By Sachi Bhati ’18, Contributor
When a student at County Day thinks of Dr. Jeremiah McCall, they generally recall his down-to-earth attitude and smiling face. Although most students know that Dr. McCall teaches history, what they don’t know is that he is also a writer. Even more surprising, he has written not only one, but four successful books based either on history or the gaming side of history. His first book was centered on his doctoral dissertation, Cavalry of the Roman Republic. “Hard core history,” this book required the most research and greatest number of footnotes out of all four books. Next came, Gaming the Past, which helps teachers use video games in history class—also the only book of its kind. The third book was a biography on third century Roman figure titled, The Sword of Rome. His latest book is aimed at the largest popular audience yet. Swords and Cinema, published last month, is a review of the historical accuracy of modern movies like Troy, 300, and Gladiator. Dr. McCall said he enjoyed writing it very much.
Each author finds their own inspiration to write. Dr. McCall’s reason was that he had seen a lot of books on ancient military history; if you’ve read one, you might well have read them all—they tend to be uninteresting; Dr. McCall wanted to do something different, something more unique. He is also very interested in how people think it was.
In his experience, Dr. McCall said that writing books takes a lot of work. “At the start you don’t have anything written down, it’s overwhelming, but basically what I did was I spent a lot of time watching battle sequences and writing down what I saw. From there I took the main parts of the battles and then did research on them. It is a lot of work in the end, but it’s a lot of fun,” Dr. McCall explained. When asked if he would write about a different topic, Dr. McCall said, “It would be cool to write something fictional, but I really don’t have any experience with that, and I like the structure that history gives where you know what happens with the characters. I think it would be fun one day to write something historically fictional, so then I could have the best of both worlds, but at the moment I am going to stick to what I know.” I was curious to know whether, if given the chance, would Dr. McCall go back in time and become a full-time writer instead of a teacher. Dr. McCall replied, “I would still be a teacher because I absolutely love working with kids, they give me a lot of energy. It’s really cool to be working with kids at this age when things are still sort of new, different and interesting. I also enjoy the problem solving involved in teaching, how to plan out a lesson and make it interesting. Also being with people sounds a lot more appealing than being stuck in a room writing.”
At the moment Dr. McCall is under contract so he will be writing another book in the future. It will have a larger niche based audience, meaning it will aim at a more specific group and will be based on a Roman figure from the third century BCE. All of Dr. McCall’s books are dedicated to his loving wife.
Some advice that Dr. McCall gives to all those aspiring writers out there is to write about what you know, remember that style takes practice (you don’t write a New York Times best-seller overnight), and remember that it takes a lot of effort. Lastly, don’t give up, make sure you keep with it.
