War and Peace
Ecco publisher Dan Halpern along with Emily Takoudes have pre-empted a book titled The Ultimate Threat from Christy Fletcher and Donald Lamm at Fletcher & Parry. Author Steve Younger is a theoretical physicist who specializes in weapons of mass destruction and threat reduction for the Department of Defense, and who also happens to be a lifelong pacifist. In the book, Younger acknowledges the very real and increasingly widespread threats to our well-being and discusses how we ought to think of them, while dispelling misinformation about WMDs and offering ideas on how to construct the best practical world consistent with our human nature. Halpern and Takoudes bought North American rights for an undisclosed amount; Lamm and Emma Parry will be offering rights at Frankfurt.
How to Be Happy
Emma Sweeney at Harold Ober has just concluded an auction for The Buddha,the Brain and the Science of Happiness by senior Tibetan lama Mingyur Rinpoche; Shaye Areheart acquired world rights for Harmony. Rinpoche himself has been the subject of scientific research published earlier this year in Time and National Geographic, where he was identified as "quantifiably the happiest man in the world" thanks to the effects of meditation on his brain. Combining 21st-century science (Rinpoche is a participant in the annual Mind and Life Institute conferences) with ancient Buddhist philosophy, the book will explain how to use meditation techniques to achieve this pinnacle of well-being. The book will be translated and edited by Eric Swanson, and publication is expected in January 2007.
Climb Every Eiger
It's been almost 40 years since the legendary American mountain climber John Harlin fell to his death while attempting a direct ascent of the Eiger, a Swiss peak that is among the world's most feared and mythologized. Harlin left behind a nine-year-old son, who swore at the time he would never try to climb a high mountain. Perhaps inevitably, John Harlin III, a contributing editor at Backpackermagazine and editor of the AmericanAlpine Club Journal, did become an accomplished climber and is now attempting to climb the Eiger himself—and write about it. Last week, his agent, Susan Golomb, sold North American rights to Harlin's memoir of the experience to Marysue Rucci at Simon & Schuster. The book will also describe Harlin's relationship with his famous father and what it was like to grow up in his shadow. Harlin's climb is the subject of an upcoming IMAX film (by the producers of the record-breaking box office 1998 hit Everest), which is slated for release in March 2007.
Clapton Strikes a Chord
Stephen Rubin and Charlie Conrad at Doubleday/Broadway ponied up more than $4 million for world rights to the memoirs of Eric Clapton, the culmination of an auction by agent Ed Victor that had been in progress for the better part of two weeks. Clapton will write the book with Christopher Simon Sykes, and publication is expected in 2007, coinciding with a planned North American tour. The autobiography will be published simultaneously in the U.K. by Century, an RH UK imprint that partnered in the acquisition with Doubleday.
Two-Book Debut
Susan Kamil at Dial outbid editors from Grove, Norton and Holt/Metropolitan for a first novel by Hisham Jabala Matar; Kamil bought U.S. rights for two books by Matar from Zoe Pagnamenta at PFD US on behalf of Kevin Conroy Scott at Conville & Walsh. Matar's No One in the World is a coming-of-age story narrated by a nine-year-old boy in Tripoli whose family's peaceful neighborhood is besieged by the cold-blooded Khadafy dictatorship. Matar, whose parents are Libyan, is currently researching a second novel set in London and Cairo, about a British Arab obsessed with the legend of an Egyptian bookbinder.
