Approaching mid-career as a scholar, Tom McKnight found himself invited to join the co-authoring team of geography luminaries Edwin Foscue and Langdon White. Over the next three editions McKnight became the sole author of their landmark college textbook. He has found additional success with another multi-edition textbook and numerous other titles.

By John Vivian

Tom McKnight's introduction to academic authoring is a classic tale of mentoring. As an undergrad at Southern Methodist University, he took courses from one of the luminaries in the field, Edwin J. Foscue. "He liked my work," recalls McKnight, adding in modesty: "There were only a few undergrad geography majors at SMU. It didn't take much to stand out." McKnight was an informal assistant to Foscue in his senior year. He was invited to Foscue's home frequently and traveled with Foscue and Mrs. Foscue half a dozen times to geography conferences. "Foscue always went out of his way to introduce me to other geographers at these conferences," McKnight recalled. It was a great entré to the dominant figures in the discipline.

MCKNIGHT Never stops writing

Late in 1961, a dozen years after being graduated from Southern Methodist, McKnight was asked to become a co-author of the Foscue & White's Regional Geography of Anglo-America. He had a first-time textbook author's usual jitters: "I worried about deadlines and about my capabilities as a writer," he recalled. Too, he was on sabbatical in Adelaide, Australia, where the university library's collection on the United States and Canada was limited -- a serious impediment, it seemed, for a textbook on geography of North America. Then, too, the head of the Adelaide University geography department was pushing McKnight to stay another semester, delaying his return to UCLA's research resources until June. When he committed to join the White and Foscue team, he had figured he would be going home in February. But it all worked out. Actually, said McKnight, the lack of resources in Adelaide facilitated his rapid completion of his part of the new edition: "I could spend only a limited amount of time on my research." His first chapter was on the geography of Hawaii, a subject not covered in the first two editions. The plan was for McKnight's draft to be critiqued by a geographer at the University of Hawaii, but White and Foscue were so pleased with the manuscript, mailed from Australia, that they decided to use it as produced -- without an outside reviewer. White and Foscue were not thrilled, however, that McKnight was considering the extended appointment in Australia, but told him to let his conscience be his guide. Despite some trepidation, he accepted the extra one-semester Adelaide assignment. "I worried about the deadlines and about my capabilities as a writer," he said. "But these two concerns faded as time went on." He pumped out five to 25 manuscript pages a day, in addition to classroom lectures, sabbatical research as part of a Fulbright grant, and family responsibilities. His wife and 2-year-old son were with him in Adelaide. "It is with a certain degree of pride that I evaluate the results if my output during this period," he said. A meeting that had been planned for February 1962 for a weekend of critical analysis of his progress at White's home at Stanford was put off. Instead, he systematically went through White and Foscue's second edition and made changes that seemed logical to him for the new edition and submitted them chapter by chapter to White and Foscue. They were enthusiastic at his productivity.

GEOGRAPHER AT WORK Tom McKnight

In 2002 McKnight received one of academic authoring's greatest recognitions, a McGuffey Award for Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation. McGuffey winners, chosen by a panel of veteran authors. McGuffey winners all have been in print 15 years or more. The award is a recognition of enduring excellence. Over his authoring career, McKnight has witnessed changes. The title Regional Geography of Anglo-America turned out not to be politically correct. The book evolved into Regional Geography of the United States and Canada. "The term 'Anglo-America' came into increasing disfavor," McKnight said. McKnight has witnessed other changes too. In some respects, co-authoring is easier. White and Foscue had been fellow grad students at Clark University, a prominent geography department in those days, but they did their co-authoring later when Foscue was building a career at Southern Methodist and White at Stanford. In those pre-Internet days with budget-breaking long-distance telephone rates, they coordinated their work by mail. They got together for a only few days a few times a year either in Dallas or at Stanford. Their planning and writing sessions were almost always in one or the other's home. They had a heavy volume of correspondence.

A daily collaboration was impossible. For the first and second editions, White and Foscue divided up the chapters, each of them doing half. When McKnight join the team, he was at the University of California, Los Angles, and figured that the logistics would be complicated. As it turned out, the new arrangement simplified things for White and Foscue. Said McKnight: "They turned over almost all of the work to me from the outset."

Although most authoring attorneys today recommend that co-authors have a contract between and among themselves, apart from their contract with a publisher, such was not common in the 1960s. With each succeeding edition, McKnight did more of the work and received more of the royalties. This was how it worked: White and Foscue turned over the work for the third edition, the first one that McKnight involved with, largely to him, along with a 30 percent share of royalties. For the fourth edition McKnight did virtually all the work and received 60 percent. For the fifth edition, White and Foscue were not involved, and he received 90 percent of royalties.

REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY PHYSICAL GEOGRAHY Two of McKnight's perennial best-sellers

Does McKnight recommend co-authorships? "I prefer single authorship," he said. "I like to maintain control of the project. I am in favor of close responsibility of content." Too, he said, he has had little experience with co-authorship. With the White and Foscue book, he did most of the work on the third edition, for which he joined the project. The fourth edition was almost entirely his, even though White and Foscue's names lingered on the spine. Although McKnight favors sole authorship, when Physical Geography was conceived, the plan was for it to be a multi-author book, but that fizzled. The initial plan was for McKnight to produce half the book and a junior author to write the other half. The junior author, it turned out, was not up to the task and had to be dropped. Then McKnight and a UCLA colleague dabbled with the idea of co-authoring, but his friend had too many irons in the fire. McKnight next invited a colleague at another university to be his co-author, but two sample chapters were entirely at too high a level. "So," he said, "I wrote the missing half myself." For the seventh edition of Physical Geographyin 2001, a co-author, Darrel Hess of San Francisco City College, joined the project. "He already and made significant contributions to the book, and I am delighted with this development of multiple authorship." McKnight has always written from an outline -- sometimes a detailed outline, sometimes a sparse one. His tools have changed over the years, though. Now he works on a Pentium laptop, mostly in Los Angeles but also in a second home at Estes Park in the Colorado Rockies. Wherever he does it, McKnight never stops writing. Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation is on a three-year revision cycle. Regional Geography of the United States and Canada is on a five-year cycle. Although he travels a great deal, roughly three or four months a year, he doesn't get away from his writing. On his travels McKnight writes about what he sees and does. "Most of it is for my own amusement with no publication anticipated." His next project? He is working on an autobiography: "Maybe my kids will be interested in reading it someday, but it is written to appeal to a one-man audience."

EDUCATION University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., geography, 1955 University of Colorado, M.A., geography, 1951 Southern Methodist University, B.A., geology, 1949 Contact: Tom McKnight

TEXTBOOKS Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation, with co-author, seventh edition, 2001 Regional Geography of the United States and Canada, third edition, 2001 Oceania: The Geography of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, 1995 Introduction to Geography, with co-author, 1993 Essentials of Physical Geography, 1992 Regional Geography of Anglo-America, with co-authors, sixth edition, 1995 Australia's Corner of the World: A Geographical Summation, 1970 World Economic Geography, with co-authors, 1964

Updated June 14, 2002