Book Editing
Book Editing / Magazine & Newspaper Editorial Work
Barbara Drake has copy edited a number of books for U.S. presses. The first book-length manuscript she edited was a doctoral thesis by Ariel Segal for the University of Miami History Department, which was subsequently published by the Jewish 
Publications Society as Jews of the Amazon: Self-Exile in Earthly Paradise (1999). According to Barbara, it’s a “fascinating read about descendents of Jewish businessmen from Morocco who came to Iquitos during the 19th-century rubber boom and fathered children with Amazonian women – Spielberg should make a movie of it.”
That project drew Barbara into the world of scholarly book editing, which involves spending long hours curled up with a footnote-laden manuscript and the Chicago Manual of Style. She specializes in books about history and politics, especially those of Latin America, the Caribbean and the (U.S.) South. On average, she copy edits between two and four books year. She is currently editing a book about Southern and Appalachian literature, by Casey Clabough.
Here are three books she recently copy edited for the University Press of Florida:
History’s Peru: The Poetics of Colonial and Postcolonial Historiography
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
Project editor: Jacqueline Kinghorn Brown; copy editor: Barbara Drake
Pub date: forthcoming (Feb. 2011), Univ. Press of Florida, 304 pp.
Book description: More than the story of a South American country, History’s Peru examines how the entity called “Peru” gradually came into being and how the narratives that defined it evolved over time. Thurner examines the development of Peruvian historical thought from its misty colonial origins in the sixteenth century up to the present day. He demonstrates that the concept of “Peru” is both a strange and enlightening invention of the modern colonial imagination, and one that lives on today.
Link to publisher’s website: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=THURN001
Toledo’s Peru: Vision and Reality
Author: Ronald Bruce St. John
Project editor: Jacqueline Kinghorn Brown; copy editor: Barbara Drake
Pub date: forthcoming (Oct. 2010), University Press of Florida, 256 pp.
Book description: Alejandro Toledo was elected president of Peru in 2001, ending the corrupt rule of Alberto Fujimori. Limited to a single term, Toledo capitalized on his indigenous roots and his identification with the lower and middle classes. Enjoying widespread support when he took office, by mid-term Toledo suffered approval ratings even lower than Fujimori’s. By the time the 2006 elections took place, Toledo’s popularity was among the highest of any outgoing president in the history of Peru.
“Combines in-depth interviews with contemporary accounts to provide the first full-length study of a Peruvian government that, in spite of its many limitations, often self-induced, deepened the market economy while restoring democratic practices.” — David Scott Palmer, Boston University
Link to publisher’s website: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=STJOH001
From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964
Author: Millery Polyné
Project editor: Jacqueline Kinghorn Brown; copy editor: Barbara Drake
Pub date: June 2010, University Press of Florida, 288 pp.
Book description: To the black diasporic imagination, Haiti has long been both a source of immense pride–because of the Haitian Revolution–and of profound disappointment–because of the unshakable realities of poverty, political instability, and violence. Charting the long history of these multiple meanings is the focus of Polyne’s rich and critical transnational history of U.S. African Americans and Haitians.
Stretching from the thoughts and words of American intellectuals such as Frederick Douglass, Robert Moton, and Claude Barnett to the Civil Rights era, Polyne’s book examines the creative and critical ways U.S. African Americans and Haitians engaged the idealized tenets of Pan Americanism — mutual cooperation, egalitarianism, and nonintervention between nation-states — to strengthen Haiti’s social, economic, and political growth and stability.
Link to publisher’s website: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=POLYNF08
To read about Barbara’s editorial experience with magazines and newspapers, click here.