Through her editorial choices, Morrison emphasized that history is a living, breathing entity shaped by the stories we tell and how we tell them. Publishing these books helped brandish her reputation as a culture worker whose productivity as an editor could be rivaled only by her rising prominence as an important writer.

She didn’t ask the more generic question, “What practices work best for writing history?” She discovered what practices worked specifically for her.

More generally, we see the following basic pattern:

Encoding —> Awareness of encoding (implicit or explicit) —> Translation into operating modes tailored specifically (and often uniquely) to the person —> Effect

So, here we have the story of a mom at home who decides to become a writer of history. She writes a book that the president reads. The president applies the lessons of the book to help avert a nuclear war. And we’re all alive today.

Barbara Tuchman didn’t set out to save the world when she wrote her books. She was just following her encodings. Once she discovered her encodings, she simply trusted them and focused the inner fire on writing books. She didn’t stop herself with questions like “Is this a worthy use of myself?” or “What will my parents think?” or “Does my husband approve?” or “Is this going to make me famous?” or “Will it generate huge social good in the eyes of my peers?” or any of that.

Recall how Toni Morrison began writing her first books not with a huge external audience in mind but so that she herself could read them. That her work eventually had a huge impact, both artistically and socially, flowed principally from keeping herself in frame, focused (alongside raising her children) on One Big Thing: books. When an interviewer asked her how she saw her public/social responsibility, how she knew she was “doing the write thing” with herself, Morrison responded, “You make it sound complicated, but it is really just about books. I edit books, I teach books, I write books.” Morrison believed that a great book can both be true to its historical/political context and be an imaginative creation, connected to what’s happening in the world while also being timeless, universal, and stunningly beautiful. In another interview, when asked whether she might take on a more political or public role if she didn’t write books, Morrison responded, “All I can do is read books and write books and edit books and critique books. . . . There are people who can organize other people and I cannot. I’d just get bored.” Morrison felt a strong sense of responsibility to give back, but she did not let that knock her out of frame. Toni Morrison did give back, absolutely and in the most profoundly powerful way: She gave of her encodings.

Bill Meehan, intellectual provocateur and caring friend, encouraged and challenged me to widen and deepen the scope of what this book is all about. “Don’t waste your time— or your words— on the little questions,” he’d hammer at me. “Go for the big questions, the questions of truth and wisdom and meaning. You need to be more of a poet and less of an analyst, more of a philosopher and less of a strategist” I’ve always built my books on a foundation of rigorous research and empirical evidence, and What to Make of a Life is no exception.