Foreign Rights Catalogue
The Ross Yoon Agency
1666 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20009 USA
+1 202 328-3282
London Book Fair 2012
Contact: Anna Sproul, Foreign Rights Manager
email: anna@rossyoon.com | work phone: +1 202 328 3282, ex. 1303 | US
mobile: +1 301 466 7362 | UK mobile: +44 07908 008 785
Table of Contents
Featured Title: Love After Death by Eben Alexander III, MD ........................................................................ 3
Featured Title: Killing Us Softly by Paul Offit, MD ........................................................................................ 4
Featured Title: The Investigator by Terry Lenzner ........................................................................................ 5
Featured Title: Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, ed. Rebecca Walker ............................... 6
Featured Title: The Best Care Possible by Ira Byock, MD .............................................................................. 7
More Upcoming Titles................................................................................................................................... 8
CURIOSITY by John Hendricks ................................................................................................................... 8
THE LETTER by Marie Tillman (to be featured in Parade Magazine, June 2012) ...................................... 9
LAW MAN by Shon Hopwood with Dennis Burke ................................................................................... 10
OVERWHELMED by Brigid Schulte .......................................................................................................... 11
THE ALCHEMISTS by Neil Irwin ............................................................................................................... 12
A GOOD BIRTH by Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD .......................................................................................... 13
THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM by Gabriel Sherman ....................................................................... 14
ARE YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS KILLING YOU? by Armon Neel and Bill Hogan ............................................. 15
SURVIVING OUR EMOTIONS by Ted George with Lisa Berger ................................................................ 16
HUMAN TERRAIN by Vanessa Gezari ...................................................................................................... 17
MIDNIGHT’S FURIES by Nisid Hajari ........................................................................................................ 18
Just Published in North America ................................................................................................................. 19
VULTURES’ PICNIC by Greg Palast........................................................................................................... 19
THE SECRET LIVES OF WIVES by Iris Krasnow ......................................................................................... 20
THE MODERN BOOK OF THE DEAD by Ptolemy Tompkins ..................................................................... 21
SHOWDOWN by David Corn ................................................................................................................... 22
THE BOND by Wayne Pacelle .................................................................................................................. 23
OBAMA ON THE COUCH by Justin Frank, MD ......................................................................................... 24
HEALING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND by Don Campbell and Alex Doman ................................................ 25
WARRIORS OF GOD by Nicholas Blanford............................................................................................... 26
INSTANT CITY by Steve Inskeep .............................................................................................................. 27
Projects in Development............................................................................................................................. 28
Selected Backlist ......................................................................................................................................... 30
About the Ross Yoon Agency ...................................................................................................................... 43
2
Featured Title: Love After Death by Eben Alexander III, MD
“Dr. Eben Alexander’s near-death experience is the
most astounding I have heard in more than four
decades of studying this phenomenon.”
—Raymond Moody, author of Life After Life
Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who spent more than 15 years on
the faculty of Harvard Medical School, tells the true story of the
experience that electrified his life and career.
One morning in 2008, as he prepared to commute to a new job at the
University of Virginia, he suddenly fell ill with a form of bacterial
meningitis so rare as to be unheard of in medical literature. Within hours, he had lapsed into a
coma from which he was not expected to recover. CT scans revealed widespread damage to his
brain’s neocortex, suggesting that if he awoke at all, he would never again be able to speak,
write, or understand his surroundings.
Miraculously, this didn’t come to pass. After a week, as Dr. Alexander’s doctors told his wife to
start making funeral plans, he opened his eyes. He went on to make a full recovery—but he was
never the same. Dr. Alexander had fallen unconscious a secular agnostic, yet in his coma, he
had traveled to the next life, felt the presence of a loving Creator, and met a woman who
turned out to be the biological sister he’d never known (he was adopted). He awoke from the
coma absolutely certain that God was real.
Dr. Alexander’s medical background makes his journey to the afterlife a much more compelling
read than others on the shelf. He is able to explain in depth why his brain was incapable of
fabricating the journey he experienced in coma—a journey he describes in detail using the fifty
pages of notes he made as soon as he regained the ability to write.
NORTH AMERICAN: Simon and Schuster (Priscilla Painton/Jon Karp)
MANUSCRIPT: 80,000 words; due September, 2012
RELEASE DATE: February, 2013
PROPOSAL AND SAMPLE CHAPTERS AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Murdoch/ANZ; Sextante/Brazil; Fortuna/Czech Republic and Slovakia;
Ansata/Germany; Hayakawa/Japan; Bruna/Netherlands; Centrepolygraph/Russia;
Piatkus/UK
3
Featured Title: Killing Us Softly by Paul Offit, MD
“Few scientists are willing to touch this third rail
of science publicity; Offit grabs it with two
hands.”
—Newsweek
Paul Offit is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at
Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. His previous books
debunking the connection between autism and vaccines—
Autism’s False Prophets (Columbia University Press) and Deadly
Choices (Basic)—electrified media coverage of the issue.
For the past 15 years, Paul has served as the head of his
hospital’s Therapeutic Standards Committee, learning an extraordinary amount about the sense
and nonsense of alternative medicine. He believes that patients deserve safe and effective
medicine—period—and is happy to champion any therapy backed up by sound science and
rigorous testing. Unfortunately, as Paul reveals in KILLING US SOFTLY, the alternative medical
industry—worth some $28 billion—rarely submits itself to such standards.
Paul’s hard-hitting analysis shows us that although many alternative treatments have important
strengths, most are ineffective and expensive—at times even dangerous or deadly. Yet they
continue to be wildly popular. He is the first to concede that this is largely because mainstream
medicine has disappointed so many people, but he believes that Americans deserve to know
the unregulated, untested, and profit-motivated nature of the “alternative.”
Five years ago, we were all too enamored of alternative medicine to buy a book about its
pitfalls. Times have changed. The industry has ballooned, costs have skyrocketed, and frankly, a
lot of people don’t feel that much better. KILLING US SOFTLY will help us sort quality from
quackery.
NORTH AMERICAN: HarperCollins (Gail Winston)
MANUSCRIPT: Summer 2012
RELEASE DATE: Spring 2013
PROPOSAL AND SAMPLE CHAPTERS AVAILABLE
4
Featured Title: The Investigator by Terry Lenzner
“One of the most feared and dreaded private
investigators in the world.”
—The Los Angeles Times
In the tradition of Frank Abagnale’s Catch Me If You Can and
Jerry Weintraub’s When I Stop Talking… comes this
alternative history from one of the world’s most renowned
private investigators.
After serving as chief prosecutor for the Senate Watergate
committee, Terry Lenzner went on to establish Investigative
Group International, a hugely successful private investigation
firm. His clients run the gamut from presidents and princes to billionaires and businessmen,
with a healthy dose of Hollywood celebrity in the mix.
Structured as a guide to what it takes to pull off a successful investigation, THE INVESTIGATOR
relates some of Terry’s most surprising stories from 30 years in the field. It offers readers a
different view of many pivotal events and outsized characters in world history: Mohammad alFayed, and the crash that killed Princess Diana; Watergate, and the secret life of Richard Nixon;
Hugo Chavez’s campaign against a Florida newspaper; and a certain blockbuster Hollywood
director’s run-in with the Russian mafia—or at least, what he thought was the Russian mafia.
In America, Terry is most famous for his work in the field of political opposition research,
uncovering information that candidates—and the public—might want to know about the
people running for office. Particularly well-known for his work with the Clintons, he continues
to investigate for campaigns at the highest levels of government. Yet his work extends far
beyond American borders, and so will THE INVESTIGATOR. The book opens readers’ eyes to the
hidden center of international politics, power, and business.
Assisting Terry in the writing of this book is Matt Latimer, a New York Times bestselling
memoirist in his own right and principal contributing writer for Donald Rumsfeld’s #1 New York
Times bestseller, Known and Unknown. Lenzner and Latimer are happy to customize the book
for foreign markets using local case studies and public figures.
NORTH AMERICAN: Blue Rider Press (David Rosenthal)
MANUSCRIPT: September, 2012
RELEASE DATE: TBD
PROPOSAL AND SAMPLE CHAPTERS AVAILABLE
5
Featured Title: Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness
ed. Rebecca Walker
“Walker and her band of scribes are in top form, giving a rich, varied
picture of Black cool style.”
—Publishers Weekly
This book explores the ineffable state and aesthetic of
Black Cool: from the effortless reserve of Miles Davis in
khakis on an early album cover, to the shock of
resistance in black women’s fashion, to hip-hop culture
and poetry performance.
A book of essays by prominent black writers including
graphic novelist Mat Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner
Margo Jefferson, and memoirist Helena Andrews,
BLACK COOL identifies the elements of African
American culture that have made it a driving force
behind international trends in art, music, literature,
entertainment, and fashion.
Editing the anthology is Rebecca Walker, author of the memoirs Black, White, and Jewish and
Baby Love and editor of the anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, and One Big Happy
Family. Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, The Washington Post Book World, Newsweek,
Glamour, Vibe, and Interview, among other publications, and she blogs regularly for The
Huffington Post.
NORTH AMERICAN: Soft Skull Press
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: February 7, 2012
6
Featured Title: The Best Care Possible by Ira Byock, MD
“With elegance, compassion, and energy,
Ira Byock shows us how to get the best end
of life care. He is a great storyteller and a
brilliant analyst of health care in America.
This is the book to read or give, if you are
facing this hard situation. Nobody gets out
of this life alive, but Byock shows us how to
do it elegantly and well.”
—Jane Isay, author of Walking on Eggshells
It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Statistics show that the vast majority of
Americans would prefer to die at home, yet many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain
in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to “fight disease and
illness at all costs.”
Dr. Ira Byock, one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country, argues that end-oflife care is among the biggest national crises facing us today. In addressing the crisis, politics has
trumped reason. Dr. Byock explains that to ensure the best possible care for those we love-and
eventually ourselves- we must not only remake our healthcare system, we must also move past
our cultural aversion to talking about death and acknowledge the fact of mortality once and for
all.
Dr. Byock describes what palliative care really is, and-with a doctor’s compassion and insightputs a human face on the issues by telling richly moving, heart-wrenching, and uplifting stories
of real people during the most difficult moments in their lives. Byock takes us inside his busy,
cutting-edge academic medical center to show what the best care at the end of life can look like
and how doctors and nurses can profoundly shape the way families experience loss.
Like books by Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman, The Best Care Possible is a compelling
meditation on medicine and ethics told through page-turning, life or death medical drama. It is
passionate and timely, and it has the power to lead a new kind of national conversation.
NORTH AMERICAN: Avery (Lucia Watson)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2012
7
More Upcoming Titles
CURIOSITY by John Hendricks
CURIOSITY tells the story of how John Hendricks built a love of great nonfiction media into the
Discovery Channel and later Discovery Communications, a company with a billion viewers in
180 countries on 100 channels in 39 languages. The anti-Murdoch, Hendricks is a media mogul
who combines proven business savvy with real, childlike excitement for helping himself and
others learn more about life’s most important questions.
A business-focused book, CURIOSITY will concentrate on the most important lessons Hendricks
has learned in 26 years at the helm of one of the world’s most successful media companies.
Hendricks and Discovery have prepared a tremendous international marketing plan for the
book. Among other things, they plan to:
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Create lobby installations in their 32 international offices, offering friends and family
discounts to employees
Dedicate an episode of their internationally-viewed show SCIENCE to the book
Create a special tie-in site for the book on their new Curiosity Project site (the Curiosity
Project, Discovery’s biggest multimedia push in its history, involves a TV show, enhanced
ebooks, a hugely-marketed website, and a dedicated retreat and lecture series in
Colorado…Hendricks intends his book to be a prominent facet of this project)
Create international in-flight programming about the book
Feature the book in Animal Planet magazine, which currently publishes in Benelux and
the UK and will soon expand to Italy, Poland, and Russia
Place the book in Discovery Channel stores, 6 of which are in China
Feature the book in Discovery Channel Magazine Asia, in partnership with Reader’s
Digest magazine
Create international websites and tablet/SmartPhone apps for the book
Partner with international mobile companies, make the book available across platforms
NORTH AMERICAN: Harper Business (David Hirshey)
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: Summer 2012
PUBLICATION: 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Global Business/Complex Chinese, Citic/Simplified Chinese
8
THE LETTER by Marie Tillman (to be featured in Parade Magazine, June 2012)
”A
candid, eloquent account of unthinkable loss, its
incapacitating aftermath, and Marie Tillman’s long, lonely
journey back to daylight…The Letter is both a heart-rending elegy
for an extraordinary man and an indispensable road map
through the wilderness of bereavement. It’s a brave and
wonderful book.”
—Jon Krakauer, author of Where Men Win Glory
“Marie Tillman’s moving memoir, The Letter, is a story of
profound courage. It…will inspire so many to recognize their own
power to be architects of change.”
—Maria Shriver
In 2003, Pat Tillman, serving in the US Army, hastily wrote a “just
in case” letter to his wife, Marie. When he returned on leave before his departure to
Afghanistan, he placed the letter on top of their bedroom dresser. For months it sat there,
sealed and ever-present, like a black hole through which Marie knew her stable life would be
pulled if she ever had reason to open it. Then, in April 2004, Marie’s worst nightmare came
true. In the days following his death, it was Pat’s letter that kept her going and, more than that,
it was his words that would help her learn to navigate a world she could no longer share with
her husband.
In THE LETTER, Marie talks for the first time about her journey to remake her life after Pat’s
death. In it, she recalls meeting and falling in love with Pat when they were kids, his harrowing
decision to join the army after 9/11, and the devastating day when she learned he’d been
killed. She describes how she withdrew from the public spotlight to grieve, learning along the
way the value of solitude, self-awareness and integrity in the healing process. And, finally,
Marie recounts her work to rebuild her life, including founding The Pat Tillman Foundation, an
organization established to carry forth Pat’s legacy of leadership, and her decision to step back
into the public eye in order to inspire people to live with meaning and purpose.
Filled with the lessons Marie learned and the wisdom she gained since Pat’s death, THE LETTER
is both a heartrending love story and an inspiring tale for anyone, young or old, whose life has
taken an unexpected hard turn—and who struggles to get back on the right path.
NORTH AMERICAN: Grand Central (Sara Weiss)
GALLEYS AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2012
9
LAW MAN by Shon Hopwood with Dennis Burke
“The only thing more remarkable than Shon Hopwood’s against-all-odds redemption is the skill
with which he’s told his story. A good lawyer needs brains, compassion, insight, and a sense of
humor. LAW MAN displays all these traits in abundance. The verdict is in, and this is an
outstanding book.”
—Jeffrey Ian Ross, PhD, author of Behind Bars: Surviving Prison
“LAW MAN transcends the ‘prison memoir’ genre and offers a redemptive tale of the human
spirit. From his damning portrait of his own transgressions to his exploration of criminal law,
family, God, and love, Shon Hopwood paints a broad, troubling, wonderful canvass of a life
transformed.”
—James S. Hirsch, New York Times bestselling author of Hurricane
A dozen years ago, a Nebraskan named Shon Hopwood was sent to a federal penitentiary after
pleading guilty to five bank robberies. Today he is a free man, married to his high school dream
girl and the father of a beautiful baby boy. He is also applying to law school, having written not
one but two appeals while in prison that were heard by the United States Supreme Court. (The
chances of getting even one of these appeals heard is just 1 in 10,000.) In a lengthy feature, the
New York Times called him “a mediocre criminal, but an unmatched jailhouse lawyer”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/us/09bar.html
Law Man is Shon’s story: a story of wayward bank robbers, lawyers, good and bad prisoners,
and unshakeable love. It’s a real-life Shawshank Redemption meets Erin Brockovich, and the
most remarkable redemption story ever to come out of the American penal system.
Assisting Shon on this project is Dennis Burke, critically acclaimed co-writer of such memoirs as
The Translator and Granny D: You’re Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell (both from Random
House).
NORTH AMERICAN: Crown (Rick Horgan)
GALLEYS AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: August 7, 2012
10
OVERWHELMED by Brigid Schulte
OVERWHELMED asks whether working mothers in any westernized country can ever find true
leisure time. Or are our brains, our partners, our culture, and our bosses making it impossible
for us to experience anything but “contaminated time,” in which we are in frantic life
management mode unless we’re sound asleep?
Our client Brigid Schulte first asked this question in a feature article for the Washington Post
magazine. Hundreds of parenting blogs, including the New York Times’ “Motherlode,” picked up
the story; Dr. Phil and NPR’s Tell Me More booked Brigid on their shows; and women’s groups
and recruiting firms contacted the Washington Post office, inviting her to speak. Brigid still
keeps a robust speaking schedule today, and every time she talks about the seemingly
intractable problem of working mothers and time, the audience asks her: what more can you
tell us? What have you found out? Can you take us a little further on this journey?
OVERWHELMED is Brigid’s answer.
As part of her global journey, Brigid neatly debunks the myth that the Dutch and Scandinavians
have it better than the rest of the world. It’s internationally well-known that women from these
countries have much more time and flexibility in their careers, but these women actually report
feeling *more* spread out and time stressed than other Westerners do. Why that is gets at the
heart of Brigid’s argument, which is that working mothers’ real problem lies in the
fragmentation of their lives. They spend their days doing 3 or 4 things at once, frantically
running around doing different tasks and trying to relax in 15-to-20 minute intervals, and in this
pile of “Time Confetti,” as Brigid calls it, true leisure is impossible. Even if you’re working part
time, you’re still experiencing this fragmentation—perhaps to an even greater degree than your
full-time colleagues.
NORTH AMERICAN: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Sarah Crichton)
PROPOSAL AND SAMPLE CHAPTERS AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: September 17, 2012
RELEASE DATE: May, 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Bloomsbury/UK
11
THE ALCHEMISTS by Neil Irwin
Neil Irwin, lead economics reporter for The Washington Post, has spent a decade cultivating
sources from the highest levels to the lobbies of the world’s central banks, including the Fed,
the Bank of England, the Bundesbank, the European Central Bank, and the People’s Bank of
China.
THE ALCHEMISTS will offer readers the history and secrets of these central banks. An MBA with
an MA in journalism, Neil combines deep knowledge of how these banks work with
unprecedented scoops about the people who run them. His book will offer readers a brief
historical background on the role of central banks, then take them through events happening
now as the world’s most important bankers try to set the path toward global stability and
prosperity.
Never has our society needed such a book more urgently. The global recession created a need
for global cooperation, leading to unlikely alliances and unexpected tensions among the likes of
Ben Bernanke, Europe’s Jean-Claude Trichet, England’s Mervyn King, and China’s Zhou
Xiaochuan. Central banks and bankers increasingly rely on each other to save their countries,
and the global economy, from chaos.
NORTH AMERICAN: Penguin Press (Laura Stickney)
PROPOSAL AND SAMPLE MATERIAL AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: October, 2012
PUBLICATION: Spring, 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Business Plus/World English, Hayakawa/Japan, Econ/Germany,
Cheers/Simplified Chinese, Campus/Brazil, KPI/Korea
12
A GOOD BIRTH by Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD
As part of her “Good Birth Project,” a landmark study she took with her from Duke to UNC,
prominent obstetrician and bioethicist Dr. Lyerly talked to more than a hundred women about
their experiences in childbirth. In intimate conversations, they revealed to her what really
mattered to them in the delivery room: not where they were or whether they used anesthesia,
but how and whether their emotional needs were met. Dr. Lyerly quickly saw that a good birth
was about more than just a healthy outcome for mother and baby—but only when she listened
to these women did she fully understand what it was about. She shares her discoveries in A
GOOD BIRTH.
Through her subjects’ voices, Lyerly identifies the values common to every good birth, and she
explains how to put them at the center of delivery. Mothers can use her advice before, during,
and even long after childbirth, as they reflect on their experiences and prepare for the next
chapter in their family lives. It’s a book unlike any other on the shelf: Instead of offering birthing
plans, agendas, options, or contingencies, it’s about how to center any birth in the positive and
profound.
A mother herself, Dr. Lyerly just gave birth to her fourth child. Gotham sees this book as a
game-changer in the genre.
NORTH AMERICAN: Gotham/Avery (Lauren Marino)
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: October, 2012
PUBLICATION: April, 2013
13
THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM by Gabriel Sherman
This book is essential reading for those interested in Rupert Murdoch’s influence on global
business and politics. Gabriel Sherman, one of the top reporters following Murdoch, tells the
story of America’s Fox News Channel—the NewsCorp phenomenon that spurred the rise of the
Tea Party, controls political debate in the world’s superpower, and counts five presidential
candidates on its payroll.
Fox News Channel generates $1 billion in annual profits. The night Americans went to the polls
to throw incumbents out of office, Fox’s ratings beat not just the major networks’ but those of
liberal networks MSNBC and CNN combined. Yet the network, one of the past quarter-century’s
biggest business success stories, remains shrouded in mystery. Few understand its profound
influence on American government and world affairs.
Sherman, a reporter for New York Magazine and The New Republic, has cultivated sources at
the highest rungs of the company. THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM will tell Fox’s story in
three acts, starting with the founding of the network in 1996 and tracing its meteoric ascent to
the present, when it controls the Republican Party and will perhaps one day control the
presidency. The bulk of the book will cover what has happened at the network since 2007,
when Fox stopped merely covering the political landscape and began to dramatically transform
it. Gabriel will continue researching and reporting the book through the 2012 presidential
election.
THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM combines the deep business reporting of Ken Auletta or
James Stewart with the gripping narrative and inside politics of Andrew Ross Sorkin. Gabriel’s
cover stories on Fox and Rupert Murdoch have set the bar for reporting on one of the country’s
most successful yet secretive companies, and his book is a revelation for anyone trying to
understand this dominant cultural force.
NORTH AMERICAN: Random House (Jonathan Jao)
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: December, 2012
PUBLICATION: Spring, 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Virgin/World English, Citic/Simplified Chinese
14
ARE YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS KILLING YOU? by Armon Neel and Bill Hogan
Top senior-care pharmacist Armon Neel still gets phone calls from all over the world about “The
Pharmacist Who Says No To Drugs,” a profile of him that ran in AARP Bulletin six years ago. The
piece’s author, Bill Hogan, chronicled Neel’s crusade against the mis-medication
and overmedication of America’s seniors: a problem that costs us thousands of lives and billions
of healthcare dollars every year.
Widely redistributed on science blogs and newsletters, the article sent a horde of patients and
concerned family members to Neel’s web site, www.medicationxpert.com. They asked him
question after question: how do I know whether my mother’s medications are safe? Why can’t
seniors take the same pills as younger adults? What are the names of unsafe drugs? And how
can I talk to my doctor about this without starting a fight?
In response, Neel has teamed up with Bill Hogan again to write a new book. ARE YOUR
PRESCRIPTIONS KILLING YOU? will offer older patients--and more important, the Boomers who
care for them--a guide to seniors’ changing bodies and why some prescriptions lead to
dizziness, heart trouble, falls, and even dementia symptoms almost always misdiagnosed as
Alzheimer’s. Neel names the specific medications that no older patient should take, and he
shows them and caregivers how to advocate on their own behalf.
Neel’s knowledge of international prescription drug markets will enable him to customize this
book fully for the United Kingdom and Western Europe.
NORTH AMERICAN: Atria (Sarah Durand)
MANUSCRIPT AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: Early 2013
15
SURVIVING OUR EMOTIONS by Ted George with Lisa Berger
We’ve all suffered from a moment of “losing it.” Maybe it’s getting angry at a co-worker,
lashing out at a spouse or friend, or shutting down when life feels overwhelming.
For the past twenty-five years, Dr. Ted George has studied patients who exhibit the most
extreme forms of this behavior. They are addicts, abusers, PTSD victims, and the severely
depressed. They express themselves, as all of us do in times of duress, in one of three basic
human responses: fight, flight, or shutdown. Dr. George’s busy metropolitan Washington
private practice is full of overachievers who have the same basic responses. They may not
qualify for the studies, but they too are suffering, as are their families.
George has combined the most cutting-edge methods of medical research—fMRI, facial
analysis, PET scans, and lactate infusions – with the lessons and takeaway of a thriving private
practice to present a model of the brain that has never been shared with the public. For the
first time in medical history, Dr. George is going to explain what happens in the brain when we
“lose it.” Hundreds of his patients feel great relief when they come to understand this brain
model, which sets them on the path toward improvement through therapy and medication.
George’s book proves that psychiatry must move beyond simple diagnosis and labeling. For the
medical profession and the families and friends of people with intense emotions, it’s a lifeline
for understanding and support. This represents the best combination of health book: one that
puts together the most advanced clinical research with many years of experienced, hands-on
patient care and storytelling.
NORTH AMERICAN: HarperOne (Nancy Hancock)
MANUSCRIPT: July 1, 2012
RELEASE DATE: Early 2013
16
HUMAN TERRAIN by Vanessa Gezari
On November 4, 2008, as America elected its new President, Paula Loyd walked with her
colleagues through Maiwand, a village in southern Afghanistan. Loyd, a privileged 36-year-old
Texan blonde with extensive experience in military, reconstruction, and aid work in the country,
was a member of the Human Terrain team, a quasi-military intelligence gathering program
staffed by volunteer academics that was a jewel in the crown of General David Petraeus’ plan
for winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
Paula’s mission: to learn as much as possible about regional politics, culture, and customs, and
to share her findings with the American military personnel working in the region. So far, she
had encountered nothing but success. Then a villager approached her: a young man who
wanted to talk about the price of fuel. He was carrying a can of gasoline. A few minutes into
their animated conversation, with no warning, he emptied the can of fuel over Paula’s head,
pulled a lighter from his pocket, and set her on fire.
HUMAN TERRAIN—written by an extraordinary young journalist whose work has appeared in
the Washington Post Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune, among
others—uses Paula’s story to discuss what most experts see as the pivotal time in the West’s
relationship with Afghanistan. The Obama administration has just appointed a new commander
in the country, signaling their intention to refocus the war away from the shock and awe of the
Bush administration.
But, as Gezari writes, “is it morally defensible to deploy social scientists whose interview
subjects may at any moment become targets of a combat operation? Is it possible to engage
your way out of a conflict, or is war inherently brutal and polarizing, much as we might wish it
to be otherwise? And given the overwhelming power of our military-industrial complex, can a
human initiative like this one have any real effect on the course of a modern war?” Such are the
important questions Gezari tackles in this book.
NORTH AMERICAN: Simon and Schuster (Priscilla Painton)
MANUSCRIPT: May, 2012
RELEASE DATE: Early 2013
17
MIDNIGHT’S FURIES by Nisid Hajari
Former Newsweek managing editor Hajari writes a dramatic history of India’s partition from the
perspective of five key players: Gandhi, Churchill, Jinnah, Nehru, and Mountbatten.
Hajari’s historical narrative is taut and horrifying, and his characters, especially Mountbatten,
come alive in vivid, idiosyncratic detail. But this is more than just great history. Nisid
demonstrates that six decades after the fiery war in which more than a million people died,
Partition’s toxic legacy looms over contemporary world events. India and Pakistan persist in
their nuclear standoff, and Pakistan, wary of India and other superpowers, provides safe haven
to jihadists, presenting perhaps the most challenging obstacle in the fight against global
terrorism.
At Newsweek, Hajari routinely wrote on the Indo-Pakistani relationship. This book is going to be
essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what’s going on in the Subcontinent
today.
WORLD ENGLISH: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Bruce Nichols)
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
DELIVERY: Summer 2012
PUBLICATION: Early 2013
18
Just Published in North America
VULTURES’ PICNIC by Greg Palast
New York Times Bestselling Author
“Palast takes us on a fast paced, kick-ass narrative that
globe trots from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil blowout
in the Gulf of Mexico, to the coast of Alaska, to New
Orleans, to Liberia, to Azerbaijan, to Fukushima, Japan.
It’s the real-deal investigative reporting of corporate
irresponsibility. As Greg Palast said himself in an
interview, ‘This book is a story of the 1%. It’s why we
occupy.’”
—Diane Wilson, FireDogLake Book Salon
This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the
weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans
the globe and decades.
For Vultures’ Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast
has spent his career uncovering the connection between
the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He’s built a
team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thrillera Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how
environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies
such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and,
most interestingly, veiled connections between the financial industry and energy titans. Palast
shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and
Central Banks act as puppets for Big Oil.
With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the
Amazon, Vultures’ Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of
regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can’t writeand take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.
NORTH AMERICAN: Dutton (Carrie Thornton)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: November 14, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Constable and Robinson/UK; Alta/Brazil; Hanbit Biz/Korea;
Hayakawa/Japan; Riemann/Germany, Denoël/France, Global/Taiwan
19
THE SECRET LIVES OF WIVES by Iris Krasnow
New York Times Bestselling Author | Inaugural Selection for “The Talk” National TV Book Club
America’s high divorce rate is well-known. But little
attention has been paid to the flip side: couples who
creatively (sometimes clandestinely) manage to build
marriages that are lasting longer than we ever thought
possible. What’s the secret? To find out, bestselling
journalist Iris Krasnow interviewed more than 200
wives whose marriages have survived for 15 to 70
years. They are a diverse cast, yet they share one
common and significant trait: They have made bold,
sometimes secretive and shocking choices on how to
keep their marital vows, “till death do us part,” as
Krasnow says, “without killing someone first.”
In raw, candid, titillating stories, Krasnow’s cast of wise
women give voice to the truth about marriage and the
importance of maintaining a strong sense of self apart
from the relationship. Some spend summers
separately from their partners. Some make time for
wine with the girls. One septuagenarian has a recurring
date with an old flame from high school. In every case,
the marriage operates on many tracks, giving both spouses license to pursue the question
“Who am I apart from my marriage?” Krasnow’s goal is to give women permission to create
their own marriages at any age. Marital bliss is possible, she says, if each partner is blissful apart
from the other.
“The Fine Line Between Marriage and Divorce,” Iris’s Huffington Post article on her vintage
wives’ tales, has been read by more than 1.5 million people and circulated across the globe,
prompting interview requests from the UK to Poland and Brazil. For the week leading up to
publication, the book was on Amazon’s top-50 bestseller list. THE SECRET LIVES OF WIVES is
poised to become a global classic.
NORTH AMERICAN: Gotham (Lauren Marino)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: September 29, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Commonwealth/Complex Chinese; Grand China/Simplified Chinese
20
THE MODERN BOOK OF THE DEAD by Ptolemy Tompkins
“A fascinating, impassioned hybrid of memoir and divine
supposition.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A brilliant and absorbing exploration of our ideas about
death and the afterlife, that brings much thought, insight,
and personal reflection to an area of experience we too
often avoid examining. Some might consider this morbid mistakenly, I’d say - but it prepares the reader for the one
spiritual adventure none of us will miss, and can even make
us look forward to it.”
—Gary Lachman
What happens to us after we die? All the world’s religions
offer their own perspectives on what happens to us after
death, and even in the modern world, where the existence
of the soul is so often questioned, channeling and neardeath experiences have kept those ancient questions alive
all the same. So it is that in today’s largely secular society, thousands still continue to turn to
ancient texts like the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead for consolation and inspiration.
Like the world’s other great sacred works, these Books of the Dead offer wisdom, hope, and
comfort. But because they’re so old, the material they present needs to be seen within a
modern context in order to be truly useful. If “What happens to the soul at death?” remains
perhaps the single most important question we can ask, then whatever answer we find should
incorporate not just ancient wisdom, but also the fruits of modern experience. The Modern
Book of the Dead does just that.
Author Ptolemy Tompkins grew up in a family where questions about the shape and fate of the
human soul were discussed on a daily basis, and he has explored those concepts in his critically
acclaimed books The Divine Life of Animals and Paradise Fever. Part memoir, part history of
ideas of the afterlife, and part road map to what might truly await each of us when we leave
our bodies behind, The Modern Book of the Dead is a wise and courageous book that
approaches the question of the afterlife in a refreshingly intimate manner.
NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH AND SPANISH: Atria (Sarah Durand)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: February 14, 2012
21
SHOWDOWN by David Corn
New York Times Bestselling Author
Veteran political journalist Corn goes behind the scenes at the
White House to recount the dramatic tale of a pivotal period
in the Obama presidency, from the game-changing 2010
midterm elections to the beginning of the 2012 campaign
season.
After Barack Obama’s first two years as president—during
which he navigated the United States through its severest
economic crisis since the Great Depression while managing
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—he was faced with a bitterly
divided nation and an emboldened political opposition
dedicated to impeding his presidency. What followed was a
year of political crises and fierce battles that would transform
Obama and profoundly shape the terrain for the next election.
Corn chronicles and examines this crucial time in the Obama
presidency and its impact on the nation’s future. Drawing on interviews with White House
officials, Obama’s inner circle, members of Congress, and others, Corn takes the reader into the
Oval Office and the back rooms on Capitol Hill for a fast-paced and gripping account of the
major events as they unfolded.
Corn captures the dilemmas faced by a president assailed by disappointed progressives and
defiantly obstructionist Republicans determined to see his defeat. Here is a chief executive
trying to balance the cross-cutting demands of governance and politics while handling unending
challenges at home and abroad. The book reveals a thoughtful leader with a cool head who is
unafraid to take risks and make tough choices, a steely battler who successfully turned his
enemies’ obstinacy to his advantage.
A vivid and powerful account of White House decision-making, Showdown offers a unique and
enlightening look at the turbulent American political scene during one of the most
consequential moments of the nation’s history, and explains the fascinating and complicated
leader at the heart of this vortex.
NORTH AMERICAN: William Morrow (Henry Ferris)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2012
22
THE BOND by Wayne Pacelle
The New York Times Bestseller is now in Paperback!
Thought-provoking, and for some it will be thought-changing.”
–Jane Goodall
“The best overall book on animals I have ever read.” –John
Mackey, CEO and Founder of Whole Foods
When did our bond with animals begin to fray, and what can
we do to fix it? In THE BOND, Wayne Pacelle, the telegenic
President and CEO of the world’s largest animal protection
organization, the Humane Society of the United States, lays out
his vision for strengthening and renewing our commitment to
the planet’s other living creatures.
Animal cruelty is a vast international problem. More than 60
billion animals—nearly ten for every human on the planet—are
bred for our consumption around the world, and most of them
live out their lives in cramped factory farms. Billions of wild animals are killed every year for
sport, for the bush meat trade, for the pet trade, or for wildlife parts. We are using hundreds of
millions of animals in scientific and research protocols, often savagely. And although we lavish
our pets with high-end food and designer accessories, we buy them too often from inhumane
puppy and kitten mills.
The HSUS works to end animal cruelty all over the world. Its international outreach program,
Humane Society International, maintains offices in Asia, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, the
United Kingdom, and the United States and works to influence legislators and reform inhumane
practices in dozens of countries.
Back home in the States, Pacelle has won admirers as diverse as Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, John
Ensign, and Rush Limbaugh and appeared in dozens of front-page newspaper features. Sparing
readers the hysteria and hyperbole that characterize so much of today’s animal-rights
movement, he lays out a moderate, compassionate plan for protecting animals all over the
world.
NORTH AMERICAN: William Morrow (Peter Hubbard)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: April 12, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Bookfactory Dubulu/Korea
23
OBAMA ON THE COUCH by Justin Frank, MD
*Profiled in Le Figaro and other international media
“Wonder why President Obama can’t fight back? The answer is in this compelling book. Dr.
Frank unravels the tragic flaw within a tightly woven man whose unexpressed rage toward both
his parents has neutered him as a leader. Aware of his own capacity for destructiveness, he
cannot allow himself to retaliate against opponents bent on crushing his Presidency. Pass on
this book to his advisers.”
—Gail Sheehy, author of Passages and Understanding Men’s Passages
Even though he’s three years into his term as President, many Americans feel like they don’t
know the “real” Barack Obama. From the idealistic campaigner who seemed to share our
dreams, and who promised to fulfill our lofty expectations, to pragmatic politician who has
repeatedly compromised on the promises of his campaign, it indeed seems as though there are
two Obamas. What to make of this? How can the electorate get a better sense of its
commander-in-chief, and how can the President more effectively lead a nation in a moment of
turmoil and crisis? These questions are of great interest to most Americans, but the questions –
and their potential answers – are especially intriguing for a psychiatrist eager to diagnose and
help cure the ills that plague our country. Here, Justin Frank, M.D., a practicing psychoanalyst
and the author of the New York Times bestseller Bush on the Couch - brings a new patient into
his office, and the results of his sessions are not only fascinating, but they provide valuable
insights that will help readers in their frustrating pursuit of the President’s character.
Obama’s transformation over the course of his brief but incredibly well-examined political
career has left some supporters disillusioned and has further frustrated opponents. To explore
this change in behavior, and Obama’s seeming inability to manage the response to his actions,
Dr. Frank delves into his past, in particular, the President’s turbulent childhood, to paint a
portrait of a mixed-race child who experienced identity issues early in life, further complicated
by his father’s abandonment. As he addresses everything from Obama’s approach to health
care reform, his handling of the Gulf Oil spill, to his Middle East strategies, Dr. Frank argues that
the President’s decisions are motivated by inner forces—in particular, he focuses on Obama’s
overwhelming need to establish consensus, which can occasionally undermine his personal—
and his party’s—objectives.
As Obama’s first term comes to a close, speculation about the future will only grow more
intense; Obama on the Couch will give average citizens and pundits alike a way to help all of us
anticipate what the President will do next—and what the future of our country might hold.
NORTH AMERICAN: Free Press (Dominick Anfuso)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: October 18, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Beijing Mediatime/Simplified Chinese
24
HEALING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND by Don Campbell and Alex Doman
”Healing at the Speed of Sound . . . provides us with powerful
tools to enhance our general health and wellbeing as well as
expand our spiritual awareness.”
—David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, ABIHM, author of Power Up
Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment
“Healing at the Speed of Sound puts us in charge of our own
sound health and well being. Life is good-but it can be so
much better with Campbell’’s infinite illuminations contained
in this wonderful body of work.”
—Barry Green, bestselling author of the The Inner Game of
Music, The Mastery of Music, and Bringing Music to Life
“From the moment of our birth . . .to the last breath we take,
sound is a primary, shaping force in our lives. Don Campbell
and Alex Doman have authored a wonderful treatise helping
us understand the role sound plays in our lives and the
means by which we can be productive, healthy and happy.”
—Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., author of the Power of Resilience
Based on more than a decade of new research, Don Campbell, bestselling author of The Mozart
Effect, and Alex Doman, an expert in the practical application of sound and listening, show how
we can use music—and silence—to become more efficient, productive, relaxed, and healthy.
Each chapter of HEALING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND focuses on a single aspect of everyday life,
providing advice, exercises, wide-ranging playlists, and links so readers can use the music they
love to create the perfect soundtrack for any goal or task. Also included are “Sound Profiles”—
brief stories showing how real people creatively tap the power of sound to improve their own
and other’s lives—as well as sound and video clips available on the authors’ dynamic website,
www.healingatthespeedofsound.com.
Inspiring, practical, and truly enjoyable, HEALING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND opens the door to a
fuller, richer, and much more harmonious life.
NORTH AMERICAN: Hudson Street (Meghan Stevenson)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: September 29, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Sanchaek/Korea, Domain/Complex Chinese, L’Homme/French
25
WARRIORS OF GOD by Nicholas Blanford
“A rich piece of storytelling . . . brilliant stuff.”
—Scott MacLeod, Middle East correspondent, Time magazine
“This is not only a real-life thriller but a story with huge implications for the future of the region.
Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Lebanon, Blanford is the man to tell it.”
—Richard Beeston, foreign editor, The Times
”A brisk portrait of the man’s travails and legacy.”
—Max Rodenbeck, The New York Review of Books
Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other
Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas
Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its
enduring struggle against Israel. Based on more than a decade and a half of reporting in
Lebanon and conversations with Hezbollah’s determined fighters, Blanford reveals their
ideology, motivations, and training, as well as new information on military tactics, weapons,
and sophisticated electronic warfare and communications systems.
Using exclusive sources and his own dogged investigative skills, Blanford traces Hezbollah’s
extraordinary evolution—from a zealous group of raw fighters motivated by Iran’s 1979 Islamic
revolution into the most formidable non-state military organization in the world, whose
charismatic leader vows to hasten Israel’s destruction. With dramatic eyewitness accounts,
including Blanford’s own experiences of the battles, massacres, triumphs, and tragedies that
have marked the conflict, the story follows the increasingly successful campaign of resistance
that led to Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
Warriors of God shows how Hezbollah won hearts and minds with exhaustive social welfare
programs and sophisticated propaganda skills. Blanford traces the group’s secret military buildup since 2000 and reveals the stunning scope of its underground network of tunnels and
bunkers, becoming the only journalist to independently discover and explore them. With the
Middle East fearful of another, even more destructive war between Lebanon and Israel,
Blanford tenaciously pursues Hezbollah’s post-2006 battle plans in the Lebanese mountains,
earning him newspaper scoops as well as a terrifying interrogation and a night in jail.
Featuring sixteen years of probing interviews with Hezbollah’s leaders and fighters, Warriors of
God is essential to understanding a key player in a region rocked by change and uncertainty.
NORTH AMERICAN: Random House (Jonathan Jao)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: October 25, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Arab Scientific Publishers/Arabic
26
INSTANT CITY by Steve Inskeep
“Steve Inskeep has written a magnificent, engrossing book... His voice reflects the best
traditions of politically alert travel writing, endowed with calm wisdom and curious empathy.”
—Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens
From the host of NPR’s Morning Edition, a deeply reported portrait of Karachi, Pakistan, a city
that illuminates the perils and possibilities of rapidly growing metropolises all around the world.
In recent decades, the world has seen an unprecedented shift of people from the countryside
into cities. As Steve Inskeep so aptly puts it, we are now living in the age of the “instant city,”
when new megacities can emerge practically overnight, creating a host of unique pressures
surrounding land use, energy, housing, and the environment. In his first book, the co-host
of Morning Edition explores how this epic migration has transformed one of the world’s most
intriguing instant cities: Karachi, Pakistan.
Karachi has exploded from a colonial port town of 350,000 in 1941 to a sprawling metropolis of
at least 13 million today. As the booming commercial center of Pakistan, Karachi is perhaps the
largest city whose stability is a vital security concern of the United States, and yet it is a place
that Americans have frequently misunderstood.
As Inskeep underscores, one of the great ironies of Karachi’s history is that the decision to
divide Pakistan and India along religious lines in 1947 only unleashed deeper divisions within
the city-over religious sect, ethnic group, and political party. In Instant City, Inskeep investigates
the 2009 bombing of a Shia religious procession that killed dozens of people and led to further
acts of terrorism, including widespread arson at a popular market. As he discovers, the bombing
is in many ways a microcosm of the numerous conflicts that divide Karachi, because people
wondered if the perpetrators were motivated by religious fervor, political revenge, or simply a
desire to make way for new real estate in the heart of the city. Despite the violence that
frequently consumes Karachi, Inskeep finds remarkable signs of the city’s tolerance, vitality, and
thriving civil society-from a world-renowned ambulance service to a socially innovative project
that helps residents of the vast squatter neighborhoods find their own solutions to sanitation,
health care, and education.
Drawing on interviews with a broad cross section of Karachi residents, from ER doctors to
architects to shopkeepers, Inskeep has created a vibrant and nuanced portrait of the forces
competing to shape the future of one of the world’s fastest growing cities.
WORLD ENGLISH: Penguin Press (Laura Stickney)
COPIES AVAILABLE
RELEASE DATE: October 13, 2011
27
Projects in Development
Here are some of the projects we’re preparing for North American submission. We fight hard to
keep world rights when we know we have interest, so please let us know if anything on this list
intrigues you.
The Taxation of America by T.R. Reid
In the mold of his New York Times top-ten bestseller The Healing of America (Penguin,
2009), T.R. Reid is working on a new project, tentatively titled The Taxation of America. Once
again, he has embarked on a worldwide journey to find perspective on an issue seizing the
national debate. Last time, it was health care; this time, it’s taxation.
Is there a better way to collect taxes? How does America’s tax system stack up to other
countries’? Do we pay more or less than our foreign peers, and is our money spent as
efficiently? How can we make taxes simpler and more equitable?
Beloved of congressmen and senators as well as journalists including the New York
Times’ Nicholas Kristof, Reid is sure to make a splash with this new book.
Hijacking the Runway by Teri Agins
Teri Agins founded the fashion beat for the Wall Street Journal and still writes a regular
column for them. Her book, currently on submission in New York, will appeal to readers of Dana
Thomas’ Deluxe as well as the growing contingent of fashion followers who prefer watching the
red carpet pre-shows more than the actual awards events—and who made the brief Alexander
McQueen exhibit the eighth most popular show in the 141-year history of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Teri’s previous book, The End of Fashion (William Morrow), has become a classic in the
genre, selling steadily since its publication in 1999. Her new book, full of the same juicy insider
tidbits as the first, will tell readers the fascinating and unexplored story of the struggle for the
soul of the multi-billion dollar fashion industry: the battles among fast fashion (H&M, Zara,
Forever 21), fake fashion (J. Crew, Anthropologie), celebrity fashion (Kardashian and the Olsen
Twins), old fashion (Lagerfeld and Ralph Lauren), and the future of the industry, new fashion
(Derek Lam and Phillip Lim).
Savior Economics by Greg Ip
When Greg Ip, the U.S. Economics Editor of The Economist, published The Little Book of
Economics (Wiley: 2010), Nouriel Roubini hailed it as a “must read in economic literacy.”
Greg’s new book will examine how and why man-made disasters happen, from financial
and nuclear meltdowns to plane crashes, security breaches, and bank failures. Using his talent
for explaining complex economic concepts in layman’s terms, he’ll show readers why failure
inevitably enters every man-made system and how a reluctance to allow for failure often
results in disaster down the line.
28
The Bloating Cure by Robynne Chutkan, MD
Gastroenterologist and television personality Robynne Chutkan hears one question
more often than any other from the women who visit her Washington, D.C. practice: “what can
I do about my BLOATING?”
Women’s anatomy and hormones—coupled with our Western lifestyle and diet—have
combined to make bloating a modern-day scourge. Drug-store and Whole Foods shelves
abound with so-called “cures,” as does the internet, but if you’re anything like the women who
end up in Dr. Chutkan’s office, you’ve been jaded by false promises.
What really helps bloating? Could my bloating be caused by celiac disease or lactose
intolerance? Should I stop taking the Pill? Why doesn’t my husband have this problem? Robynne
provides the answers that have been eluding Western women for years.
The Electromagnetic Brain by Karen Shanor, PhD, with Ptolemy Tompkins
It guides birds and butterflies in their migration; it enables bees to communicate with
one another; it sets our circadian rhythms and courses through our neurons; it warns animals
away from earthquakes and tsunamis. Humankind is only just beginning to understand the
power of electromagnetism, the energy in and all around us that pulses from our every living
cell. Within a decade, ESP and other “New Age” phenomena might be recognized and
understood by scientists studying electromagnetism inside the brain.
Just as we enter this new era of understanding, however, we’re posing a terrible threat
to the planet’s electromagnetic network, altering the landscape with cell towers and
transmissions as we surround ourselves with signal-emitting electronics. Flocks of birds are
falling dead from the sky, and whales are floating dead to the surface. Are we destroying
nature’s most miraculous power just as we begin to understand it?
Karen Shanor, a clinical psychologist and the author of several books, explores these
topics in The Electromagnetic Brain.
29
Selected Backlist
Tina Rosenberg, JOIN THE CLUB
*Pulitzer Prize-winning author
The fearless Tina Rosenberg has spent her career tackling some of the world’s hardest problems. Her searing work
on how Eastern Europe faced the crimes of Communism garnered both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer
Prize. In Join the Club, she identifies a brewing social revolution that is changing the way people live, based on
harnessing the positive force of peer pressure. Her stories of peer power in action show how it has reduced teen
smoking in the United States, made villages in India healthier and more prosperous, helped minority students get
top grades in college calculus, and even led to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. She tells how creative social
entrepreneurs are starting to use peer pressure to accomplish goals as personal as losing weight and as global as
fighting terrorism. Inspiring and engrossing, JOIN THE CLUB explains how we can better our world through
humanity’s most powerful and abundant resource: our connections with one another.
“At a time when America is grappling with a decline in trust, and when cooperation across nations and cultures
is extremely difficult, Rosenberg’s book is timely, thoughtful and important. It illuminates one crucial piece of
the complex puzzle of social improvement.” –Jeffrey Sachs, writing in the New York Times Book Review
“Rosenberg’s case studies are as different as they are fascinating…. A brilliant book that fully realizes its
ambition.” –Abraham Verghese, Newsweek
“Compelling and path-breaking. We now know from Tina Rosenberg’s book that peer pressure can be an
overwhelming force for good.” —Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One
“Tina Rosenberg has cracked a code that reveals how people change for the better. She has found the common
humanity in human communities across the earth. Join the Club will open your mind to the ways in which we can
heal our world.” —Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes
“This book reveals startling possibilities to improve the world. It tackles the toughest of all questions — how to
change human behavior and culture — and provides a blueprint for success. Indispensable for anyone who cares
about social change.” – David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World
“What an exhilarating book. Tina Rosenberg has found an extraordinary key to solving problems as diverse as the
misery of Indian Untouchables, the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic, dangerous sexual behavior in AIDS-ridden
South Africa, the anomie of American suburbs. It is organized pressure from peers. And she doesn’t just
philosophize. She has been to the crisis points, all over the world, and she tells us the stories of wonderful human
beings.” —Anthony Lewis, author of Gideon’s Trumpet
“Tina Rosenberg ranges widely as she explores the strategies that have succeeded in changing personal behavior in
ways that have limited the spread of AIDS in southern Africa, allowed severely abused women in rural India to
transform their lives, enabled young people to lead in ousting a tyrant in the Balkans, sharply improved the
performance in mathematics of minority students in Texas and in many other circumstances that people have
overcome seemingly impossible challenges. Her reporting is meticulous, her writing is fluid and her insights are
penetrating. This is a path-breaking book.” – Aryeh Neier, President, Open Society Institute
North American: W.W. Norton
Copies available
Editor: Bob Weil
Pub: March 28, 2011
Foreign: Hayakawa/Japan, Random House/Korea, Campus/Brazil, Icon Books/World English
30
Marc Kaufman, FIRST CONTACT: SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS IN THE HUNT FOR LIFE BEYOND EARTH
**Best Nonfiction Book of 2011—Kirkus Reviews**
Marc Kaufman’s riveting, game-changing book tells the incredible true story of science’s search for the beginnings
of life on Earth—and the likelihood of it existing elsewhere in our universe.
 Fantasy no more: For decades, researchers assumed that the genesis of life was too delicate a process to exist
anywhere other than Earth. But recent discoveries—from microbes living in unimaginably inhospitable
environments to new extra-solar planets—point towards a day when the existence of extraterrestrial life will
be confirmed.
 The big questions just got bigger: Kaufman takes readers around the globe, into space, and miles below
Earth’s surface to show how the search for life on other planets is changing the way humans think about their
own history, what it means to be human, and what, exactly, life is.
 A complicated quest made simple: FIRST CONTACT is the first book to bring together cutting-edge
developments across the many branches of science, from microbiology to geochemistry, physics, and
astronomy, which are racing to verify what was once deemed impossible. Kaufman demystifies the rigorous
science and advanced technology that is edging ever closer to the most important scientific discovery of our
time.
FIRST CONTACT is fully up-to-date on recent events. By the time arsenic-based life was found in California’s Mono
Lake in December—a discovery with profound implications for our search for life beyond Earth—Marc had been on
the scene for months. In the course of writing this book and reporting for the Washington Post, Marc had been in
contact with the researchers many times.
“Marc Kaufman traveled to the ends of the Earth to report this fascinating, awe-inspiring and accessible book. Are
we alone in the universe? Almost certainly not. Kaufman leaves the reader with a lucid sense of what we know and
where the next wave of discovery will take place.” –Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA,
Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
“In First Contact, journalist Marc Kaufman reveals how the extremes of life on Earth illuminates our search for life
in the Universe. And, true to the title, Kaufman explores what the social and cultural consequences of first contact
might be. We visit the labs and lairs of research frontiers while probing the minds of scientists on this epic search.
Along the way, Kaufman invokes crisp, clear, and engaging narrative that, at times, leaves you to think you were
conducting the research yourself.” –Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Marc Kaufman, a world-class reporter whose writing is clear and clean, is just the right author First Contact. I
found this book as thrilling as it is illuminating as he takes us around the Earth and off into space in search of the
beginnings of life here and probably elsewhere.” –David Maraniss, author of They Marched Into Sunlight and When
Pride Still Mattered
“Writing with cinematic clarity, Marc Kaufman provides a masterful, gripping tour along the frontiers of the search
for extraterrestrial life and shows how this quest is inextricably linked with the struggle to understand life on
Earth.” –Kathy Sawyer, author of The Rock from Mars
“Marc Kaufman brings to life the broad and increasingly successful effort by scientists to find signs of life beyond
Earth. It’s an exciting read about a scientific venture that will no doubt surprise and intrigue many people.” –Elon
Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors
North American: Simon & Schuster
Editor: Priscilla Painton
Discovery 21/Japan, Hangilsa/Korea, Alfa Layinlari/Turkey
galleys available
Pub: April 2011
31
Miranda Kennedy, SIDEWAYS ON A SCOOTER: LIFE AND LOVE IN INDIA
When twenty-something reporter Miranda Kennedy packed up her bags for India, leaving her boyfriend and hectic
life in New York City, she didn’t know what awaited her. She just wanted to hail the nearest rickshaw, immerse
herself in a country that had long fascinated her family, and prove her mettle as a world traveler. But over her five
years covering India and the region for National Public Radio and navigating the foreign and sometimes befuddling
culture, she discovers first-hand that the place is much more complicated than it initially appears. In SIDEWAYS ON
A SCOOTER, Kennedy explores how the varnish of modernity in India is often only skin-deep, especially when it
comes to its cultural views on women. (Indeed, the mere act of trying to rent an apartment as a single woman
practically results in Kennedy being branded a harlot.)
During her time in India, Kennedy’s understanding of the country alters her own attitudes about everything from
politics and religion to marriage and family. As she begins to build a life for herself, she is pulled into the lives of
several Indian women, including her charismatic friend Geeta—a self-described “modern girl” who attempts to
squeeze herself into the traditional role of wife and mother (as well as the occasional jean-skirt); Radha, a proud
Brahmin widow who denies herself the most basic pleasures in order to live by high-caste Hindu principles; and
Parvati, a defiant, chain-smoking and whiskey-drinking journalist who nevertheless feels compelled to keep her
boyfriend a secret from her family.
Incisive and witty, SIDEWAYS ON A SCOOTER is both a memoir and a deft cultural examination that peels back
India’s globalized image as a land of call centers, yoginis, and Bollywood to reveal an ancient place where, in many
ways, women’s lives have scarcely changed for centuries.
“This high-spirited story joins an adventurous journalist’s view of modern India with a young woman’s passionate
desire to experience life and love in another culture. Miranda Kennedy’s sense of humor and intimate voice bring
the jangly world of New Delhi to life. If you liked Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, you have to read this book.”
—Susan Cheever, author of American Bloomsbury
“As the world focuses on the big picture of India’s emergence onto the world stage, Miranda Kennedy gives us a
privileged, close-up view of how lives are changing on the ground....Her understanding of the country, her stories
of the tensions between tradition and modernity, and her flowing, limpid prose, make this a must-read for anyone
wanting to understand modern India.”
—Rob Gifford, NPR Correspondent, and author of China Road
“Part personal account, part extended reportage on an ancient culture in the throes of modernization and part
nonfiction narrative of manners, the book offers an intimate look at the nature, problems and limits of both
Western and non-Western female freedoms in a country where “nothing is sharper than the tug of tradition and
family.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Thank all the multi-limbed, colorful deities for Sideways on a Scooter. In the grand old tradition of JR Ackerley’s
tenderly funny Hindoo Holiday and with the Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s sense of heat, dust and place, Kennedy’s book
is a deeply personal account of India seen through the lens of six remarkable women – seven if you include this
wonderfully-gifted author. Kennedy has compassion, self-awareness and – that most necessary trick of all in any
work of this nature– an ability to allow the reader intimacy without ever veering into the realm of voyeurism.” —
Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
North American: Random House
MS available
Pub: April 26, 2011
Foreign: HarperCollins/Australia, Shanghai Xiron/Simplified Chinese, PreviewBooks/Korea
32
Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan, HOW TO DISAPPEAR: Erase Your Digital Footprints, Leave False Trails, and
Vanish Without a Trace
Ahearn and Horan, two professional skip tracers with 40 years’ international experience finding tax evaders,
crooks, and fraudsters, have written a guide to making yourself invisible from anyone who wants to find you.
Whether you’re Julian Assange or just want to avoid people like him, this is everyman’s guide to falling off the grid
and keeping yourself safe from hackers, leakers, stalkers, and thieves.
So many of Frank and Eileen’s targets have made amateur mistakes. There was the guy who snuck off to the
Dominican Republic, then changed his Barnes and Noble delivery address…or the one who deleted himself from
every public record but thought he could get away with having fresh lobster delivered to his house. Frank talked to
a bunch of the guy’s friends, found out about his love of lobster, made a few phone calls to deliverymen, and—
bull’s eye.
Our authors wrote the book for people who don’t want to make these same mistakes: survivalists, millionaires,
whistleblowers, and anyone curious about what it would take to be completely un-findable in the digital age.
They’ve successfully traced people all over of the world, so they are willing to customize the book completely for
every foreign country that wants to buy rights. As in: How to Disappear in France, How to Disappear in Japan, etc.
Frank has appeared in international press from the BBC to the South China Morning Post to Portuguese Penthouse.
See some of his media clips here: http://frankahearn.com/printmedia.html.
“Whether readers have an ex stalking them, a cheating spouse, creditors on their tail or simply wish to start anew,
this book will serve as a useful tool in reinvention…Even readers with little danger in their lives will be fascinated
by Ahearn’s book, which reads like equal parts how-to and detective story.” –Kirkus Reviews
World English: Globe Pequot/Lyons Press
Copies available
Editor: Steve Culpepper
Pub: September 14, 2010
Foreign: Penguin/ANZ, Cine21/Korea, Sharp Point Press/Complex Chinese, NTV/Turkish, Beijing
Yongzhenkaiyuan/Simplified Chinese
33
Wray Herbert, ON SECOND THOUGHT: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits
Newsweek columnist and critically acclaimed science writer Herbert examines the stubborn nature of the human
brain: how we make snap decisions without conscious thought and what we can do to override our instinct. What
Herbert does so brilliantly is take the work scientists, economists, and psychologists who are explain “why we do
the things we do” and discuss them in a way that is engaging, understandable, and useful.
Why do we procrastinate? Why do we fall into addiction? What can we do to check ourselves? Look to this book
for practical answers.
Emotional Intelligence popularized some pretty heady science for the masses. Wray’s book promises to have the
same result.
“Wray Herbert displays his gifts as a science writer par excellence. ON SECOND THOUGHT goes a long way toward
leveling the mental playing field by outing the hidden power of our unconscious mental models.” –Daniel
Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
“There is one way to be rational, and many many ways of being irrational. With stories, anecdotes, and studies, in
On Second Thought Wray Herbert takes us through a guided tour of our many irrational tendencies, holding our
hand, and helping us to see the mistakes we all make every day.”—Dan Ariely, bestselling author of Predictably
Irrational
“Wray Herbert has written a wonderful book that should be read by the public and experts alike. It may be the
most complete statement currently available on the foibles manifest in everyday decision-making and surely one
of the most interesting books that I have had the pleasure of reading.”—Ellen Langer, professor of psychology at
Harvard University and bestselling author of Mindfulness and Counterclockwise
From “looming maladaptive style” to the “cooties heuristic,” Wray Herbert takes us on a journey through the styles
of thought we usually take for granted. In clear and lively prose, he describes psych experiments and real-life
quandaries that reveal how our cognitive habits get in our way—or, occasionally, save our skins. It all adds up to a
fascinating book that is altogether a treat.” —Robin Marantz Henig, author of Pandora’s Baby: How the First Test
Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution
North American: Crown
Copies Available
Editor: Julian Pavia
Pub: September 14, 2010
Foreign: Cheersbooks-China Renmin University Press/China; Azoth/Complex Chinese; Book21/Korea,
Intershift/Japan
34
Steve Luxenberg, ANNIE’S GHOSTS: A JOURNEY INTO A FAMILY SECRET
Think of this as the real-life Memory Keeper’s Daughter meets a riveting episode of the BBC hit series Who Do You
Think You Are.
As he tends to his dying mother’s affairs, Steve Luxenberg discovers that she had a sister she never told anyone
about. So Luxenberg, a prizewinning investigative reporter and editor for The Washington Post, turns his
investigative skills on his own family, trying to find out what happened. Why did his mother always insist that she
had been an only child? And what was the fate of the aunt he never knew he had?
The journey took him through a century of buried family history: the ships that brought two million Jews out of
Russia in the early 1900’s, carrying new hope and old attitudes; the Holocaust, which several of his European
relatives endured; the Great Depression in Detroit, where Luxenberg’s mother grew up in a town of low-paying
jobs, cramped apartments, and stifled ambition; the culture of shame that surrounded learning disabilities and
mental illness in midcentury middle America; and the public institution where Luxenberg’s grandparents confined
st
their younger daughter after her 21 birthday.
Annie’s Ghosts is equal parts memoir, social history, and detective story. It explores the nature of memory and
history, of loss and loneliness, of self-deception and self-preservation. Above all else, it evolves into a story of
personal freedom—the desire for it, the elusive character of it, the ephemeral meaning of it, the random way in
which it is denied to some and bestowed on others.
“Beautifully complex, raw, and revealing.” —Kirkus (Starred)
“Armed with superb investigative skills and relentless determination…Annie’s Ghosts is a fascinating account of a
life lived in the shadows and a family beset by despair.” —Allison Block, Booklist (Starred)
“Steve Luxenberg’s hunt for the story of his hidden aunt is both a gripping detective story and a haunting memoir.
It will leave you breathless.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe
When you think you have the right family but the information doesn’t match what you have been told, how do you
dig through the layers to find the truth?...A great non-fiction read for genealogists.” –Jan Alpert, President of the
National Genealogical Society
North American: Hyperion
Editor: Leslie Wells
Foreign: Casini/Italy
Copies available
Pub: May 2009
35
Kevin Nelson, THE SPIRITUAL DOORWAY IN THE BRAIN: A NEUROLOGIST’S SEARCH FOR THE GOD EXPERIENCE
What are near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences? Do they reflect moments of spiritual ecstasy and
revelation? Are there physiological explanations for those tunnels of light? In The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain,
Dr. Kevin Nelson offers an unprecedented examination of the biology behind profound, revelatory spiritual
experiences, based on his groundbreaking research.
The world’s leading neurologist on near-death experiences, Dr. Kevin Nelson has written the first comprehensive,
empirically tested, and per-reviewed explanation of the biology behind these mystical human experiences. THE
SPIRITUAL DOORWAY IN THE BRAIN takes us on a journey into what Nelson calls the “borderlands of
consciousness”—the space between consciousness, unconsciousness, and dreaming—when our states of
perception are not whole but fragmented and blended with one another. Three decades of research, including
case studies, brain scan analyses, and a rigorous understanding of evolutionary biology, have led Nelson to
conclude that the spiritual is as much a part of our basic biological makeup as our sex drive or survival instinct.
These experiences originate deep within our brains, so deep that it seems they must be shared by other animals
with brain structures akin to our own.
Filled with amazing firsthand accounts as varied as a patient seeing the devil battling with his guardian angel at the
foot of his bed to a man watching the universe synchronize around the bouncing ball in a pinball machine, THE
SPIRITUAL DOORWAY IN THE BRAIN is an eloquent account of scientific research that has often been marginalized
and ridiculed. Nelson delves deep into the mystery of our spiritual lives, reveals the biological machinery that
enables us to perceive miracles, and finds spiritual experiences to be an inescapable and precious part of who we
are.
“Despite the breathtaking progress they have made in the last decade, neuroscientists have generally shied away
from the enigmatic—yet most treasured—aspects of our minds. This book is a bold, provocative, and highly
readable account of the author’s journey into the world of religious experience and its possible psychological
basis.”
—V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., author of Phantoms of the Brain and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness
“Why are near-death experiences so remarkably similar? Why the universal reports of bright lights, dark tunnels,
and feelings of rapture? Kevin Nelson, the neurological authority on near-death experiences, walks us through
brain functioning during such times. See how our brain biology during the near-death experience has transformed
even hardened agnostics into fervent believers in this wonderful book.”
—Gayatri Devi, M.D., clinical associate professor of neurology, New York School of Medicine
“Kevin Nelson’s Brain knows, dreams, believes, and –not quite yet—dies. Thank God for that ‘not quite yet’ bit!”
—Alan Hobson, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
North American: Dutton
Editor: Stephen Morrow
Copies available
Pub date: January 2011
Foreign: Simon & Schuster/UK; Henamu/Bookhouse/Korea; Ten Have/Netherlands, Intershift/Japan
36
Sacha Scoblic, UNWASTED: MY LUSH SOBRIETY
By age 32, Sacha Scoblic had put together an enviable resume as a journalist. She wrote and edited pieces on
politics and pop culture for The New Republic, then served as an assistant managing editor there before taking a
job as deputy Washington bureau chief for Reader’s Digest. In her off hours she partied with friends. And she
partied a lot.
Unwasted isn’t about the dark days of her struggle with alcoholism. As she says, she’s “not just another drunk with
a tale of depravity and redemption.” This book tells the story of what happened once Sacha put down the bottle
and taught herself how to live clean in a world of happy hours, wine-soaked pasta sauces, and boozy corporate
retreats. It’s about how she lost her social lubricant but regained her free time and the energy to pursue her
childhood dreams and a fulfilling marriage.
Full of sharp humor and a tenderness that can startle you, the book will lead an entire generation of young adults
through the minefield of alcohol culture – all the while pushing back against a society that celebrates modern
drunkenness.
Sacha has developed a loyal following from pieces she’s written about her sobriety for the NY Times “Proof”
column . Her sense of humor will appeal to fans of Sloane Crosley, her vulnerability and candor is reminiscent of
Julie Powell, and the topicality of her subject may remind you of Curtis Sittenfeld.
North American: Kensington
Editor: Amy Pyle
Copies available
Pub: July 2011
Ch’an Master Shen-yen, FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
*More than 35,000 copies sold in Taiwan
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW is the autobiography of Sheng-yen, perhaps the foremost living master of Ch’an
Buddhism (Chinese Zen), an extraordinary monk and teacher. With humility and candor, Sheng-yen writes of his
journey as a spiritual seeker, his search for a teacher, and his development as a religious personality. He writes
about his arduous training at the hands of one particular teacher after he left the army, which led him to spend six
years in a mountain hut in solitary retreat. Footprints traces the turbulent history of China in the mid-twentieth
century. It is the story of an amazing life journey of one man. But it is also a window into the mind of an
enlightened master and a map of spiritual growth. Unlike most Buddhist books, which offer disembodied teaching
and technical analysis, FOOTPRINTS anchors profound spiritual truths in a sweeping narrative of one man’s life.
Although Sheng-yen has published 120 books, this is the first book that tells the story of his life in his own words. It
is destined to become a spiritual classic and will appeal not only to his disciples but a general readership interested
in Buddhism, spirituality, and China.
“Chan Master Sheng Yen is a great teacher and I have great confidence in his scholarship and wisdom. I feel
privileged to be his friend, and admire what he has been doing for the Buddhadharma in the East as well as in the
West.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
“When I listen to Master Sheng Yen’s presentation of Chan Buddhist teachings, my immediate and very profound
feeling is that I am listening to words of wisdom from someone who is very experienced and a great practitioner.”
—His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
North American: Doubleday
Pub: October 2008
Foreign: Sun Color/Taiwan; Theseus/Germany; Beijing Book Company/China: Tamgusa/Korea
37
Eve Agee, THE UTERINE HEALTH COMPANION
*Winner, International Book Award (Women’s Health category)
Eve Agee, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and a trained holistic healer. For the past ten years, she has focused on
a major health problem that few in the medical field know what to do about: debilitating uterine health disorders.
During her training as a medical anthropologist, Eve wondered why so many Western women suffered
disproportionately compared to women in other parts of the world. She spent three years shadowing 20 doctors
in one of the top health care systems in America. She observed 400 consultations between doctors and patients.
Along the way, she conducted more than 150 interviews with women about their uterine health, and she traveled
around the world observing the rituals, practices, and attitudes towards the uterus and menstruation.
What she found was a stark contrast in the ways Western culture – especially Western medicine – views the uterus
compared to places such as Japan, Ghana, and even Native America.
The Uterine Health Companion breaks Western taboos, stigmas, and myths related to the uterus – from
menstruation to miscarriage (something the author has experienced herself) to menopause. But Agee’s book goes
beyond this to provide a practical and proven holistic health plan for optimal uterine health, one which she
implements with clients in her thriving private practice, to great success.
“The Uterine Health Companion is good medicine. Because it’s written from the perspective of a medical
anthropologist with cross-cultural experience, it highlights how very skewed the Western medical view of the
uterus really is. I highly recommend this book.” –Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s
Wisdom
North American: Celestial Arts/Ten Speed
Editor: Sara Golski
Foreign: Cine21/Korea
Pub: March 2010
Copies Available
Ptolemy Tompkins, THE DIVINE LIFE OF ANIMALS: EXPLORING THE NATURE OF THE ANIMAL SOUL
Author of Paradise Fever and veteran Guideposts columnist Ptolemy Tompkins’s THE DIVINE LIFE OF ANIMALS is
an inquiry into the spiritual lives of animals, and the bonds between animals and humans, that interweaves the
true stories of animal lovers with a look at what the Bible and other religious or sacred texts have to say on the
subject.
Do animals have a relationship with the divine? Do pets live on after death? Tompkins addresses these questions
and more.
“For anyone who has ever wondered about the mysteries of the animal soul, this compulsively readable book is
the one you’ve been waiting for. I kept wondering, How come no one’s ever explained it all so clearly before?”
—Michael Mountain, co-founder, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary
“Delightfully insightful and well-researched…Tompkins’s book is incredibly entertaining while it also raises deep
ethical questions about our human understanding of the animal soul.” –Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)
North American: Crown
Editor: Rachel Klayman
AdA/French
Copies available
pub: June 8, 2010
38
Timothy Beal, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BIBLE
In this revelatory exploration, a noted religion scholar and former evangelical Christian takes us back to early
Christianity to ask how a box of handwritten scrolls became the Bible, and forward to see how the multibilliondollar business that has brought us Biblezines and manga Bibles is selling down the Bible’s sacred capital. Showing
us how a single text was created from the proliferation of different scripts, Beal traces its path as it became
embraced as The Book of books and the Word of God. Among his surprising insights:



Christianity thrived for centuries without any Bible. Early congregations used collections of scrolls; there
was no official canon of scriptures and no book existed that was big enough to hold them.
There is no “original” Bible behind the thousands of different Bibles on the market today. The further we
go back in the Bible’s history, the more versions we find.
The idea of the Bible as the literal Word of God is only about a century old.
In calling for a fresh understanding of the ways scriptures were used in the past, Beal offers a chance to rediscover
a Bible, and a faith, that is truer to its own history—not a book of answers but a library of questions.
“This amazing book will make you see the scriptures in a new light…. Thou shalt read Beal.” –A.J. Jacobs
“… presents a convincing case for a radical rereading of the text, an honest appreciation of this sacred book. An
engrossing and excellent work, highly recommended.” –Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Writing in a remarkably accessible style ... [Beal] exhorts readers to see the Bible not as a book of finite answers
but as a crucible of questions that provoke, inspire, and even anger those who pick it up. The same might be said
about his own book.”–Booklist (Starred Review)
“Under Beal’s instruction, we will lose some of our naiveté, but we’ll gain maturity of insight that will more than
compensate. A needed book from a talented writer.” –Brian D. McLaren
“Part autobiography, part social scientific research, part shrewd discernment, part theological interpretation —
Tim Beal has written a zinger of a book about the cultural history of the Bible.”–Walter Brueggemann
“Beal’s exciting book offers both fascinating history and a new and insightful way to approach the ‘sacred text.’”–
John Shelby Spong
“… offers the vision of a productive future in which the biblical process of argumentation will thrive in the digital
environment.” –Bruce Chilton
“… well-written and engaging ... a laudable look at the Good Book.”–Kirkus Reviews
North American: Harcourt
Editor: Andrea Schulz
Copies available
Pub: February 16, 2011
39
David Casarett, LAST ACTS
What would you do if you had only a few days to live? Or a few weeks or months? What if a loved one were in this
situation — how could you help that person decide how to spend the time that remained? Perhaps you lost a
family member or dear friend to a terminal illness and were baffled by that person’s choices. How do you make
sense of his or her last acts?
Dr. David Casarett, a palliative care physician and researcher, specializes in the care of patients near the end of life.
Drawing on his years of experience and the stories of patients he has treated, as well as his own research, he
explores the wide variety of ways in which people spend their last days. Why do some people choose to be
altruistic, while others are vengeful? Why do some leave a legacy, while others prefer to celebrate and enjoy their
time with family and friends? Why do some fight and struggle to the last minute, while others accept their fate and
use their limited time to reconnect or reconcile?
The tremendous diversity of these last acts makes clear that there is no formula for dying well or choices that are
right for everyone. At the same time, these stories reveal that some choices may be harmful to the dying person or
those closest to him. Last Acts helps dying patients and their families think about the possibilities that exist at the
end of life, so they may choose to spend their time in ways that help bring them peace of mind.
North American: Simon and Schuster
Editor: Bob Bender
Copies available
Pub: February 2010
Alexander Shaia, THE HIDDEN POWER OF THE GOSPELS
Why are there four gospels? And what can they teach us about coping with today’s problems? Alexander Shaia’s
answers might surprise you. In The Hidden Power of the Gospels, he reveals a four-fold pattern embedded in the
ancient cycle of the gospels: a four-step guide to overcoming adversity echoed in other major religions and
supported by the best modern knowledge of psychotherapy and the way our brains work. Each book in the old
gospel order—Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke—represents a different step in the process. Read them with Shaia’s
guidance and be transformed.
Shaia, a licensed psychotherapist himself and the founder of Santa Fe’s Blue Door Retreat, has earned a national
following by speaking at dozens of religious, ecumenical, and psychological conferences annually. More than 6,000
people bought his self-published guide to the four-fold process, which he calls the Quadratos. He’s earned the
respect of colleagues and church leaders alike: Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Church Cathedral in San Francisco, called
his work “breathtakingly liberating.” Visit Shaia’s popular site on the web at www.quadratos.com.
North American: Harper One
Editor: Mickey Maudlin
Copies available
Pub: February 2010
40
Alfie Kohn, UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING
*Winner, 2006 National Parenting Publications Award
Most parenting guides begin with the question “How can we get kids to do what they’re told?” — and then
proceed to offer various techniques for controlling them. In this truly groundbreaking book, nationally respected
educator Alfie Kohn begins instead by asking, “What do kids need - and how can we meet those needs?” What
follows from that question are ideas for working with children rather than doing things to them. One basic need all
children have, Kohn argues, is to be loved unconditionally, to know that they will be accepted even if they screw
up or fall short. Yet conventional approaches to parenting such as punishments (including “time-outs”), rewards
(including positive reinforcement), and other forms of control teach children that they are loved only when they
please us or impress us. Kohn cites a body of powerful, and largely unknown, research detailing the damage
caused by leading children to believe they must earn our approval. That’s precisely the message children derive
from common discipline techniques, even though it’s not the message most parents intend to send.
More than just another book about discipline, though, Unconditional Parenting addresses the ways parents think
about, feel about, and act with their children. It invites them to question their most basic assumptions about
raising kids while offering a wealth of practical strategies for shifting from “doing to” to “working with” parenting including how to replace praise with the unconditional support that children need to grow into healthy, caring,
responsible people. This is an eye-opening, paradigm-shattering book that will reconnect readers to their own best
instincts and inspire them to become better parents.
North American: Atria
Pub: 2006
Foreign: Patria/Mexico; Kalima/United Arab Emirates; Arbor/Germany; Uriga/Korea; Il Leone Verde
Edizioni/Italy; Crianza Natural/Spain; Tianjin Huawentianxia Books/Simplified Chinese; BusinessWeekly/Complex
Chinese; Mizan Learning Center/Indonesia
Harry Fisch and Kara Baskin, SIZE MATTERS: HARD FACTS ABOUT MALE SEXUALITY THAT EVERY WOMAN
SHOULD KNOW
A man’s anatomy is a lot easier to understand than his mind, and knowing what’s going on down there is just as
important to a happy relationship as figuring out the deeper meaning of his every word. You can analyze your
relationship with your girlfriends, but who can you turn to with the more . . . sensitive questions? In Size Matters,
Dr. Harry Fisch, an expert on the male reproductive system, and writer Kara Baskin team up to introduce you,
metaphorically speaking, to the penis.
Clearing up mysteries about male anatomy, orgasm, masturbation, STDs, testosterone, impotence, sexual
response, and much more, Size Matters is the first women’s user manual for male sexuality—a guidebook that will
answer all your questions and lead you to a better sex life. For example: Can masturbation have any effect on sex?
Can he do it too much . . . or too little? He always orgasms before me . . . is there any way to slow him down? Do
grown men still have wet dreams? Can his weight affect our sex life?
Size Matters is a fun, prescriptive, easy-to-understand troubleshooting guide for women who have questions about
male sexuality or who want to have better sex. You might not always understand what’s going on in his mind, but
now you can know what’s going on in his pants.
North American: Three Rivers Press
City Editions/France; Lac Hong Book Co./Vietnam
Pub: July 15, 2008
41
Alice Steinbach, EDUCATING ALICE
Cooking at the Paris Ritz. Writing in Prague. Training border collies in Scotland. Sketching in Havana. Dancing with
geishas in Kyoto. Pulitzer-prize winner Alice Steinbach left her flourishing newspaper career to travel the world and
take classes, and she recounts the lessons she learned in this warm, witty, and engaging memoir. It is pure
escapism for anyone who has ever looked out the window longingly. Steinbach’s work at the Baltimore Sun
earned her the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. She is now a freelance writer.
“[Steinbach’s] stories are powerfully seductive to anyone who’s ever been tempted to get up and go, following
interests wherever they may lead. Even during the occasional setbacks, from language barriers to confusing
geographies, Steinbach makes such a life look highly desirable.” —Publisher’s Weekly
North American: Random House
Pub: 2005
Foreign: Transworld/UK; Random House/Australia; Marco Polo/Taiwan; Woongjin Think Big Co./Korea;
Saraiva/Brazil
Alice Steinbach, WITHOUT RESERVATIONS
In a travel-book-cum-memoir set against a glamorous background of European cities, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer
Steinbach describes the months she spent traveling after she took a sabbatical from her job as columnist for the
Baltimore Sun. For Steinbach, traveling is an exercise in reconnecting with a more independent and uninhibited
side of her personality. Her not-quite-spontaneous adventure begins in Paris, where she finds a kindred spirit in a
worldly Japanese businessman. From there she heads off to Oxford, where she takes a course in English village life,
and on to Milan, where she meets the most charming of her fellow travelers, a young American girl soon to be
married. The obstacles Steinbach faces on her journeys seem minor—overcoming a fear of ballroom dancing in
Oxford and putting aside the habit of always doing “at least two things at once.” Only in Milan, when she was
nearly mugged, does Steinbach experience anything harrowing. Though the descriptions of each locale are thin,
they are not really the purpose of this memoir; rather, the author’s intent is to connect emotionally with each city
and to learn “to take chances. To have adventures [and] to see if I could still hack it on my own, away from the
security of work, friends and an established identity.” Supplying more finely observed details might have made this
a richer book, but the writing is generally optimistic, warm and genuine in a Chicken-Soup-for-Travelers kind of
way.
North American: Random House
Pub: 2002
Foreign: Random House/Australia; Transworld/UK; Forum/Sweden; Editions de la Table Ronde/France; Marco
Polo/China; Book21/Korea
42
About the Ross Yoon Agency
“They journeyed outside the mapped terrain of agentry into inspiration,
editing, guidance, nudging and hand-holding. There is no one in my
professional life to whom I have been attached for so many years…and
this has been my good fortune.”
–Tina Rosenberg, winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize
Founded in 1987, the Ross Yoon Agency operates on a simple philosophy: books change lives.
We are a tight-knit team specializing in adult nonfiction on a variety of topics: memoir,
psychology, business, religion, science, current events, history, and more.
Our clients include CEO’s, top doctors, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, historians, academics,
politicos, and radio and television personalities.
Gail Ross, founder and president of the agency, likes to say that each new project she takes on
must meet two criteria: It must make her two daughters proud and help pay for their college
educations. A media lawyer with a JD from Georgetown University, Gail is also a partner in the
firm of Trister, Ross, Schadler, and Gold. Her editorial interests run the gamut of nonfiction
from religion and current events to culture and society, history, and biography.
Howard Yoon, vice president of the agency, joined Gail’s team in 1992, the year he graduated
from college. In addition to his work as a literary agent, he has served as an editorial director,
ghostwriter, foreign rights manager, book editor, writing professor, and columnist for National
Public Radio’s “Kitchen Window” series. He specializes in narrative nonfiction, memoir, current
events, history, science, cookbooks, and popular culture and looks for original voices and
experiences.
Like Howard, Anna Sproul has worked at Ross Yoon for her entire career. In addition to
managing the agency’s foreign rights, she produces and edits clients’ book proposals and has
recently started her own domestic client list. Outside of her day-to-day work at Ross Yoon, she
is a freelance book editor, ghostwriter, author, and promoter. Her particular interests include
popular culture, science, biography, history, sociology, humor, Americana, and any book that
makes her look at the world upside-down.
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