Archbold, Rick 1950–

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ARCHBOLD, Rick 1950–

PERSONAL: Born 1950.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Warner Books, Inc., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Journalist.

AWARDS, HONORS: Tom Fairley Award, Editors Association of Canada, 1991, for editing John Sawatsky's book Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition.

WRITINGS:

(With Eugene Whelan) Whelan: The Man in the Green Stetson, Irwin Publishing (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1986.

(With Robert D. Ballard) The Discovery of the Titanic, introduction by Walter Lord, illustrations by Ken Marschall, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Richard Earle and David Imre) Your Vitality Quotient: The Clinically Proven Program that Can Reduce Your Body Age—and Increase Your Zest for Life, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature, Random House (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Audrey McLaughlin) A Woman's Place: My Life and Politics, MacFarlane, Walter, & Ross (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

(With Robert D. Ballard) Lost Ships of Guadalcanal, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Robert D. Ballard) Return to Midway: The Quest to Find the Yorktown and the Other Lost Ships from the Pivotal Battle of the Pacific War, National Geographic (Washington, DC), 1999.

(With Carolyn A. Bennett) Kill or Cure?: How Canadians Can Remake Their Health Care System, HarperCollins (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

(With Rosalie David) Conversations with Mummies, Morrow (New York, NY), 2000.

Canada: Our History, An Album through Time, Doubleday Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

I Stand for Canada: The Story of the Maple Leaf Flag, MacFarlane, Walter, & Ross (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

JUVENILE

(With Robert D. Ballard) The Discovery of the Bismarck, introduction by Ludovic Kennedy, illustrations by Ken Marschall, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Robert D. Ballard) The Lost Wreck of the Isis, Scholastic/Madison Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Robert D. Ballard) Exploring the Bismarck, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1991.

Deep-Sea Explorer: The Story of Robert Ballard, Discoverer of the Titanic, Scholastic, (New York, NY), 1994.

Hindenburg: An Illustrated History, Warner Books, (New York, NY), 1994.

Robert Bateman: Natural Worlds, Simon & Schuster, (New York, NY) 1996.

Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner, Hyperion, (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Robert D. Ballard) Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria the Ocean Floor Reveals Its Greatest Lost Ships, Hyperion, (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Robert D. Ballard) Ghost Liners: Exploring the World's Greatest Lost Ships, Little, Brown, (Boston, MA), 1998.

(With Robert Bateman) Safari, Little, Brown, (Boston, MA), 1998.

Ken Marschall's Art of Titanic, Hyperion, (New York, NY), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS: Canadian journalist Rick Archbold established his career in the 1980s and 1990s as author and coauthor of nonfiction books on subjects ranging from Canadian politics to the search for sunken ships. His first achievement, 1986's Whelan: The Man in the Green Stetson, is the autobiography of the Canadian politician Eugene Whelen. The book was rendered from tape recordings, and according to Oliver Bertin of Toronto's Globe and Mail, Archbold wrote the text while giving "full rein to Whelan's personality." Whelan was a colorful and controversial figure in Canadian politics, known for wearing a green Stetson hat and adopting a rustic manner, which served him well as member of parliament for a rural constituency. A member of the Liberal Party, he became minister of agriculture in 1972 and then launched an unsuccessful bid for party leadership. Later in his career, and after his resignation, he became keenly interested in trying to solve problems of Third World agriculture.

In 1987, Archbold began a long-lasting collaboration with marine geologist Robert D. Ballard with the book The Discovery of the Titanic. Ballard was the man who found the legendary sunken ocean liner on September 1, 1985, after repeated attempts beginning in 1977. Exploring the wreck, he formed a theory about the cause of the sinking. The collision with the iceberg, in the words of Washington Post Book World reviewer Duncan Spencer, "popped a series of rivets between the iron plates that formed the skin of these prewelding ships. A long seam only three-quarters of an inch wide allowed the water to pour in so that the 'watertight' bulkheads were soon overtopped." Spencer added that while the captain of the Titanic's motives for steering into an ice field remain unknown, the book "has given us roundness and an end to one of the world's unforgettable soap operas."

Archbold collaborated with Ballard on several other volumes, including Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria the Ocean Floor Reveals Its Greatest Lost Ships, recommended by Kevin P. Hayes in New York Daily News as "a handsome and fascinating volume that takes readers on a tour of some of the century's greatest ocean liners—both as they were in their colorful transatlantic careers and as they met their ends, which were often heartrending." Lost Liners is also illustrated by Ken Marschall, who contributed his paintings to other collaborations by Ballard and Archbold. Brad Hooper, commenting on it in Booklist, called it "a lovely book that—ironically—is about tragedies!"

Archbold added more literature to the Titanic canon with his books Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner and Ken Marschall's Art of Titanic. In the former, he detailed the rich menu and table settings featured on the Titanic during its last voyage. The plainer fare served to the lower-class passengers is also described, and recipes are provided for delicacies such as quail eggs with caviar and lobster thermidor. Biographies of prominent passengers, fashion notes and table-setting suggestions are given for those readers who may wish to recreate the atmosphere of the era with a Titanic-inspired dinner party. Last Dinner on the Titanic is "part cookbook, part Edwardian history text," remarked Paula Chin in People.

Archbold teamed with specialists in a different field, that of medicine, to produce the 1989 Your Vitality Quotient: The Clinically Proven Program that Can Reduce Your Body Age—and Increase Your Zest for Life. His coauthors were Dr. Richard Earle, cofounder of the Canadian Institute of Stress, and Dr. David Imre, a back specialist. The authors' thesis, as recounted by Judith Viorst in the New York Times Book Review, is that "prolonged periods of high stress can weaken our immune system, that without a strong immune system aging is accelerated and that therefore the way we handle stress determines just how rapidly we age." In this book stress victims are classified into six types: Speed Freak; Basket Case; Cliff Walker; Drifter; Worry Wart; Loner. The volume also discusses five "Vital Life Skills," which are aimed at coping with stress: Values/Goal Clarification; High-Performance Nutrition; Effective Relaxation; Self-Affirming Communication; Essential Exercise. Expressing some doubts about the new-age style in which this and similar books make their claims, Viorst nevertheless admitted, "there's a lot in them that makes sense from even the most conservative point of view."

Archbold's later coauthorships have further explored familiar subject areas. With Ballard, he has written more about sunken ships in Lost Ships of Guadalcanal, and for the juvenile audience The Discovery of the Bismarck, The Lost Wreck of the Isis and Exploring the Bismarck. Archbold also wrote a biography of his frequent collaborator, titled Deep-Sea Explorer: The Story of Robert Ballard, Discoverer of the Titanic.

In 1990 Archbold solely produced the biography Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature. And in 1992 Archbold helped another Canadian politician, Audrey McLaughlin, the New Democratic Party member of the House of Commons, to write an autobiography titled A Woman's Place: My Life and Politics. He gave some insight into his country's history with his book I Stand for Canada: The Story of the Maple Leaf Flag, a book that detailed the transition from the Britishinspired flag of the early twentieth century to the red-and-white maple-leaf flag that has symbolized Canada since 1965. Reviewing the book for January Magazine, Lincoln Cho called it "a beautiful book, lovingly written and designed, elegantly reproduced. It is amazing to me that this story has never been told in its fullness before. A fitting tribute to a national symbol worthy of the attention."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Archbold, Rick, Richard Earle, and David Imre, Your Vitality Quotient: The Clinically Proven Program that Can Reduce Your Body Age—and Increase Your Zest for Life, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1989.

PERIODICALS

American History, February, 1995, review of Hindenburg: An Illustrated History, p. 24.

American History Illustrated, November-December, 1988, review of The Discovery of the Titanic, p. 10; November-December, 1993, review of The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal, p. 26.

Archaeology, November-December, 2000, Mark Rose, review of Conversations with Mummies: New Light on the Lives of Ancient Egyptians, p. 76.

Booklist, October 15, 1993, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal, p. 413; March 1, 1994, Merri Monks, review of Deep-Sea Explorer: The Story of Robert Ballard, Discoverer of the Titanic, p. 1247; December 15, 1994, Gilbert Taylor, review of Hindenburg, p. 723; December 1, 1996, Ray Olson, review of Robert Bateman: Natural Worlds, p. 636; October 15, 1997, Brad Hooper, review of Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria the Ocean Floor Reveals Its Greatest Lost Ships, p. 380; August, 1998, Carolyn Phelan, review of Ghost Liners: Exploring the World's Greatest Lost Ships, p. 1992; November 15, 1998, Margaret Flanagan, review of Ken Marshall's Art of Titanic, p. 562, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of Safari, p. 582; October 15, 1999, Roland Green, review of Return to Midway: The Quest to Find the Yorktown and the Other Lost Ships from the Pivotal Battle of the Pacific War, p. 412.

Book Report, November-December, 1995, Becky Copeland, review of Deep-Sea Explorer, p. 47.

Canadian Historical Review, September, 1987, J. L. Granatstein, review of Whelan: The Man in the Green Stetson, p. 461.

Discover, October, 2000, review of Conversations with Mummies, p. 102.

Entertainment Weekly, April 11, 1997, A. J. Jacobs, review of Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner, p. 80.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), October 18, 1986.

Library Journal, April 1, 1997, David Nudo, review of Last Dinner on the Titanic, p. 104; January, 1988, John Kenny, review of The Discovery of the Titanic, p. 94; March 1, 1989, review of The Discovery of the Titanic, p. 46; December, 1999, Harold N. Boyer, review of Return to Midway, p. 156.

Maclean's, November 23, 1992, Nancy Wood, review of A Woman's Place: My Life and Politics, p. 70; December 19, 1994, review of Hindenburg, p. 57; April 21, 1997, review of Last Dinner on the Titanic, p. 10; February 17, 2003, review of I Stand for Canada: The Story of the Maple Leaf Flag, p. 50.

New Statesman, April 18, 1997, Brian Cathcart, review of Last Dinner on the Titanic, p. 47; January 16, 1998, Robert Hewison, review of Last Dinner on the Titanic, p. 38.

New York Daily News, January 7, 1998, Kevin P. Hayes, review of Lost Liners.

New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1987, p. 19; April 9, 1989, Judith Viorst, review of Your Vitality Quotient: The Clinically Proven Program That Can Reduce Your Body Age—and Increase Your Zest for Life, pp. 30-31.

People, December 15, 1997, Patrick Rogers, review of Lost Liners, p. 34; August 11, 1997, Paula Chin, review of Last Dinner on the Titanic, p. 36.

Publishers Weekly, September 16, 1996, review of Robert Bateman: Natural Worlds, p. 64; October 20, 1997, review of Lost Liners, p. 66.

Resource Links, February, 2001, review of I Stand for Canada, p. 21.

School Library Journal, April, 1994, Frances E. Millhouser, review of Deep-Sea Explorer, p. 134; September, 1998, Ann G. Brouse, review of Ghost Liners, p. 212; October, 1998, Arwen Marshall, review of Safari, p. 120.

Sea Frontiers, August, 1991, Robert F. Marx, review of The Discovery of the Bismarck, p. 59.

Skin Diver, January, 2000, Heather Brown, review of Return to Midway, p. 40.

Washington Post Book World, November 6, 1987.

Whole Earth Review, summer, 1995, J. Baldwin, review of Hindenburg, p. 17.