News

Book News: Warts, Dimples, Chads and All
Edward Nawotka -- 2/5/01
The election that wouldn't end provides plenty of book fodder for publishers



Also in this Article:



Now that the Supreme Court has finished its deliberations on the 2000 presidential election, the publishing industry is weighing in with a variety of titles aimed at a public it hopes is still curious and/or dissatisfied with the process.

Fast out of the postelectoral gate is Smashmouth: Two Years in the Gutter with Al Gore and George W. Bush by Dana Milbank, published last month by Basic Books. The Washington Post reporter offers a view of the on-the-road, behind-the-scenes antics of the George and Al election express as it stalled in the anticlimax of November 7 and limped along to its conclusion weeks later. The material, much of which was originally published in the "Style" section of the Washington Post, was deemed so astute that the paper promoted the 32-year-old reporter to White House correspondent. It is the first title to test the depths of electoral burnout and to see whether readers can tolerate even more Bush vs. Gore. With a 45,000-copy first printing, Basic is optimistic about sales and is sending the author on a six-city tour.

The book's editor, Vanessa Mobley, told PW that she thinks political books are always hard to sell. "We're sanguine about selling into a market where the political junkies may already be sated," she added. "Dana is gracefully nonpartisan and can skewer both parties equally. Plus, because it's one of the first books out and so funny and timely, we think we have a bit of a leg up on the other books."

Bookseller John Bennett, owner of Bennett Books in Wyckoff, N.J., told PW that he feels, despite the extended aftermath of the campaign, that there's still an audience for books on the 2000 election. Whether the books are positive or negative in tone, he said, they continue to sell.
Tales from the election front -- and beyond.
"We are hedging our bets and stocking every one of the Bush-related books," he explained. Despite their obvious biases, Bennett said both George W. Bushisms: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President, edited by Jacob Weisburg and Bruce Nichols, and Is Our Children Learning? The Case Against George W. Bush by Paul Begala (both from Simon& Schuster) are moving. Molly Ivins's Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush seems to be having a long and happy shelf life, first as a Random House hardcover last February and now as a Vintage paperback. And the Bushes themselves fill out this minicategory in the store as well, with A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House by George W. and All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings by George H.W. "There appears to be a continuing fascination with the election," Bennett added, "and people are curious about what is going to happen in the next four years."
Publishers will be providing plenty more grist for the mind mill, with books arriving from a half dozen "authoritative" sources, including Jeffrey Toobin, ABC News legal analyst and New Yorker staff writer, and CNN and Time reporter Jeff Greenfield.

As soon as February 23, Times Books will put out what it is calling (surprise, surprise) the "authoritative and comprehensive account" of the period, 36 Days: The Complete Chronicle of the 2000 Presidential Election Crisis. The book will include lead New York Times stories from each consecutive day as well as "background pieces, analytical essays, investigative reports, personality profiles and opinion pieces" from the more than two dozen Times reporters who worked on the story.

True aficionados (or conspiracy theorists) of the fiasco will want to review the legal proceedings and filings in the case to drill down to the true minutiae of the issue. To satisfy this demand, Washington, D.C., think tank the Brookings Institute has compiled the key texts from the landmark legal cases argued in the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary. The book, published on February 19, is edited by Brookings senior fellow E.J. Dionne Jr. and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol It includes more than 60 opinion pieces from journalists and scholars, who weigh in on the issue from both sides of the political divide.

Brookings has high expectations for the title and has gone ahead with a 10,000-copy printing, which is three times the average printing for the press. Becky Clark, Brookings marketing director explained: "Advance orders have been strong, and our large print run reflects our confidence."

Among other releases will be a book by George W. Bush's not-so-famous campaign media advisor, Stuart Stevens. According to the publisher, Simon & Schuster's Free Press, the book promises to be an "irreverent" chronicle of how "a Republican takeover was launched from ultra-liberal, music-crazed Austin." In addition, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has inked a deal in the low six figures with Oxford University Press to pen a personal assessment of the Supreme Court's role in the election. The book, tentatively titled Supreme Injustice, will argue that "the Supreme Court violated its highest principles." Dershowitz, who has delivered highly charged and timely legal bestsellers in the past, is expected to have the book finished in time for a late spring pub date.

Finally (for now), the former vice president and his wife, Tipper, have decided to avoid electoral politics altogether and write a book about family--a very different sort of politics. The as-yet-untitled book will "mix personal stories, historical and global perspectives, psychological considerations, and policy issues to examine the rapidly changing state of the family today, both in the United States and around the world," and will be published by Henry Holt in fall 2002.


From Broadway Bomb to a Book

Of the 25 years spent writing Conversations with the Capeman: The Untold Story of Salvador Agron (Painted Leaf Press), author Richard Jacoby said, simply: "It has been a long haul." But the book, which tells the story of the youngest person ever to sit on death row in the State of New York--and which inspired a failed Broadway musical on the subject by Paul Simon--has a path to publishing that is almost as twisted as the real-life drama of 16-year-old Salvador Agron's conviction and death sentence for the racially charged murder of two white youths in 1959.

Jacoby remembered when Agron made headlines around the world for the stabbing deaths in New York's Hell's Kitchen in a gang rumble gone bad. He recalled how Agron shocked people
Agron maintained
he didn't remember.
when he told a reporter at the time of his arrest, "I don't care if I burn, my mother can watch." Then, just eight days before he was to be put to death, Governor Nelson Rockefeller commuted Agron's sentence. He was released from prison in 1979.
Conversations with the Capeman, published in November, sprung out of Jacoby's work as a Brooklyn College graduate student. He first met Agron in 1974 while working on his thesis. Conversations with the Capeman has literally taken up half of Jacoby's life. "I had a compulsion to tell Agron's story," Jacoby told PW.

In one of the many coincidences connected to Agron's life and the making of this book, the murders took place just blocks from the setting of the classic musical about gang warfare, West Side Story. A few years ago, Paul Simon, who was a teen at the time of the murders, was inspired to create a
musical about Agron's life. Although the book was written by Nobel Prize-winning p t Derek Walcott, The Capeman became one of Broadway's biggest flops--to the tune of $11 million--and closed after only 68 performances.

All this time, Jacoby worked on his retelling of the Agron case. There was plenty of drama to keep him going. Although Agron confessed to the murders, there was evidence that he may not have been the killer. Agron, who died of pneumonia in 1986, maintained that he never remembered what happened that night. No blood was ever found on the cape he wore--which earned him his media nickname, Capeman--or on his knife.

In yet one more twist, Jacoby, who has since become a special education teacher, met the woman who became his book agent when the two volunteered at the Greenhaven Penitentiary, while Agron was held. When Jacoby finally finished the book in 1995, agent Jo Sgammato submitted Conversations with the Capeman to several major publishers. "I had a lot of interest," Sgammato recalled, "but they all wanted to wait and see what happened with the musical. As we all know, the musical failed."

She had almost given up when a friend told her about a new press in Times Square specializing in books on gay and Latino subjects, and Sgammato thought it might be a match for a story about a 16-year-old Puerto Rican gay gang member accused of murder. Painted Leaf Press founder and publisher Bill Sullivan jumped on the book. "This book was a lost cause, kind of like Sal Agron was," he commented. In yet another coincidence, Painted Leaf is located near Agron's parole office and the park where the murders took place.

Even with a contract, publishing Conversations with the Capeman has not been easy for Jacoby. He's received death threats, and although they have tapered off, they have not completely disappeared.

As a safety precaution, Jacoby asked Sullivan not to use a recent photograph of him in the book or press packet. Instead, he supplied Painted Leaf with a black-and-white photo of himself at the same age Agron was at the time of his arrest. Jacoby also canceled a proposed New York media tour.

In order to promote Conversations with the Capeman and still accommodate Jacoby's safety needs, Sullivan noted, "We've been doing a lot of online promotion. In an unusual move for a small press, Sullivan also set up a site, www.capemanbook.com, dedicated to the book.

If Simon's musical is revived, sales for Conversations with the Capeman could take off. According to a report in the New York Times last fall, Simon and the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., are discussing reworking the play and reviving the show.
--Judith Rosen