Ben Hecht Biography & Books at the Snickersnee Press

The Snickersnee Press publishes only Ben Hecht reprints and new Ben Hecht research by Florice Whyte Kovan. Buyers may purchase directly from the publisher. Retailers should  purchase from us as we are the sole source for new books. Libraries and other institutions may send purchase orders. 

Address: Snickersnee Press
431 Fifth Street NE 
Washington, DC 20002

Fax: 1.202.547.0132 (purchase orders)

About Our Free-Lance Library Research Business, Academic & Publisher Research in Washington DC 

Our Washington, DC research business was launched in 1989 as Public & Private Research. Since then we have been delivering archival research materials and copies of research materials from libraries to an international clientele including museums, businesses, agencies and individuals, university departments, law firms, producers, writers, dissertation students, major publishers and the curious.

We have been for many years Academic & Publisher Research but in 2005 we embraced the research business under our Snickersnee Press umbrella.  Looking at our Art & Architecture on 1001 Afternoons in Chicago book is a good way to assess our research!   

Our fondly-recalled first assignment was to find a specific image for the Amsterdam exhibit "Amerikaans Abstracte Kunst 1930-1945." This set us off on jobs researching topics ranging from the quirky to the sublime: fascist mothers, potato chip bags, Harlem writers, the history of coffee, sedition trials, the shape of the human forefoot (toes).

As researchers for other researchers we have completed scores of research assignments uncredited, but some books in which we are acknowledged include "Women of the Far Right," by Glen Jeansonne (University of Chicago Press); "Arthur S. Greene, 1867-1955: The Life and Work of a Long Island Photographer." and David Levering Lewis's Pulitzer Prize winning "W.E.B Du Bois: A Biography of a Race" (Holt) First Edition. The Jeansonne and Lewis books constituted major projects for us as consultants retained by their university departments.

We delivered an extensive collection of images to EDI, Division of Mitsubishi, for their virtual reality event "Texas Adventure" in San Antonio. We completed 180 copyright researches for literary reprints and permissions for Viking Penguin. 

In addition to bibliographic database research, we find unpublished materials, including letters in personal collections curated in libraries. This combination of high tech and high touch methods serves our research clients just as it has served our own publishing operations at the Snickersnee Press.

In terms of public service, Academic & Publisher Research sponsored "Women of World War II," a 1991 conference at the Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Center in Racine, bringing together renowned authorities on role of women in the war, among them military historian D'Ann Campbell, jazz scholar Sherrie Tucker. We researched and/or captioned several related exhibits based on studies of USO, vaudeville history and the all-woman bands of the 1940s ("all-girl bands") at venues including the Racine County Historical Museum and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Our home office in residential Washington, DC is walking distance to the information riches of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian repositories and the National Gallery of Art. We therefore do not assess trip charges to District of Columbia research facilities

Academic and Publisher Research and the Snickersnee Press are proprietary businesses owned by FW Kovan, BA, English, MA, Urban Studies (UWM) and PhD studies (OSU). An analyst for state governments, she later taught  Sociology at Midwestern institutions, including the Ohio State University.

In May 2002 Academic & Publisher Research welcomed Allan Kovan, BA, Wayne State, PhD, History (Cal, Berkeley) recently of the National Archives, to consult on selected projects.

Virtually anyone may engage our research assistance, whether affiliated with an academic institution, publisher, museum, business, organization or as an individual (but we occasionally steer people elsewhere). Note: We do not do offer research on Ben Hecht to the public as our principal, Florice Whyte Kovan, is writing his biography.

About our research in manuscripts and special collections.

All research requests must be in writing and contain a complete sidewalk address. We are retained by the half-day minimally, by the day or under contract for an hourly rate as needed for an academic year.  site, payable by PayPal through your university department, organization,  publisher or as an individual.

All research requests must be in writing and contain a complete sidewalk address. We are retained by the half-day minimally, by the day or under contract for an hourly rate as needed for an academic year.  site, payable by PayPal through your university department, organization,  publisher or as an individual.

Our Capitol/Union Station office:

431 Fifth Street NE, Washington, DC 20002, by appointment.

Our email:  acdmpubr AT earthlink DOT net or through our Contact Academic & Publisher Research on this site.

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About Florice Whyte Kovan, Editor, Snickersnee Press

As a Ben Hecht scholar for over fifteen years, Flori. Kovan has researched Hecht coast-to-coast and has writen, edited and published 14 publications by and about him since 1997.  In 2001, Kovan was commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to research and storyboard Ben Hecht's 1943 Holocaust play "We Will Never Die," a substantial project entailing her research and design of 180 digital page layouts, incorporating Hecht's text with pictures she located, "pop-up" annotations and her brief contextualizing essays.  She spoke at the University of Chicago Doc Films  pioneering all-Hecht film series, the first for Hecht and pathfinding in its honoring a sccreenwriter  She was a consultant to the off-Broadway production, Moonlight and Magnolias, about Hecht's frenetic stint as a script doctor for Gone with the Wind.   Kovan was awarded a study desk at the Library of Congress for her biographical work on Ben Hecht.

Flori Kovan outside of the Algonquin Hotel,

haunt of the Algonquin literary round table set of which Ben Hecht was a member.