civil rights era, though I have a few smaller book projects I might do before that. That one I’ll probably be living with for a while.

— Interview by Editorials Editor Asher Smith