Late last summer, on a brilliant day, Bob Kane’s boat came in, literally. My wife and I met Bob and Edie Kane off a cruise ship at Tower Pier alongside the Tower of London. They were on a cruise that had taken them to Stockholm and St. Petersburg, and was continuing to France and Spain. For thirty years the leading independent publisher of military books in the United States has been the Presidio Press, founded by Colonel Robert V Kane, a most knowledgeable, fine and distinguished gentleman. Based in San Francisco, Presidio pursued an independent course of publishing both fiction and non-fiction on military subjects, publishing books especially on World War II and Vietnam. They have published quality and significant books such as Summons the Trumpet, The Life and Death of an American Army, With the Old Breed, This Ain't Hell But You Can See It From Here and Inside Spetznaz. The publishing house was characteristic in being a very family business with Bob Kane, Richard Kane, for some while Steven Kane, Bob Kane's daughter Robin and her one-time husband Bob Nelson. Presidio handled the Greenhill sales in the United States for Greenhill’s first years until they gave up their own invoicing and distribution. One of the books that they handled was the bestselling photographic Soviet Wings. Whenever the ABA was held on the West Coast, or when it was held in Las Vegas, I would take advantage of travelling all that way to have the pleasure of visiting with my friends at Presidio. I would stay over in the home of Edie and Bob Kane, which had a glorious view of San Francisco bay. One year I arrived and they were obviously preoccupied. The story of what was bothering them came out over dinner; the firm might be harbouring a criminal, planning a raid on it. They had a visit that day from one of their authors who had later called Bob Kane. They had a potential, dreadful problem. The person that was working in an alcove of Bob Kane's office on a new accounting computer system was known to the author: she was a convicted embezzler. The author checked his files and sent through to Bob Kane by fax the newspaper report of her conviction which had a photograph, and she had been sent to a penitentiary for two years for her crimes. The potentially dreadful problem was that Presidio were using some ‘off-the- shelf’ programmes that they had purchased, and they feared that she might have adapted them or introduced something into them, and she had in fact applied for a permanent role in the accounting department. Presidio were open for embezzlement! There was the terrifying possibility that in adapting the new program for their computer she might have introduced some deliberate errors, or for conversion of monies. And her work was nearly complete. Bob Kane came home that evening, to work out what to do, to discuss the problem with Robin, his daughter, who had just returned to the office after an absence to be in charge of the accounting department. And that was the evening that I turned up as a guest! They couldn't dismiss the person on the spot, because they did not know if there might be loops in the programme, and such dismissal would be regarded as unfair. Whilst discussing the problem, they began to wonder how they could check the work that had already been done, and in fact Robin had the book-keeping system in her car for some evening work. I pitched in to the discussion, and in fact volunteered to help them check the system. So we all settled down, I recall being seated on the floor, with computer print-outs discussing the situation and checking. After some hours of work nothing untoward could be found (although a couple of good ideas for future security were made) and the problem of how to let the person go was discussed, and indeed she left Presidio very (but very) shortly thereafter. Two years ago Presidio Press was sold to Ballantine Books and the business was relocated to New York and the plan is now to build the imprint both by publishing new books but putting all of Ballantine military books under the Presidio brand. Ron Doering who until recently was the Editor of the Military Book Club is now the Editor of Presidio, plans to expand the Presidio paperback imprint. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 127 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com