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Newsday Photo/Ken Spencer |
With his last three books, Harvey Rachlin has carved out a niche for himself as a writer of quirky history books. In Lucy’s Bones, Sacred Stones, and Einstein’s Brain and Jumbo’s Hide, Elvis’s Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha, he uses historical artifacts to recount riveting and often little-known episodes of the past. He does much the same with paintings in his latest book, Scandals, Vandals, and da Vincis. In devising a way to come up with original true stories about masterpieces, he may have pioneered a new literary genre, the "art tale."
The long-running smash-hit History Channel series, History's Lost and Found, is based on Rachlin's Lucy's Bones and Jumbo's Hide. Three one-hour pilots, hosted by television journalist Roger Mudd and narrated by actor Edward Herrmann, debuted in December 1998, and because the miniseries broke ratings records for the History Channel, the show was green-lighted for a series (Herrmann narrated all the episodes). The show ran in prime time for several years. It is still on the air in the U.S. in reruns and is also now broadcast in countries around the world.
Rachlin's first book was The Songwriter's Handbook, which received back-cover endorsements from six Academy Award-winning songwriters: Sammy Cahn, Burt Bacharach, Marvin Hamlisch, Henry Mancini, Richard Rodgers, and Jule Styne. He followed this up with The Encyclopedia of the Music Business, which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism, was named an Outstanding Music Reference Book of the Year by the American Library Association, and was recommended by Henry Mancini on behalf of the CBS Television Network and the Library of Congress at the conclusion of the 1984 Grammy Awards. There are back-cover endorsements from Elton John, Johnny Mathis, Pat Boone, and Morton Gould.
Rachlin’s other books include The Making of a Cop and The Making of a Detective. For the former, he attended the New York City Police Academy, where he followed a small group of recruits through the rigorous training process. For the latter, he followed one of the NYPD’s most skillful young investigators as he earned his gold shield in New York City’s most dangerous precinct, the “Seven-Five,” in East New York, Brooklyn.
Harvey Rachlin is the author of eleven books and the editor of two. He has written more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles, his byline appearing in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
The Times (London), and The Writer. He has appeared on numerous television shows, including The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, the Dinah Shore Show, and Sally Jessy Raphael. He is a lecturer in music at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
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