Cumming & Cumming Book Signing
- The Cummings’ books — Joe’s “Bylines” at left; Doug’s “The Southern Press” at right.
When Washington and Lee journalism professor Doug Cumming holds a book signing on Thursday, Nov. 4, at Lexington’s Books & Co., he’ll be joined by a fellow author and Southern journalist — his father, Joe Cumming.
Joe Cumming will be signing and reading from his new book, (AuthorHouse, 2010), while Doug will sign copies of his, The Southern Press: Literary Legacies and the Challenge of Modernity (Northwestern University Press, 2009).
The event will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Books & Co. is at 29 West Nelson Street.
Father and son are both journalists with Southern roots. Joe Cumming, 84, was bureau chief for Newsweek magazine from 1961 through 1979 and had a ringside seat for the civil-rights years. After leaving Newsweek, he taught journalism at West Georgia College and continued to write, including a book-page column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a review of Bylines on Amazon.com, novelist Pat Conroy wrote: “Joe Cumming is a grand and legendary figure in my life and the life of the south he writes about with such eloquence and precision. Though he is a native of an aristocratic and cultured Georgia family, he lives his life as Zorba the Greek. Get Joe’s book and you will understand why I say that he has made the world a far better place with his writings.”
Doug Cumming, a graduate of Bennington College (B.A.), Brown University (M.A.) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D.), spent 26 years as as a reporter and editor for newspapers and magazines in Raleigh, N.C., Providence, R.I., and Atlanta. He joined the W&L faculty in 2003. Doug teaches courses in early American newspapers, Southern journalism and various aspects of reporting.
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