I’m a longtime Lerner/TFCB staffer—first in-house and then freelance. Domenica invited me to write an entry to give a little bit of the insider’s view. I work from my home office, which makes for a short commute. Sometimes I go out to the driveway and then back in to pretend I’m walking to work.

The office takes up 20 percent of my residence. I know this because you have to measure it for your taxes. This tax-free space includes the couch, where I sometimes read, but I usually try to sit up straight at the desk.

I redecorated once. I switched the living room and the office, but since it’s really all one big room, the boundaries are not well defined. According to my accountant, office decorations are tax deductible. That means my Who’s Minding the Store? (starring Jerry Lewis and Nancy Kulp) movie poster could be a deduction, but that was a gift.

My alien snowball from Roswell was also a gift. That leaves the “Herbert Hoover for President” campaign button, which cost me only one dollar, on account of it’s a reproduction. My accountant, unsurprisingly, is frustrated with me. She wants big tax deductions. Campaign contributions to Herbert Hoover will get you nowhere these days.

And since we’re on my favorite topic of Herbert Hoover, let’s talk history. I was living in Minneapolis freezing to death. I dreadfully wanted to move, but I had so many good People’s History titles in the hopper at Lerner that I delayed the thawing out for quite a while. I managed to edit Snapshot: America Discovers the Camera; Get Up and Go: The History of American Road Travel; Farewell John Barleycorn: Prohibition in the United States, and other series titles before finally fleeing for warmer climes.

More recently, I edited titles in The Decades of Twentieth-Century America books, which got me very hopped up about Busby Berkeley movies and other mid-century masterpieces. I remain in thrall.

Check in next week for more from TFCB.