Sticky Situations
Thanks to two new books, readers can get their sugar fix without swallowing a single calorie. From Routledge comes Chewing Gum: An Unofficial History (May) by Michael Redclift. "This is the history of a commodity," says editor David McBride, "about how it came into the modern world as a product when Santa Ana, the guy from the Alamo, introduced chicle from the Yucatan to an inventor on Staten Island around 1870." Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (Algonquin Books, Apr.) by Steve Almond is "like a Willie Wonka fantasy," says editor Kathy Pories. "Steve was inspired by a great sense of loss as he watched his favorite candy bars disappear" from a market ruled by the big three: Mars, Hershey and Nestle. So he traveled from California to Massachusetts visiting the last remaining independent candy companies. "It's both an exposé and a personal journey told with his own irreverent humor," remarks Pories. She adds, "Steve says he has eaten a piece of candy every single day of his life."
Ship of Jewels
Michael Sand, executive editor of Bulfinch Press, describes Cunard's recently completed Queen Mary 2 as "the largest and most expensive ocean liner in the world. It's taller than the Statue of Liberty, longer than four city blocks. It has 10 restaurants and a Canyon Ranch Spa. It's the height of opulence." Luxe, too, is Queen Mary 2: The Greatest Ocean Liner of Our Time by John Maxtone-Graham, with photography by Harvey Lloyd. Scheduled for release to coincide with QM2's virgin docking in New York in April, the oversized book has an eight-page gatefold cutaway of the sumptuous vessel. "Everyone who goes on that trip even once will want a book to commemorate the crossing," says Sand. "We will have the perfect captive audience to sell books on board." Yes, QM2 will even have its own floating bookstore.
Self-(Consciousness) Help
In both the business and personal worlds, first impressions matter greatly, as clinical psychologists Ann Demarais and Valerie White point out in First Impressions: What You Don't Know About How Others See You (Bantam, Mar.). The pair, who via their First Impressions consulting service assist Fortune 500 companies as well as singles eager to get back into the dating scene, say that it can take up to five more meetings to overcome a bad initial encounter. For Bantam Dell senior editor Danielle Perez, one of the reasons Demarais and White's proposal made such a strong first impression on her is that "it's something everyone can relate to. The authors have both pieces of the pie, social and business. And there are lots of checklists to really help people understand what their style is." In case there is any doubt that how other people see us is a near universal concern, rights have already been sold to 12 countries.
Mobile Home
The actual header on the classified ad read "Cottages for Sale, Must Be Moved," but Kate Whouley fudged a letter, making her memoir singular: Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved: A Woman Moves a House to Make a Home (Commonwealth Editions, May). In it, Whouley, a publishing veteran who now heads her own consulting firm, Books in Common, shares her adventures of transporting a Cape Cod vacation cottage 29 miles via back roads in 2000—on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, no less—to unite it with her own small domicile. She notes, "I was 42 when I did the project. On the whole, I was working with men who were wonderful doers as opposed to talkers. The book is certainly not a how-to, but it's hopeful for women who are home repair—laden." Part of the story is her "little crushes" on some of the workmen. "There is no big romance," she insists. "I remain a single woman. My builder called the process 'marrying the houses together.' "
Portrait of a Difficult Man
Nicknamed "the father of the atom bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer was a notoriously perplexing person. The puzzle that he was will be addressed by former New Yorker staff writer Jeremy Bernstein in Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (Ivan R. Dee, Apr.), whose release is timed for the centenary of the scientist's birth and the 50th anniversary of the hearings that stripped him of his security clearance. "This biography is different because, first, it's written by a physicist. Second, it's written by a physicist who can write. And third, it's written by a physicist who was also a colleague of Oppenheimer's," says company president Ivan Dee. "Jeremy has an admiring opinion of him, but this is in no way hagiographic. The story is told somewhat impressionistically. It's not designed to be exhaustive. It draws on the evidence and on Jeremy's personal knowledge and observations to get to the bottom of Oppenheimer's character."
Mail Bonding
Dorie McCullough Lawson has always resisted writing. "As the daughter of a writer [Pulitzer Prize—winner David McCullough], I didn't want to write at all. Absolutely not. Too hard." Yet she reads biographies avidly, with a confessed foible. "I always skip. I've always loved the letters and the family side of the story." As the mother of three young children (six, four and five months), Lawson searched for an anthology of letters from parents to their progeny that she might present to her own offspring. "There weren't any," Lawson claims. So she herself compiled Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children (Doubleday, Apr.), containing approximately 100 missives penned by nearly 70 prominent American achievers. "I had the idea for years, but I fought it," Lawson reveals. "Now, I think I'm hooked." Perhaps surprisingly, the collection does not contain any pithy words from her own father. "We're an example of what's happening," she admits. "We talk on the phone every day. There are no letters."
Mother's Milk
Boasting one of the more audacious titles of the season, How My Breasts Saved the World: Misadventures of a Nursing Mother (Lyons Press, May) by Lisa Wood Shapiro is a memoir and how-to that speaks to the realities of breast-feeding. "Breast-feeding is the one thing women lie about, more than they lie about sex or money," says editor Ann Treistman. "Women want so much to succeed because it's supposed to be such a natural thing to do—but it can be harder than they expect. A baby wants to nurse every three hours, and that's at night, too, and for women in an office, breast pumps are disturbing contraption." Of the title Treistman says, "It's a little silly, but it also reflects real life because when you're a nursing mom, you do feel responsible for the world. After all, breast-feeding is what got us on this planet. When a woman nurses in public, she causes a lot of controversy. I think that's because of our prudishness, and I say, 'Get over it.'"
Fond of the Pond
Houghton Mifflin consulting editor Harry Foster reports, "During his lifetime, [Henry David] Thoreau's works were quite unsuccessful. His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers [1840], was a great flop. It took five years to sell the first printing of 2,000 copies of Walden [1854]. It was out of print from 1859 to 1862"—the year of Thoreau's premature death at the age of 44. Since then the masterwork, which was originally published by Houghton Mifflin's predecessor, Ticknor and Fields, has been continuously in print. On August 9, 2004, comes Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic, with original color photography by Scot Miller, plus historic photographs and drawings. Published in association with the Walden Woods Project, it is priced at $28.12—half a cent less than Thoreau laid out to build his cabin at Walden Pond. The book has a 9"x10" trim. "We wanted it to be readable," remarks Foster. "We didn't want it to be a book you only looked at."
Murky Waters
What covers three-quarters of the world? The oceans. Who rules these open waters? Well, that depends. William Langewiesche scans the horizons and calls what he finds The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime (North Point Press, May). "It's a subject that's right in front of our noses, but it's one that no one ever thinks about," says editorial director Rebecca Saletan. "Eighty percent of what we build our lives on travels by sea." Langewiesche's attention focuses primarily on three aspects of this vast watery world: shipwrecks, contemporary piracy and terrorism. Some 43,000 ships cross the oceans carrying freight of all kinds, and a great percentage of them are under the control of shadowy enterprises whose motives are not always pure. "The sea is both a laboratory for and a metaphor for the fragility of human constructs," notes Saletan. "We have sacred notions of nationhood, but the ocean is literally fluid. It doesn't respect the boundaries drawn by human beings."
Olympian Overviews
With this year's Olympic games returning to their birthplace in Greece this August, savvy publishers spot an opportunity. In fact, as of this writing, we've come across six, count 'em, six in competition. In March, Trafalgar Square introduces Athens to Athens: The Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC 1894—2004 by David Miller, a Mainstream book. Facing Athens: Encounters with the Modern City by George Sarrinikolaou is due from North Point Press in June, the same month Getty Publications releases Games and Sanctuaries in Ancient Greece: Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, Nemea, Athens by Panos Valavanis. Also for June, DK announces The Olympic Games: Athens 1896—Athens 2004. "This is a complete, illustrated history with over 1,000 color photos," reports senior editor Barbara Berger. "It will have inside stories as well as records of every stat, every result." July brings Games for the Gods: The Greek Athlete and the Olympics (MFA Publications, dist. by D.A.P.) by Christine Kondoleon and John Hermann. Mark Polizzotti, publisher of this division of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, says, "Like a lot of things we do, this was generated by an upcoming exhibition that opens in July. We have a very extensive classical collection, so we approach the subject from the point of view of the original Olympics and draw parallels, where appropriate, between the Olympics then and the Olympics now. The ancient Greeks didn't believe in the idea of fair play. One athlete might grab another by his privates, and everyone would cheer." Sights below the waist are also revealed in The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games (Random House Trade Paper, June) by Tony Perrottet. "The title reflects the author's writing style, which is irreverent and funny," says Susanna Porter, senior editor. "He goes through the Olympics day by day, writing about the people gathering there, about the training, the night life, all the different events where the athletes were completely naked. There are maps and illustrations taken from ancient vases," she notes, "but no penises on the cover. We felt that penises on the inside would be okay."
Spy Kid
Larry J. Kolb's life story, as told in Overworld: Confessions of a Covert Operative (Riverhead, May), is dramatic in the way Oedipus's life story is dramatic. Kolb, the son of a high-ranking American spy, spent his childhood in the far reaches of the world, learning, among other things, the tricks of the spy trade. Eventually pursued by the CIA to join their ranks, Kolb declined, becoming instead a businessman and sports agent to athletes including boxer Muhammad Ali. As agent to a famous figure, Kolb wined and dined with other famous figures, one of whom, arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, had a daughter whom Kolb married. Kolb's proximity-by-marriage to Khashoggi was irresistible to CIA spymaster and cofounder Miles Copeland, who succeeded in persuading Kolb to participate in covert intrigues in such far-flung locales as Beirut, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nicaragua and India. "Kolb's life is an adventure of the highest order, but the perspective he brings to it—an understanding not only of the psychology, but of the depths of betrayal and heartache involved in espionage—makes this an unusually compelling story," says acquiring editor Christopher Knutsen.
Eisner Feels Tents
It may sound like an oxymoron, but Camp (Warner Books, June), co-written with Aaron Cohen, showcases the softer, gentler side of hard-driving Disney CEO Michael Eisner (Work in Progress). In it, he's less concerned with business strategy per se than how the lessons he learned at Keewaydin summer camp in Vermont, with its emphasis on basic values such as teamwork, changed his life. "He views it as his most formative influence," says Time Warner Book Group CEO Larry Kirshbaum, who acquired the book after hearing Eisner speak about summer camp. "I was very impressed by the passion he feels. When you see him at an A&W drive-in eating burgers with a bunch of kids, he looks like a camp counselor. The incredible enduring boyishness comes through. This is the real Michael Eisner, not the one that does war every day at Disney." Kirshbaum is planning a media blitz around Father's Day, graduation and—of course—the start of the camping season.
Antique Disses
Alice Roosevelt Longworth once famously said, "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me." Nowadays Teddy's daughter might advise picking up a copy of Samuel Johnson's Insults, whose subtitle would surely have delighted the old gal: A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights and Effronteries from the Eighteenth-Century Master. Jack Lynch, a Johnson scholar and editor of his noted 1755 dictionary, has culled more than 350 biting barbs from the dictionary's hundreds of vituperative entries into this April Walker Books/Levenger Press title. Many of these zingers have long lain dormant, notes the publisher; some have even come close to extinction. But now, thanks to Johnson and Lynch, we can once again revel in such terms as "runnion" (a paltry, scurvy wretch) and fustilarian (a stinkard; a scoundrel). A little shy about insulting folks? Would spouting putdowns in a dead language make you feel safer? Check out X-Treme Latin: Unleash Your Inner Gladiator by National Lampoon magazine founder Henry Beard, coming in March from Gotham Books. Talk back to the TV, evade awkward questions, psych out your golf opponent—and sound like a veritable scholar. Beard's thought of everything, including some helpful phrases for reps selling this title—Hoc muneribus omnibus late visis praebemus (we are pitching all national shows).
