Announcing our next book: Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Vermont

Five years after the first COVID lockdowns, the Vermont Historical Society will release Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Vermont, edited by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Vermont author Garrett M. Graff. This book is the result of a major oral history initiative from VHS, and it chronicles Vermont’s response to the pandemic and the experiences of Vermonters who experienced it.
Vermont’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was widely recognized, and in March 2020, the Vermont Historical Society began documenting the outbreak. With a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services [Grant Number MA-251676-OMS-22], launched Collecting COVID-19: A Vermont Story, to collect, document, and preserve the impact that COVID-19 had on the state. This grant supported the hiring of four field interviewers who conducted more than 100 interviews from a wide range of Vermonters. The project also included a crowdsourced archive of photographs, data, and items related to Vermonters’ experiences during the pandemic.
This book will be accompanied by a narrative podcast, and the items and oral histories collected during the project will be made available to scholars and the general public through an online archive, details of which will be announced in the coming months.
Here's the book's description:
In March 2020 the spread of COVID-19 prompted Vermont state officials to order a two-week lockdown to attempt to slow the spread of the illness. It was the start of a years-long response to the global pandemic that upended the world.
Vermont’s response to the pandemic was widely recognized, and realizing the significance of the outbreak, the Vermont Historical Society began documenting it through a series of oral histories from state officials, doctors, first responders, and ordinary citizens, in addition to collecting hundreds of photographs, data, and items related to Vermonters’ experiences during the pandemic.
Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 In Vermont builds on that project. Edited by bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, it compiles those oral histories into a comprehensive narrative of the pandemic in Vermont from the first lockdowns in March 2020 through the tumultuous years that followed.
The book is edited by bestselling Vermont author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff. Graff has spent two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. Today, he’s a columnist for The Washington Post, serves as the director of cyber initiatives at the Aspen Institute, and hosts the history podcast, Long Shadow, which received a 2024 Edward R. Murrow Award.
The former editor of POLITICO Magazine and a longtime contributor to WIRED and CNN, he’s written for publications like Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Foreign Affairs, and authored nine books—including the #1 national bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 and the award-winning When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day. His New York Times bestseller Watergate: A New History was a finalist in 2023 for the Pulitzer Prize in History. The third generation of Vermont writers in his family, Graff graduated from Montpelier High School, was married in Barnard, and now lives in Burlington. You can read an interview with Garrett M. Graff here.
VHS Executive Director Steve Perkins says “VHS’s role is to tell our state's story. Since history is ongoing, it often means collecting and preserving stories in real time. VHS has become adept in role and this book is an example of immediate history-making that will stand the test of time.”
“Garrett Graff has read the more than 100 interviews conducted by VHS about Vermont’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic” says Alan Berolzheimer, VHS Managing Editor. “He has skillfully distilled and excerpted them into 14 thematic chapters that vividly illustrate Vermonters’ experiences of the pandemic.”
“One of the defining characteristics of the pandemic is that there is no single overarching experience of the pandemic,” says Graff, “but seeing the microcosm that was the pandemic across Vermont helps us better understand what we each individually and collectively lived through in 2020 and 2021."
It will be sold through the Vermont Historical Society’s bookstore, bookstores across Vermont, and will be available as an eBook through various online platforms.
Preorders for the book are now open. Life Became Very Blurry will be released on March 25th, 2025 as a trade paperback and will retail for $24.95. We'll begin shipping preorders about a week prior to release date. VHS will hold a book launch at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier on Thursday, March 27th at 7:00PM.