2014 LONDON BOOK FAIR 78 5 Avenue, 3
2014 LONDON BOOK FAIR 78 5th Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011 | t: (212) 277-8007 | www.cheneyliterary.com Contact: Alexander Jacobs alex@cheneyliterary.com NON-FICTION elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Penguin Press (2016) Editor: Ann Godoff Proposal available Lauren Collins FRENCH LESSONS One provincial author’s quest to learn to live (and love) in French, and to discover whether the languages we speak make us who we are. FRENCH LESSONS (working title) After a lifetime spent firmly in English – raised in suburban North Carolina, having never travelled to Europe until her late teens – Lauren Collins suddenly finds herself in Geneva, married to a French man whose name she pronounces incorrectly. A staff writer for the New Yorker, capable of spinning out eloquent profiles of Michelle Obama and Donatella Versace, she is unable to find the right words to purchase a lamp. Her new life in Switzerland, as she puts it, is like being stranded in a silent movie; her lack of French a kind of membrane separating her from her husband and the family she’d married into. “Talking to you in English,” he tells her in the heat of a fight, “is like loving you with gloves.” Thus Lauren decides she will master French. What follows is a story of two romances: falling in love anew with her husband across the linguistic divide, and falling in love with the world she comes to inhabit in a foreign tongue. Learning to speak French, she finds, is also learning to live in French – exploring a new identity and a new worldview through the lens of a new language. Part memoir, part reportage, French Lessons will be a sparkling addition to the highly successful literature on all things French – a witty, intelligent exploration in the vein of Geoff Dyer, Gary Shtyengart, and Nora Ephron. UK: 4th Estate (in a pre-empt) France: Flammarion Lauren Collins began working at the New Yorker in 2003, and has been a staff writer there since 2008. Since 2010, she has been based in Europe, covering stories in London, Paris, Copenhagen, and beyond. Her feature on the Daily Mail was short-listed for the Feature Story of the Year award by the Foreign Press Association in London. She was recently nominated for a James Beard award for her story, “Fire-Eaters,” about the search for the world’s hottest chili pepper. She currently lives in Geneva, where the book takes place. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Scribner (2017) Editor: Daniel Burgess Proposal available Nora Krug HEIMAT A highly inventive visual memoir – part graphic novel, part personal scrapbook – reflecting on the author’s confrontation with her German heritage and her family’s wartime experience. Heimat re-tells key moments from Nora’s childhood in Germany and subsequent years abroad, interrupted by stories – told in distinct visual styles – which draw on letters, archival material and cultural ephemera to reimagine the wartime experience of her relatives. This hybrid style helps depict in unusually vivid terms her efforts to come to terms with the fateful, sometimes unconscionable choices they made. The result is a personal meditation that speaks to a deeply human concern: to what extent to do we owe our identity to our families, and how much are we defined by the accident of birth? Nora Krug is an associate professor in the Illustration Program at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. Her drawings and visual narratives have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and A Public Space. She was recently named a 2014 Maurice Sendak Fellow and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright, DAAD, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and of several awards from the Society of Illustrators and the Arts Directors Club. UK: Penguin Press / Particular Books Brazil: Companhia das Letras Germany: Knaus Holland: Balans / Oog & Blik Italy: Stile Libero elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Sam Walker THE CAPTAIN CLASS: The Hidden Force Behind the World’s Greatest Teams Random House (2016) Editor: Andy Ward Proposal available A wide-ranging investigation into the 14 greatest sports teams in history, and the fierce, often difficult leaders who drove them to unprecedented success. Over two decades as a sportswriter, Sam Walker has covered successful teams of all stripes: from the groups of superstars whose dominance seems preordained to the scrappy outfits that triumph against all expectations. Journalists and fans rushed to call them great. But the question nagged him: what separated the truly great teams – the persistent winners – from the lucky, the streakers, the one-time champions? So began a decade-long investigation: a study of over 900 winning international franchises, from the US to New Zealand, to distil the handful of teams that deserved to be called the greatest, and to identify the common element that set them apart. What Sam discovered defied the magic ingredients usually proffered by sportswriters and fans – fiery coaches, inspiring speakers, superstars, even those with a “C” emblazoned on their uniforms. In other words, it’s not Ronaldo or Michael Jordan – but rather the selfless, the striving, the unglamorous players that rarely find themselves in the spotlight. The Captain Class will offer a groundbreaking new explanation for what drives enduring success through an analysis of history’s most exceptional franchises. It argues for a radically new vision of leadership, on the field and off. Drawing on years of up-close reportage, interviews with players, coaches and analysts, and bourgeoning scientific research on team dynamics, Walker’s book will be among the first to define the often counterintuitive qualities that help make and sustain great teamwork. UK: Ebury (in a pre-empt) ANZ: Penguin Australia Japan: Hayakawa Spain: Debate Sam Walker is the global sports editor at the Wall Street Journal, whose sports desk he founded in 2009. His first book, Fantasyland, chronicled his attempt to win the world’s toughest fantasy baseball competition. Called “brilliantly funny” by the Washington Post, it appeared on the New York Times extended bestseller list and became the subject of a 2010 documentary of the same name. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Knopf (2017) Editor: Robin Desser Proposal available Burkhard Bilger FATHERLAND A gripping, poignant investigation into the life of the author’s German grandfather during World War II. FATHERLAND Part war story, part family memoir, Fatherland explores the impact of World War II on a village in occupied Alsace through the story of the author’s grandfather, a one-time Nazi administrator. It is a tale of life-and-death decisions, moral complexities, and surprising alliances, which recounts Bilger’s grandfather’s unlikely relationship with the local leader of the French resistance. Defying expectations, the two men work to protect a village under siege, and when the grandfather is later imprisoned by the Allies for war crimes, the resistance leader, the villagers, and a Jewish lawyer join forces to exonerate him. It is a remarkable true story that only the celebrated New Yorker writer Burkhard Bilger could tell. Burkhard Bilger has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2001. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, and numerous other publications, and has been anthologized three times in Best American Science and Nature Writing, twice in Best American Sports Writing, and once each in Best Food Writing, Best Technology Writing, and Best American Science Writing. Bilger was a senior editor at Discover from 1999 to 2005. His first book, Noodling for Flatheads: Moonshine, Monster Catfish, and Other Southern Comforts (Scribner, 2000), was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. Bilger is a Branford Fellow at Yale University and teaches a course on feature writing there. Author speaks French and German. UK: William Collins Brazil: Intrinseca France: Belfond Germany: DVA Holland: Ambo Italy: Bompiani elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Masha Gessen WORDS WILL BREAK CEMENT: The Passion of Pussy Riot Riverhead (January 8, 2014) Editor: Rebecca Saletan Finished copies available The first major book on Pussy Riot, which resurrected the power of truth in a society built on lies. Drawing on her exclusive, extensive access to the members of the feminist punk protest group, Pussy Riot, and their families and associates, Masha Gessen reconstructs the fascinating personal journeys that transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision, gave them the courage and imagination to express it unforgettably, and endowed them with the strength to endure the devastating loneliness and isolation that have been the price of their triumph. Masha Gessen is the author of six books, including the bestselling The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and Perfect Rigor. She has contributed to The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Granta, and Slate, and she has received numerous awards, including the 2013 Media for Liberty Award. Author speaks Russian. “Urgent… She is not the first to tell Pussy Riot’s story…but she tells it more thoroughly, her anger at Russia’s ‘overwhelming mediocrity’ scorching every page.” –Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times “Remarkable…disquieting, moving, and closely reported.” –David Remnick, The New Yorker UK: Granta France: Globe Holland: Ambo Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Poland: Proszynski Sweden: Brombergs “Words Will Break Cement is the fullest account so far of the Pussy Riot story A moving object lesson in the power of art — perhaps especially messy and exuberant art — to rise above repression and have the last, cement-breaking word.” –Sara Marcus, Los Angeles Times “Gessen’s book is a fine, full, deeply sympathetic portrait of a particular kind of courage, a punk dissidence that is at once frail and mighty.” –Financial Times “What makes someone into a dissident? Why do some people give up everything — home, family, job — to embark on a career of protest? … Gessen set out to answer this question … in this excellent short account.” –Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Masha Gessen Riverhead (2012) Editor: Rebecca Saletan Paperback edition available THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin New York Times Bestseller A Best Book of 2012: The Daily Beast, Slate, & SF Chronicle “Masha Gessen [is] one of the most important activists and journalists Russia has known in a generation.” –David Remnick, The New Yorker A chilling and unflinching portrait of one of the most fearsome figures in world politics. The Man Without a Face is the first full account of how a small-minded, lowlevel KGB operative rose to become the most powerful man in the world’s largest country, in a few short years destroying years of progress and making Russia once more a threat to her own people and to the world. Masha Gessen is the author of six books. She has contributed to The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, Granta, and Slate. Author speaks Russian. “[An] absorbing portrait.” –The New Yorker “Gessen shines a piercing light into every dark corner of Putin's story… Fascinating, hard-hitting reading.” –Foreign Affairs Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize UK: Granta Brazil: Nova Fronteira Croatia: Profil Denmark: Rosinante Estonia: Tanapaev “Although Gessen is enough of an outsider to write beautifully clear and eloquent English, she is enough of an insider to convey, accurately, the wild swings of emotions, the atmosphere of mad speculation, the paranoia, and, yes, the hysteria that pervade all political discussion and debate in Moscow today.” –The New York Review of Books Finland: Otava France: Fayard Germany: Piper Greece: Patakis Holland: Ambo Israel: Books in the Attic Italy: Bompiani Japan: Kashiwa Shobo Lithuania: Barzda Norway: Gyldendal Norsk elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Poland: Proszynski Romania: Pandora Spain: Debate Sweden: Brombergs Taiwan: China Times K. Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool EXCEL: How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Performers Eamon Dolan Books / HMH (2016) Editor: Eamon Dolan Proposal available A career-spanning book by the world’s foremost expert on expertise. EXCEL Over thirty years ago, Ericsson first overturned the idea of innate talent, demonstrating in several canonical experiments the remarkable elasticity of brain and body when exposed to specific forms of training. In the decades since, his research on top-flight performers across a range of fields has demonstrated that excellence is built through practice, not birthright, and that expertise is more than simply the product of 10,000 hours. How that time is spent is what separates diligent amateurs from true masters. Ericsson’s work has isolated a series of core principles he calls “deliberate practice” proven to dramatically improve performance in music, sports, chess, medicine, and a variety of other domains. Deliberate practice differs from ordinary learning in that it resists automation – where we normally stop training when performance becomes routine, the experts Ericsson has studied continue to exert full effort to move beyond their comfort zones. Such training must be carefully designed, with ample opportunity for feedback and clear benchmarks to assess progress. At each step, practitioners of deliberate practice – whether soccer players, taxi drivers, or pianists – gradually refine a mental representation to help guide their every move. UK: Bodley Head Brazil: Gutenberg Editora Canada: Penguin CA China: Beijing Huazhang Germany: Droemer Knaur Holland: Unieboek Spectrum Italy: Sperling & Kupfer Japan: Bungeishunju Korea: The Business Books Co. Sweden: Forma Books In Excel, Ericsson will for the first time describe the process by which an average performer grows into an expert. Like Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling Thinking, Fast and Slow, this book will be a career-spanning work by the foremost authority in his field. It will also be an empowering read – a go-to book for readers interested in applying the principles of deliberate practice to improve at work, at home, and in life. Anders Ericsson is the Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. His research on expertise has been widely cited in major newspapers and magazines, and he speaks regularly to major international organizations, medical schools, teachers and educational researchers, professional sports teams, and military groups Author speaks Swedish. Robert Pool has contributed to many of the world’s leading publications on science and technology, including Science, Nature, and Discover, and is the author of several trade books. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Leah Vincent CUT ME LOOSE: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood Nan A. Talese (January 21, 2014) Editor: Ronit Feldman Finished copies available In the vein of Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted, an electrifying memoir about a young woman’s promiscuous and self-destructive spiral after being cast out of her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family. Leah Vincent was born into the Yeshivish community, a fundamentalist sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism that advocates a stiff re-enactment of European shtetl life. As the daughter of an influential rabbi, Leah and her ten siblings were raised to worship two things: God and the men who ruled their world. But the tradition-bound future that she envisioned for herself was cut short when she was sixteen and caught exchanging letters with a male friend, a violation of religious law that forbids contact between members of the opposite sex. Leah’s parents were unforgiving. Cast out in Brooklyn, Leah was left alone to face poverty, predatory men, and the frightening new freedoms of secular life. Fast-paced, unflinching, and ultimately redemptive, Cut Me Loose tells the story of one woman’s harrowing struggle to define herself and the boundaries between body and belief. Leah Vincent is a writer and activist. The first person in her family to go to college, she went on to earn a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. In addition to writing for various publications, including the Huffington Post and the Forward, she is an advocate for reform within ultraOrthodoxy and for the empowerment of former ultra-Orthodox Jews seeking a self-determined life. Author speaks Hebrew. Estonia: Oceanic Invest France: Plon “[W]renching. . . . Her book should be read, not just as a warning of the very real dangers of the world, but also of the price to be paid when, in the name of religion, people forget humanity.” –Wall Street Journal “As thoughtful and heroic as it is gripping and tragic… the finest example of this sort of memoir yet.” –Flavorwire “This is a coming-of-age memoir for every book club on the planet and every woman alive… Never—not since the memoirs of Mary Karr—has the connection between self-destruction and family dysfunction been so tangible and clear.” –Koren Zailckas, author of Smashed and Mother, Mother elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Jody Rosen TWO WHEELS GOOD: A Bicycle History of the World Crown (2016) Editor: Rachel Klayman Proposal available A book about bicycles – their history and their future – and how this extraordinary product of human ingenuity fundamentally changed the modern world. On May 21, 1897, thousands of Cambridge men gathered to protest a new proposal allowing women to earn full degrees. At the epicenter of the mob, strung up and hanging from a second-story window, was the effigy of a woman. And affixed to her, in riding position, was a bicycle. For many, the bicycle is remembered as youthful freedom. For others it’s a convenient and eco-friendly alternative to cars. Yet few realize that this remarkably simple mode of transportation has a deceptively storied past of equal parts controversy and inspiration. The bicycle inspired the first paved roads, and then laid the foundation for manned flight. In Peru today, a bicycle is a mobile fruit stand; in Africa, an ambulance; in Vietnam, a plow. Drawing on historical research from archives in Paris, London and New York, as well as extensive on-the-ground reporting, Two Wheels Good will recount the stormy history of the bike from the “velocipede-mania” of the 1860s to the bike lane battles of 2013. But it is, too, a “bicycle history of the world,” in the vein of How Soccer Explains the World, that shows how this 19th century relic has, in its remarkably consistency, shaped the look and feel of our modern world. UK: Bodley Head Brazil: Rocco Germany: Nagel & Kimche Holland: Thomas Rap A favourite slogan of bicycle advocates goes: Two wheels good, four wheels bad. The sentiment smacks of the bike movement’s sanctimony, but it captures the feeling that has prevailed through nearly two centuries: that there is something inherently good about bikes. “Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish,” wrote Iris Murdoch. “Only the bicycle remains pure at heart.” Jody Rosen is the music critic for New York magazine. His writing on culture and music has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and many other publications. He was previously music critic for Slate and the Nation, and a senior critic at Rolling Stone. His work has appeared four times in the annual Best Music Writing anthology. He is the author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song (Scribner). Author speaks French. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Reed Albergotti & Vanessa O’Connell WHEELMEN: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever Gotham (October 15. 2013) Editor: Megan Newman Finished copies available A New York Times Bestseller “The most comprehensive book on the subject … a colorful and thorough retelling.” –USA Today The first in-depth look at the making – and unmaking – of an international icon, the phenomenal business success built on the back of fraud, and the greatest conspiracy in the history of sports. The Wall Street Journal reporters Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O’Connell broke the news of Lance Armstrong doping scandal at every turn. Now, in Wheelmen, they reveal the broader story of how Armstrong and his supporters used money, power, and cutting-edge science to conquer the world’s most difficult race. Albergotti and O’Connell offer a riveting look at what happens when enigmatic genius breaks loose from the strictures of morality. They reveal the competitiveness and ingenuity that sparked blood-doping as an accepted practice, and show how the Americans methodically constructed an international operation of spies and revolutionary technology to reach the top. At last exposing the truth about Armstrong and American cycling, Wheelmen paints a living portrait of what is, without question, the greatest conspiracy in the history of sports. UK: Headline France: Hugo & Cie Holland: Atlas-Contact Hungary: Candover Kft. Italy: Mondadori Portugal: Dom Quixote Russia: Mann-Ivanov-Ferber The book draws on nearly three years of exhaustive research & interviews with all the key players – including Armstrong himself. Reed Albergotti is a white-collar crime reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He is also the son of a fanatic amateur cyclist who served as the director of cycling competition in the 1984 Olympics. An accomplished bike racer himself, Reed speaks the sport’s odd language. Vanessa O’Connell, an award-winning reporter at The Wall Street Journal for seventeen years, has covered tobacco, alcohol, guns, insider trading, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. “A chilling tale, and many of the anecdotes Albergotti and O’Connell collected sound like they were actually crafted in a TV-drama writers’ room.” –The Atlantic “Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O’Connell uncovered plenty more shocking details about the full extent of Armstrong’s drug use as well as the many people and institutions that helped him.” –The Daily Beast elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Cat Bohannon EVE: Evolution and the New Science of Womanhood Knopf (Summer, 2015) Editor: Andrew Miller Proposal available A milestone narrative account of the biological and cultural evolution of womanhood. EVE In select laboratories and clinics across the world, scientists are coming to terms with a far-reaching new conclusion: the female body has a history all its own. They are asking more sophisticated questions, not simply about what distinguishes women from men, but about how women have responded uniquely to evolutionary pressures, how their transformation, in turn, has shaped human society. In this sweeping first book, Cat Bohannon takes stock of the surprising, groundbreaking science in the nearly two decades since Natalie Angier’s bestselling Woman: An Intimate Geography. Because “there was an Eve on Earth for each feature,” the book retraces, step by step, the articulation of the female form. Both humanist and scientist, Bohannon draws on her own original research to link the story of women to ones of broader contemporary resonance: What does walking upright mean for childbirth, and how did that impact nomadic societies? Did breasts develop “for babies” or “for men”? What is the link between hip fat and puberty, and is liposuction robbing our children of the building blocks of a healthy brain? In a wide-ranging account in the vein of Guns, Germs and Steel, Bohannon makes an eloquent, tough-minded argument: that science has written off the female body to our detriment, and that this will be the book that writes her back in. Cat Bohannon is a PhD candidate in the departments of psychology and literature at Columbia University, where she studies narrative and cognition. An MFA in poetry and nonfiction, she has published in Science, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, and Poets Against the War. UK: Hutchinson Brazil: Companhia das Letras Canada: Random House Canada France: Flammarion Germany: C. Bertelsmann Holland: Het Spectrum Italy: Mondadori Japan: Bungeishunju Korea: Sigongsa Spain: Seix Barral Taiwan: Commonwealth elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Arthur Lubow A SECRET WITHIN A SECRET: The Life of Diane Arbus Ecco (2015) Editor: Hilary Redmon Partial manuscript available A major new biography of the legendary photographer. “My favourite thing,” Diane Arbus once wrote, “is to go where I’ve never been.” In a relatively brief career, cut short by her suicide in 1971, Arbus captured an extraordinary and unusual set of characters in black-and-white: high-society figures, giants, transvestites, nudists. Her pursuit of the unusual and unseen earned her a significant public following and the admiration of critics, who count her with Cartier-Bresson and Frank as among the most significant photographers of the 20th century. Since her first MoMA retrospective broke attendance records in 1972, her monographs and photos have sold widely and often. Her major recent Paris retrospective will soon move to Berlin. In this authoritative biography – the first in a generation – Arthur Lubow reveals the extraordinary woman behind the images. Lubow displaces the caricature, perpetuated by biographers past, of a mordant sensationalist. Instead, he gives us a winning raconteur; a brilliant, disarming writer; a seductive listener; a woman who probed complex ideas about identity in a manner revolutionary to both her art and her time. Lubow transforms her iconic photographs into cinematic set pieces, where Arbus established with her subjects an unprecedented intimacy through charm and sheer persistence. UK: Jonathan Cape Lubow draws on dozens of interviews with Arbus’s friends, colleagues, and subjects, as well as letters and writings only recently made public. This authoritative reappraisal lends fresh insights into her life, mind, and art, and her enduring significance in contemporary culture. The result is a masterful piece of writing that is as vivid and intimate as a novel. Arthur Lubow is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Formerly a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he is the author of The Reporter Who Would Be King: A Biography of Richard Harding Davis (Scribner). The recipient of a James Beard Award and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, he is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Jeremy Denk EVERY GOOD BOY DOES FINE Random House (2015) Editor: Andy Ward Proposal available “A superb musician who writes with arresting sensitivity and wit.” –Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic & author of The Rest Is Noise Meditations on lessons, mentors, and life, from the world-class pianist, New Yorker essayist, and MacArthur Award winner, Jeremy Denk. In popular culture, music lessons are often linked with psychological torture. Teachers drive students mad, breaking their spirit with pitiless exactitude – variations on Isabelle Huppert’s sadomasochistic turn in The Piano Teacher. As the pianist Jeremy Denk discovered in a long-lost practice journal, the stereotype is not ill-deserved. UK: Atlantic Books Winner of a 2013 MacArthur “Genius” Grant. But in his storied career – performer, mentee to exacting masters and sometime-teacher himself – Denk came to see practice in a more expansive light: as rituals that occasion discovery and exploration, and mark the passing of wisdom from one generation to the next. In Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk expands on his witty, searching pieces for the New Yorker to recount a three-decade career-in-lessons: his earliest musical memories, loving and stormy relationships with great mentors, those “unattainable” pieces he still struggles to best. Lurking in each lesson is a moral, a sometime-comic, sometime-profound meditation about obsessions, posterity, art and life. Jeremy Denk is a renowned concert pianist and the recipient of a 2013 MacArthur “Genius” Grant. He performs regularly in the United States and around the world, including, this season, at Carnegie Hall in New York and Wigmore Hall in London. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and on the web for NPR. He blogs at Think Denk: www.jeremydenk.net/blog. “Denk is a writer of free-range acuity, in articles, reviews, and Think Denk, his online journal, a treasury of ruminations, both deep and daffy, on the nature of music and the adventures – and misadventures – of making it manifest.” –Vanity Fair elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Christine Rosen THE EXTINCTION OF EXPERIENCE Norton (2015) Editor: Brendan Curry Proposal available A bold investigation into how technology imperils real-life experience, with profound consequences for our society. THE EXTINCTION OF EXPERIENCE The playwright Max Frisch once observed that technology was “the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” Through our many mediating technologies, we have nearly achieved that state. Email and Caller ID protect us from unwanted contact with others, Google acts as our external memory, Facebook is the storage place for our friends, simulations teach us to make and do things, and sociometers promise to help us overcome the messiness of human relationships. Daily intimacy with the physical world recedes, little by little, as our reality increasingly becomes something we access through a screen. In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen chronicles how, more and more, we know our world through information about it rather than experience in it. But at what cost? We are, after all, physical animals. We sweat, flinch, and grin. We send unspoken signals to each other during even the most fleeting interactions. By keeping the real world, with its messy physical realities, at arm’s length, we may be losing more than mere social skills and tact – we risk undermining the very things that make us human. The Extinction of Experience is a timely social critique informed by the latest scientific research. In the vein of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, Rosen urges us to think anew about the way we live with technology. UK: Bodley Head (in a preempt) Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis, where she writes about the social and cultural impact of technology. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard and other major publications. She is the author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the Eugenics Movement (2004) and My Fundamentalist Education (2005), and is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com FICTION elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Julia Pierpont AMONG THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS: A Novel Random House (July, 2015) Editor: Noah Eaker Final manuscript available A masterful debut novel chronicling the breakup of a family, set against the backdrop of post-9/11 New York. AMONG THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS One morning, eleven-year-old Kay arrives at her family’s Manhattan apartment to discover a box of letters meant for her mother: “Dear Deborah,” it begins. The package sets in motion a series of revelations and recriminations poised to tear the Shanley family apart. Among the Ten Thousand Things follows the family’s fortunes in the wake of this domestic crisis. The father, Jack – a visionary and vain sculptor, whose controversial work gains him attention from a young admirer – journeys West to make some sense of his mistakes. Deb, his wife, brings the children – Kay and fifteen-year-old Simon – to Rhode Island, where they become embroiled with a local family that hauntingly reflects their own. Julia’s prose brims with lyricism and emotional intelligence, reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen’s blistering portraits of American family life. Her insights – about manhood and responsibility, about earning (and keeping) the respect of one’s children – are all the more astonishing coming from a 26-year-old. In her writing, we find our world reflected back to us with startling force. Julia Pierpont is an MFA candidate at NYU, where she received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellowship, as well as the Stein Fellowship. Born and raised in Manhattan, she works at The New Yorker. Author speaks Italian. France: Éditions Stock Italy: Mondadori “Julia Pierpont has as sharp and humane an eye as anyone writing. This book is among the funniest, and most emotionally honest I’ve read in a long time.” –Jonathan Safran Foer “Julia Pierpont’s novel is remarkable… She displays not only wisdom, but real tact as a writer.” –Colm Toíbin elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Adelle Waldman THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF NATHANIEL P.: A Novel Holt (July 16, 2013) Editor: Barbara Jones Paperback edition available Named a best book of 2013 by The New Yorker, NPR, Slate, The Economist, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, & others. A National Bestseller Called “one of the most controversial novels of the year,” this subversive debut recasts the image of the young and ambitious writer so long defined by Roth and Mailer. Nathaniel “Nate” Piven is a rising literary star, a sought-after scribe with his pick of women – and a habit of routinely letting them down. Here, Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of the sensitive intellectual, whose deep musings sit uneasily beside his prejudices. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is a witty, generation-defining portrait of contemporary manners. Adelle Waldman is a freelance journalist and book reviewer. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, NewYorker.com, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. “The best debut novel of the summer…. Waldman’s gift is to give voice to the minute calculations and fickle desires of modern manhood as we cringe and read just one more chapter, and then another...” –GQ “A smart, engaging twenty-first-century comedy of manners.” –Jess Walter, New York Times Book Review UK: Heinemann Czech Republic: XYZ France: Christian Bourgois Holland: Nieuw Amsterdam Italy: Einaudi Mexico & Latin America: Planeta Russia: Eksmo Turkey: Yapi Kredi “That most unusual and wondrous of things: a novel that wants to educate our hearts.” –Alain de Botton “A delectable analysis of contemporary dating.” “Powerfully intelligent… Fiendishly readable” –The Washington Post –The New Republic “Adelle Waldman just may be this generation’s Jane Austen.” –The Boston Globe “A pitch-perfect debut…a comic performance you shouldn’t miss.” –Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Neely Tucker THE WAYS OF THE DEAD: A Novel Viking (June 12, 2014) Editor: Allison Lorentzen Galleys available “If this is Tucker's first novel, I can’t wait for what's coming next.” –Michael Connelly The electrifying first installment in a new crime series featuring Washington D.C. reporter, Sully Carter. When the teenage daughter of a powerful Washington D.C. judge is found dead, three local black kids are arrested for her murder – but reporter Sully Carter suspects there’s more to the case. From the city’s grittiest backstreets to the elegant halls of power, wry yet wounded Sully pursues a string of cold cases, all the while fighting against pressure from government officials, police, suspicious locals, and his own bosses at the newspaper. Based on the real life 1990s Princeton Place murders, Neely Tucker’s debut novel is a pitch-perfect rendering of a fast-paced newsroom and a layered, edge-of-your-seat mystery sure to please fans of Elmore Leonard and HBO’s The Wire. Neely Tucker is a veteran journalist with a career spanning twenty-five years, thirteen of which he spent at The Washington Post. His 2004 memoir, Love in the Driest Season, was named one of the Best 25 Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. “Tough, exciting, always intelligent.” –John Sandford, author of the bestselling Prey series “Rich yet taut description, edgy storytelling, rock-and-rolling dialogue, and a deeply flawed but compelling hero add up to a luminous first novel.” –Kirkus (starred review) UK: Century France: Gallimard (Série Noire) Poland: Proszynski “This riveting debut novel should spawn a terrific series.” –Booklist (starred review) The second Sully Carter novel, tentatively titled THE WELL OF TIME, will appear in Summer, 2015: Sully Carter is sipping bourbon at a waterfront bar when the body of Billy Ellison, scion of one of Washington’s wealthiest clans, is found in a channel leading to the Chesapeake Bay. The investigation quickly leads to Frenchman’s Bend – a waterfront drug market that is, Sully discovers, the deadliest spot in America’s deadliest city, ‘the murder capital of the murder capital.’ Frenchman’s Bend was the city’s most notorious slave market before the Civil War, and for more than 150 years has retained its blood-stained heritage. When the Ellisons – one of the city’s most prominent black families – try to deny that their son had ever been in the area, Sully is drawn into a violent mystery with echoes of Frenchman’s ill-begotten past. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com David Treuer PRUDENCE: A Novel Riverhead (2015) Editor: Becky Saletan Edited manuscript available A haunting and unforgettable novel about love, loss, race, and desire in World War II-era America. PRUDENCE: A Novel On a sweltering day in August 1942, Frankie Washburn returns to his family’s rustic Minnesota resort for one last visit before he joins the war as a bombardier, headed for the darkened skies over Europe. Awaiting him at the Pines are those he’s about to leave behind: his hovering mother; the distant father to whom he’s been a disappointment; the Native caretaker who’s been more of a father to him than his own; and Billy, the childhood friend who over the years has become something much more intimate. But before the homecoming can be celebrated, the search for a German soldier escaped from the POW camp across the river explodes in a shocking act of violence, with consequences that will reverberate years into the future for all of these characters, and that will shape how each of them makes sense of the past. With Prudence, Treuer delivers his most ambitious and captivating novel yet. Powerful and wholly original, it’s a story of desire and loss and the search for identity; of race and class in a supposedly more innocent era. Most profoundly, it’s about the secrets we choose to keep, the ones we can’t help but tell, and who -- and how -- we’re allowed to love. David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. The author of three previous novels and two books of nonfiction, he has also written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Slate, and The Washington Post, among others. He has a PhD in anthropology and teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Southern California. France: Albin Michel Praise for THE TRANSLATION OF DR. APELLES: “Deeply crafty, shape-shifting. . . . [Treuer] seems to want to do for Native American culture and literature what James Joyce did for the Irish: haul it into the mainstream of Western culture through sheer nerve and verve.” –The Washington Post Praise for LITTLE: “Mr. Treuer’s accomplishment is a wonder. Out of the seasons and landscapes of a Minnesota reservation David Treuer has forged a strong intricate narrative complete with the intimate voices of fully realized characters.” –Toni Morrison elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett BLOWBACK: A Vanessa Pierson Novel Blue Rider Press (October 1, 2013) Editor: David Rosenthal Finished copies available “Want to read a thriller about the real CIA and how it actually works? Then dive into this corker from former agent Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett.” –James Patterson Introducing the first book in a new espionage thriller series by former CIA ops officer Valerie Plame and suspense writer Sarah Lovett. Valerie Plame’s career as a CIA operative was cut short when her cover was blown by George W. Bush’s White House. Now, after dedicating herself to protecting America from its enemies, Plame turns to fiction with suspense writer Sarah Lovett – with all the knowledge, experience, and authenticity only they can bring to the page. In Blowback, the first book in a major new series, undercover CIA agent Vanessa Pierson tries to pinpoint just who is building a nuclear weapon in Iran – and how this shadowy figure has discovered the identities of several of her sources and had them assassinated. And she’s getting closer, putting her cover, her career, and her life at risk. Valerie Plame’s career in the CIA included assignments in counterproliferation operations, ensuring that enemies of the United States could not threaten America with weapons of mass destruction. Author speaks French, German, and Greek. Sarah Lovett’s five suspense novels, featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange, have been published in the United States and around the world. “A tense spy thriller, with a smart, sexy heroine, international danger, and yes, a love interest… [Blowback] reads like Clancy, Cussler, or Ludlum…” –The Huffington Post All rights available In the next Vanessa Pierson novel: Bhoot’s shadow network threatens Paris and London, & Vanessa suspects a traitor on her team. “Great storytelling, real insider authenticity, and above all a fascinating main character in Vanessa Pierson. And maybe those initials are not a coincidence – sometimes fiction can reveal things that non-fiction can’t.” –Lee Child “Plame, aided by crime writer Sarah Lovett, hits the target in her fiction debut, setting up a planned series with a high-octane tale of deception.” –Entertainment Weekly elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Robin Kirman HIGH STREET GATE: A Novel Crown (2015) Editor: Alexis Washam Unedited manuscript available “No going back to how things were. A girl was dead. Her life stopped short, and for those she’d left, events plunged forward the more quickly.” HIGH STREET GATE: A Novel A crisp New Haven spring in 1998, and Yale’s gothic campus is teeming with pre-graduation excitement and anxiety. The world is flush with possibility for three friends: Georgia, a reckless beauty with a nomadic past; Charlie, an earnest college Republican at odds with his blue-collar roots; and Alice, the spirited, troubled child of Serbian immigrants. And then, in one life-changing evening, an unspeakable tragedy. High Street Gate is the haunting, riveting story of students reeling in the wake of a brutal murder. As the police begin to circle an unlikely suspect – a handsome, poised Yale professor and master of Davenport College, Rufus Trumbull – the three friends’ secrets and lies begin to unravel. In razor-sharp prose, Robin Kirman shows us the lives of these flawed characters, from childhood, through the campus tragedy and 9/11, and ending with the ten year memorial to their slain classmate. In that time, Georgia, Charlie, and Alice suffer unforeseen disasters and bear witness to the dissolution of the young master, who remains shadowed by questionable guilt. A literary page-turner of extraordinary emotional intelligence in the tradition of Donna Tartt, High Street Gate is at its core a story of violence and its aftereffects. But it’s also a tale of difficult friendship and forbidden love, between those struggling to forgive – and be forgiven themselves. France: Albin Michel Robin Kirman received a BA in philosophy from Yale College and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. At the latter, she served as a writing instructor for three years in the English department. She currently splits her time between New York City and Israel. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com RIGHTS HELD BY PUBLISHER elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Mark Owen NO HERO: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL Dutton (November 11, 2014) Editor: Ben Sevier The companion volume to the multimillion-copy classic No Easy Day by former Navy SEAL Mark Owen reveals the evolution of a SEAL Team Six operator Mark Owen’s instant #1 New York Times bestseller, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, focused on the high-profile targets and headline-grabbing chapters of the author’s thirteen years as a Navy SEAL. His follow-up, No Hero, offers a rare counterpoint: an intimate account of Owen’s most personally meaningful missions, missions that never made headlines, including the moments in which he learned the most about himself and his teammates in both success and failure. Brazil: Paralela China: CITIC France: Seuil Germany: Heyne Holland: De Boekerij Israel: Keter Italy: Mondadori Japan: Kodansha Poland: Literackie Sweden: Nona For all rights queries, contact Sabila Khan @ Penguin: Sabila.Khan@us.penguingroup. com “I want No Hero to offer something most books on war don’t: the intimate side of it, the personal struggles and hardships and what I learned from them,” says Owen. “The stories in No Hero are a testament to my teammates and to all the other active and former SEALs who have dedicated their lives to freedom. In our community, we are constantly taught to mentor the younger generation and to pass the lessons and values we’ve learned on to others so that they can do the same for the guys coming up after them. This is what I hope I have done for readers of No Hero.” Every bit as action-packed as No Easy Day, and featuring stories from the training ground to the battlefield, No Hero offers readers a never-before-seen close-up view of the experiences and values that make Mark Owen and the SEALs he served with capable of executing the missions we read about in the headlines. Mark Owen is a former member of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team Six. In his many years as a Navy SEAL, he has participated in hundreds of missions around the globe, including the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009. Owen was a team leader on Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Owen was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist mastermind’s hideout, where he witnessed Bin Laden’s death. Mark Owen’s account of the raid, in No Easy Day, remains the only accurate eyewitness account on record. elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Lawrence Osborne THE BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER: A Novel Hogarth (April 1, 2014) Editor: Alexis Washam Finished copies available A riveting tale of risk and obsession set in the alluring world of Macau’s casinos, by the author of the critically acclaimed The Forgiven. His name is Lord Doyle. His plan: to gamble away his last days in the dark and decadent casino halls of Macau. His game: baccarat punto blanco – “that slutty dirty queen of casino card games.” Though Doyle is not a Lord at all. He is a fake; a corrupt lawyer who has spent a career siphoning money from rich clients. And now he is on the run, determined to send the money - and himself - up in smoke. So begins a beguiling, elliptical velvet rope of a plot: a sharp suit, yellow kid gloves, another naughty lemonade and an endless loop of small wins and losses. When Lady Luck arrives in the form of Dao-Ming, a beautiful yet enigmatic lost soul, so begins a spectacular and unnatural winning streak in which millions come Doyle’s way. But in these shadowy dens of risk and compulsion, in a land governed by superstition, Doyle knows that when the bets are high, the stakes are even greater. The Ballad of a Small Player is a sleek, dark-hearted masterpiece: a ghost story set in the land of the living, and a decadent morality tale of a Faustian pact made, not with the devil, but with fortune’s fickle hand. Lawrence Osborne is the author of the bestselling novel The Forgiven and six books of nonfiction. His short story "Volcano" was selected for Best American Short Stories 2012, and he has written for the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Forbes, Harper's, and several other publications. UK: Hogarth Italy: Adelphi For all rights queries, please contact Karin Schulze @ Crown: KSchulze@randomhouse.com “[A] vivid and feverish portrait of a soul in self-inflicted purgatorio.” –New York Times Book Review “At a point where most novelists start to show signs of flagging, Osborne…has hit his creative, fictional stride… A thrilling, exceptional talent in Britain fiction’s landscape.” –Sunday Times “Hypnotic.” –Tash Aw, NPR “A searing portrait of addiction and despair set in the glittering world of Macau's casinos...Osborne’s intriguing Chinese milieu and exquisite prose make this work as a standout.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review) elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Benjamin Kunkel UTOPIA OR BUST: A Guide to the Present Crisis Verso / Jacobin (March, 2014) Finished copies available “For anyone who cares about historical necessity, the crisis of capitalism, and our fate.” –Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers After the financial crash and the Great Recession, the media rediscovered Karl Marx, socialist theory, and the very idea that capitalism can be questioned. But in spite of the publicity, the main paths of contemporary critical thought have gone unexplored outside of the academy. Benjamin Kunkel’sUtopia or Bust leads readers — whether politically committed or simply curious — through the most important critical theory today. Written with the wit and verve of Kunkel’s best-selling novel, Indecision, this introduction to contemporary Leftist thinkers engages with the revolutionary philosophy of Slavoj Žižek, the economic analyses of David Graeber and David Harvey, and the cultural diagnoses of Fredric Jameson. Discussing the ongoing crisis of capitalism in light of ideas of full employment, debt forgiveness, and “fictitious capital,” Utopia or Bust is a tour through the world of Marxist thought and an examination of the basis of Western society today. Benjamin Kunkel is the author of the best-selling novel, Indecision, and a founding editor of n+1. He has written for the New Yorker, Dissent, and the London Review of Books. Germany: Suhrkamp For all rights queries, please contact Federico Campagna @ Verso: federico@verso.co.uk elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Reza Aslan ZEALOT: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth Random House (July 16, 2013) Editor: Will Murphy Finished copies available #1 New York Times Bestseller International Bestseller “Riveting.” –The New Yorker A momentous work of popular scholarship and runaway bestseller, this provocative and meticulously researched biography challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion. Reza Aslan is an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions. His first book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, has been translated into thirteen languages and named by Blackwell as one of the hundred most important books of the last decade. Born in Iran, he lives in New York and Los Angeles with his wife and two sons. “[Aslan’s] literary talent is as essential to the effect of Zealot as are his scholarly and journalistic chops…. A vivid, persuasive portrait.” –Laura Miller, Salon For all rights queries, contact Joelle Dieu @ Random House US: jdieu@randomhouse.com UK: Westbourne Press Arabic: Nahdet Misr ANZ: Allen & Unwin Bosnia: Buybook Bulgaria: Ciela Norma Brazil: Zahar China: YZKY Croatia: Profil “A bold, powerfully argued revisioning of the most consequential life ever lived.” –Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Going Clear Finland: Gummerus France: Les Arènes Germany: Rowohlt Greece: Patakis Holland: Balans Hungary: Scolar Kft. India: HarperCollins India Italy: Rizzoli Japan: Bungeishunju Korea: Mirae Lithuania: Kitos Kyngos Norway: Bazar Poland: Gruner & Jahr Portugal: Quetzal Romania: Editura Trei Russia: AST elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Serbia: Dereta Slovakia: Vydavatelstvo Tatran s.r.o. Spain: Urano Sweden: Weyler Taiwan: Acropolis Turkey: Okuyanus Mark Leibovich THIS TOWN: Two Parties and a Funeral – plus plenty of valet parking! – in America’s Gilded Capital Blue Rider Press (July 16, 2013) Editor: David Rosenthal Paperback edition available #1 New York Times Bestseller #1 Washington Post Bestseller “Leibovich is a writer of excellent zest. At times his book is laughout-loud (as well as weep-out-loud). He is an excellent reporter, even as his reporting leaves one reaching for Xanax.” –Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review Washington – This Town – might be loathed from every corner of the nation, yet these are fun and busy days at the nexus of big politics, big money, big media, and big vanity. In This Town, Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, presents a blistering, stunning and often hysterically funny examination of our ruling class’s incestuous media industrial complex. Through his eyes, we discover how the funeral for a beloved newsman becomes the social event of the year. How political reporters are fetishized for their ability to get their names into the predawn e-mail sent out by the citys most powerful and puzzled-over journalist. How a disgraced Hill aide can overcome ignominy and maybe emerge with a more potent “brand” than many elected members of Congress. And how an administration bent on “changing Washington” can be sucked into the ways of This Town with the same ease with which Tea Party insurgents can, once elected, settle into it like a warm bath. Outrageous, fascinating, and destined to win Leibovich a whole host of, er, new friends, This Town is must reading, whether you’re inside the Beltway – or just trying to get there. China: CITIC For all rights queries, contact Sabila Khan @ Penguin: sabila.khan@us.penguingroup.c om Mark Leibovich is The New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent, based in Washington, D.C. In 2011, he received a National Magazine Award for his story on Politico's Mike Allen and the changing media culture of Washington. He is also the author of The New Imperialists, a collection of profiles on technology pioneers. “A lancing, often hysterically funny portrait of the capital’s vanities and ambitions” –The New Yorker “A wildly entertaining anthropological tour.” –Jonathan Chait, New York elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Nathaniel Rich ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW: A Novel Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 2, 2013) Editor: Sean McDonald Paperback edition available A novel about fear of the future – and the future of fear. New York City, the near future: Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician, is hired by a mysterious new financial consulting firm, FutureWorld. The business operates out of an empty office in the Empire State Building; Mitchell is employee number two. He is asked to calculate worst-case scenarios in the most intricate detail, and his schemes are sold to corporations to indemnify them against any future disasters. This is the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming. As Mitchell immerses himself in the mathematics of catastrophe— ecological collapse, war games, natural disasters—he becomes obsessed by a culture’s fears. Just as Mitchell’s predictions reach a nightmarish crescendo, an actual worst-case scenario overtakes Manhattan. Mitchell realizes he is uniquely prepared to profit. But at what cost? At once an all-too-plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear, Odds Against Tomorrow poses the ultimate questions of imagination and civilization. Nathaniel Rich is the author of the acclaimed debut, The Mayor’s Tongue. His essays and short fiction have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times Magazine. Born in New York City, he now lives New Orleans. Author speaks Italian. Denmark: Ordenes By Germany: Klett-Cotta Holland: Anthos For all rights queries, contact Devon Mazzone @ FSG: devon.mazzone@fsgbooks.com “Let’s just, right away, recognize how prescient this charming, terrifying, comic novel of apocalyptic manners is…. Rich’s prose is so immediate, so urgent…that the loss, the chaos is devastating…” –New York Review of Books “This brilliantly conceived and extremely well-executed novel – no glue and tape here – is the opposite of a disaster. A knockout of a book by a young writer to keep your eye on from now on.” –Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered “Intelligent, exhaustively researched… Any sentence from Rich is worth reading, any thought worth pondering in this ambitious novel of ideas.” –New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) “An irresistible literary thriller… Rich mines the terror of our times.” –Rolling Stone elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Free Press (August 19, 2014) Editor: Priscilla Painton Galleys available William Deresiewicz EXCELLENT SHEEP A groundbreaking manifesto for people searching for the kind of insight on leading, thinking, and living that elite schools should be— but aren’t—providing. As a professor at Yale, Bill Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose. Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions. Korea: Darun Taiwan: Sun Color For all rights queries, contact Lance Fitzgerald @ S&S: lance.fitzgerald@simonandschu ster.com William Deresiewicz is a contributing writer for The Nation and contributing editor for The New Republic and The American Scholar. He speaks regularly on the state of education in America at schools and leadership conferences across the country to enormous interest and acclaim. An associate professor of English at Yale until 2008, he is the author of the highly acclaimed A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter. “Deresiewicz’s book is in and of itself a higher education, and to read it is to learn what’s a college for. The author is an inspired teacher, and his lesson is of a truth sorely needing to be told.” –Lewis Lapham “William Deresiewicz is one of America’s best young public intellectuals. He has written a passionate, deeply informed, and searing critique of the way we are educating our young. Whether you agree or disagree - and I found myself doing both - you must read this book. It should spark a great debate on America's campuses and beyond.” –Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post American World) elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Random House (February, 2013) Editor: Andy Ward Paperback edition available Emily Bazelon STICKS & STONES A New York Times Bestseller Being a teenager has never been easy, but in recent years, with the rise of the Internet and social media, it has become exponentially more challenging. Bullying, once thought of as the province of queen bees and goons, has taken on new, complex, and insidious forms, as parents and educators know all too well. No writer is better poised to explore this territory than Emily Bazelon, who has established herself as a leading voice on the social and legal aspects of teenage drama. In Sticks and Stones, she brings readers on a deeply researched, clear-eyed journey into the ever-shifting landscape of teenage meanness and its sometimes devastating consequences. The result is an indispensable book that takes us from school cafeterias to courtrooms to the offices of Facebook, the website where so much teenage life, good and bad, now unfolds. Emily Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, and the Truman Capote Fellow at Yale Law School. Before joining Slate, she worked as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and lives in New Haven. “Intelligent, rigorous . . . [Emily Bazelon] is a compassionate champion for justice in the domain of childhood’s essential unfairness.” –Andrew Solomon, The New York Times Book Review Japan: Hayakawa For all rights queries, contact Joelle Dieu @ Random House US: jdieu@randomhouse.com “[Bazelon] does not stint on the psychological literature, but the result never feels dense with studies; it’s immersive storytelling with a sturdy base of science underneath, and draws its authority and power from both.” –New York “A humane and closely reported exploration of the way that hurtful power relationships play out in the contemporary public-school setting . . . As a parent herself, [Bazelon] brings clear, kind analysis to complex and upsetting circumstances.” –The Wall Street Journal “[A] richly detailed, thought-provoking book.” elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com –The Washington Post Nina Munk THE IDEALIST: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty Doubleday (September 10, 2013) Editor: Bill Thomas Finished copies available A powerful account of Jeffrey Sachs’s ambitious quest to end global poverty “The poor you will always have with you,” to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty—disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, through the Millennium Villages Project, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto “the ladder of development.” For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project, accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state, humanitarian organizations, rival economists, and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and witnessing their struggle to survive, Munk came to understand the reallife issues that challenge Sachs’s formula for ending global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of human life. For all rights queries, contact Suzanne Smith @ Doubleday: ssmith@randomhouse.com Nina Munk, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is a journalist and the author of Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner. She was previously a senior writer at Fortune, and before that a senior editor at Forbes. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Fortune, and the New York Times. “In one of the most readable and evocative accounts of poverty ever written, The Idealist shows that virtually nothing about foreign aid is ever ‘easy’… Superb.” –William Easterly, Barron’s “A sharply rendered and deeply disillusioned account… With impressive persistence, unflagging empathy and journalistic derringdo, Ms. Munk…document[s] the project’s progress.” –James Traub, The Wall Street Journal “Nina Munk has written a fascinating book about a fascinating man.” –Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Dr. Manning Marable MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention Viking (2011) Editor: Wendy Wolf Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History 2011 National Book Award Finalist 2011 National Book Critics Circle Finalist New York Times Bestseller A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, The New Yorker, The Nation, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post Years in the making – the definitive biography of the legendary black activist. A 2011 National Book Award finalist, Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew. UK: Penguin UK Brazil: Editora Schwarcz Ltda. France: Editions Syllepse Italy: Donzelli Editore Sweden: Leopard Forlag Turkey: Penguen Kitap Basim Yayin For all rights queries, please contact Hal Fessenden @ Penguin Group: hal.fessenden @us.penguingroup.com Manning Marable (1950–2011) was the M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African American Studies and a professor of history and public affairs at Columbia University. He was the founding director of African American Studies at Columbia from 1993 to 2003, and also served as director of Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Black History. The author of fifteen books, Marable also edited the quarterly journal Souls. “An extraordinary portrait of a man and his time… A masterpiece.” –San Francisco Chronicle “It will be difficult for anyone to better this book… It is a work of art, a feast that combines genres skillfully: biography, true crime, political commentary.” –Washington Post elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com SELECTED BACKLIST elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com D.T. Max EVERY LOVE STORY IS A GHOST STORY: A Life of David Foster Wallace Viking Penguin (2012) Editor: Paul Slovak Paperback edition available A New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Top 10 Books of 2012: New York Times (Michiko Kakutani), Slate & The Daily Beast A Times (UK) Best Biography of 2012 Named a Best Book of 2012 by The Economist, The Financial Times, Village Voice, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, & Kansas City Star The first biography of the most influential writer of his generation. David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his era, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest. Written with the cooperation of Wallace’s family and friends and with access to hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, and audio tapes. D.T. Max is the author of The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery, which Salon named one of the five best non-fiction books of 2006. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Author speaks Italian and Spanish. UK: Portobello China: Horizon Media France: Editions de L’Olivier Germany: Kiepenheuer & Witsch Italy: Stile Libero Spain: Debate “In his revealing new biography, D. T. Max gives us a sympathetic appraisal of Wallace’s life and work, tracing the connections between the two, while mapping the wellsprings of his philosophical vision.” –Michiko Kakutani, New York Times “[A] tremendous biography of the feted American novelist…a supremely understated and magnificently comprehensive life of a remarkable writer.” –Sunday Times “As illuminating, multifaceted, and serious an estimation of David Foster Wallace’s life and work as we can hope to find.” –Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair “[A] scrupulous and affecting biography” elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com –Financial Times Joshua Foer MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything Penguin Press (2011) Editor: Ann Godoff International Bestseller New York Times Bestseller #1 Amazon.com Bestseller Named One of the Best Books of 2011: Amazon, New York Times (Michiko Kakutani), O Magazine, Sunday Times, Globe & Mail, Salon, Discover Magazine, Men’s Journal An instant bestseller and blockbuster phenomenon, Foer’s unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion explores the vast, hidden impact of memory on every aspect of our lives. Joshua Foer has written for National Geographic, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Slate. He is the founder of Atlas Obscura, an online compendium of the world’s curiosities. “In his captivating new book…the young journalist Joshua Foer tackles the subject of memory the way George Plimpton tackled pro football and boxing. … His narrative is smart and funny and, like the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, it’s informed by a humanism that enables its author to place the mysteries of the brain within a larger philosophical and cultural context.” –Michiko Kakutani, New York Times “[T]he most entertaining science book of the year” –The Sunday Times, Best Books of the Year UK: Penguin Press Brazil: Ediouro China: CITIC Croatia: Znanje Czech: Jota Denmark: Hr. Ferdinand Estonia: Aripaev Finland: Atena France: Laffont Germany: Riemann Verlag Greece: Livanis Holland: De Bezige Bij Hungary: Park Indonesia: PT Gramedia Iceland: Forlagið Israel: Modan Italy: Longanesi Japan: X-Knowledge Korea: Woongjin Think Big Lithuania: Media Incognito Norway: Forlaget Poland: Harbor Point Portugal: Livros d’Hoje Romania: Litera Russia: Lomonosov Serbia: Mono and Manana elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Spain: Seix Barral Sweden: Natur och Kultur Taiwan: Oak Tree / Cite Thailand: Post Publishing Turkey: Altin Kitaplar Vietnam: TRE Grace Coddington Random House (2012) Editor: Susan Kamil GRACE: A Memoir A Financial Times Best Book of the Year The highly anticipated memoir of a fashion legend – the star of The September Issue and the Creative Director of American Vogue. Beautiful. Wilful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known through much of her career only to those behind the scenes, she might have remained fashion’s best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue, the acclaimed 2009 documentary that turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden, reluctant celebrity. With the witty, forthright voice that has endeared her to her colleagues and peers for more than forty years, Grace now creatively directs the reader through the storied narrative of her life so far. Evoking the time when models had to tote their own bags and props to shoots, Grace describes her early career as a model, working with such world-class photographers as David Bailey and Norman Parkinson, before she stepped behind the camera to become fashion editor at British Vogue in the late 1960s. Here she began creating the fantasy “travelogues” that would become her trademark. In 1988 she joined American Vogue, where her breathtakingly romantic and imaginative fashion features, a sampling of which appears in this book, have become instant classics. UK: Chatto & Windus Brazil: Record China: Hunan Literature and Art Finland: Nemo France: Albin Michel Holland: Atlas-Contact Japan: Space Showers Networks Korea: Bookie Russia: Sindbad Spain: Turner Libros Taiwan: Azoth Turkey: Sho-pigo For all rights queries, contact Linda Shaughnessy @ AP Watt: lshaughnessy@apwatt.co.uk Delightfully underscored by Grace’s pen-and-ink illustrations, Grace will introduce readers to the colorful designers, hairstylists, makeup artists, photographers, models, and celebrities with whom Grace has created her signature images. Grace Coddington lives in New York City and Long Island with her partner, Didier Malige, and their two cats, Bart and Pumpkin. “Splashy, dishy…charmingly forthright.” –Janet Maslin, New York Times “If Wintour is the Pope . . . Coddington is Michelangelo, trying to paint a fresh version of the Sistine Chapel twelve times a year.” –Time elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Marco Roth THE SCIENTISTS: A Family Romance Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2012) Editor: Jonathan Galassi A Vogue, LA Times, & New Republic Best Book of 2012 New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice A memoir from a founding editor of the lauded journal n +1. The precocious only child of a doctor and a classical musician, Marco Roth was able to share his parents’ New York. Theirs was a world that revolved around house concerts, a private library of literary classics, and discussions of the latest advances in medicine—and one that ended when Marco’s father started to suffer the worst effects of the AIDS virus that had infected him in the early 1980s. What this family could not talk about for years came to dominate the lives of its surviving members, with surprising and often devastating effects. Written in the tradition of Edmund Gosse, Henry Adams, and J. R. Ackerley, The Scientists is a book that grapples with a troubled intellectual and emotional inheritance—the ways in which we learn from our parents, and then learn to see them separately from ourselves. Marco Roth has written extensively for n+1, which he co-founded in 2004. The recipient of the 2011 Shattuck Prize for literary criticism, he has contributed to The New York Times, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. Author speaks French, Spanish, Italian and German. “It is an exquisitely written and intensely interior book, one that eschews the contemporary memoir’s penchant for epiphanies, redemption and tidy resolutions.” –Laura Miller, Salon UK: Union Books Italy: Indiana Editore “Circuitous, elegant and fiercely intelligent… With the wisdom of a good reader and the humility of a lost soul, Mr. Roth sorts through the mess of his past—in order to plot his escape from it.” –The Economist “[T]his slim, fierce meditation takes readers into realms where more emotional, confessional tales rarely tread.” –Maureen Corrigan, NPR “[B]eautifully intelligent and moving…a literary detective story and also an object lesson in the way the self can be constituted by literature.” –Adam Kirsch, The New Republic elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com JAMES WOLCOTT of Vanity Fair “Among the last of the great, garrulous, generalist critics…” –New York Times CRITICAL MASS: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs Doubleday (Oct. 15, 2013) Editor: Gerry Howard A career-spanning collection of essays and cultural journalism from one of the most acute, entertaining, and sometimes acerbic (but in a good way) critics of our time -from his early-seventies dispatches as a fledgling critic for The Village Voice on rock ’n’ roll, comedy, movies, and television to the literary criticism of the eighties and nineties that made him both feared and famous to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair. “Mr. Wolcott’s cultural criticism is ecstatic and alive, and this big box of his best stuff is absurdly entertaining — a rolling series of intellectual lightning strikes. Pound for pound, sentence for sentence, for a certain kind of reader, this is the book of the year.” –Dwight Garner’s 10 Favorite Books of 2013, The New York Times All rights available “[A] collection of hundreds, maybe thousands, of the most consistently surprising sentences any American critic has written. This book about the ups and downs of performance is itself a great show.” –New York Review of Books LUCKING OUT: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in the Seventies Doubleday (2011) Editor: Gerry Howard From one of our most admired (and feared) cultural critics, a memoir that captures all the gritty, grubby glamour of New York in the awful/wonderful Seventies. In the autumn of 1972, a very young and green James Wolcott arrived in New York from Maryland, full of literary dreams, equipped with a letter of introduction from Norman Mailer, and having no idea what was about to hit him. This portrait of a critic as a young man is also a rollicking, acutely observant portrait of a legendary time and place. “Superb.” All rights available –The Wall Street Journal “The Village Voice in the 1970s, Patti Smith and the punk scene, porno theaters in Times Square, Pauline Kael and her acolytes—New York City journalism at its gossipy best.” –Slate elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com From MASHA GESSEN PERFECT RIGOR: A Genius & the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century Harcourt (2009) The fascinating true story of mathematics, genius, global politics, and obsession. In 2006, Grigory Perelman, a forty-year-old Russian mathematical genius, solved the Poincare conjecture, one of the seven great mathematical mysteries of the last century. For his efforts, Perelman was among the four recipients of the Fields Medal—mathematicians’ equivalent of the Nobel Prize—but he refused the award. In March 2010, Perelman won the Millennium Prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute, and rejected it as well. In Perfect Rigor, Masha Gessen explores the world of mathematics’ most reclusive genius. “Perelman and the world of Soviet maths training make a fascinating, moving tale, and in Perfect Rigor Masha Gessen tells it brilliantly.” –Tom Stoppard, The Guardian UK: Icon Books China: Beijing Canglang France: Globe Germany: Suhrkamp Greece: Tavlos Israel: Books in the Attic Japan: Bungeishunju Korea: Sejong Russia: Corpus Taiwan: Faces Publishing Ltd. Vietnam: Tre Publishing BLOOD MATTERS: From Inherited Illness to Designed Babies, How the World and I found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene Harcourt (2008) A Financial Times Best Science Book of 2008 A New York Times Notable Book of 2008 A personal look at the possibilities and effects of genetic testing. In 2004, genetic testing revealed that Masha Gessen had a mutation that predisposed her to ovarian and breast cancer. As she wrestled with a wrenching personal decision – what to do with such knowledge – Gessen explored the landscape of this brave new world, exploring the way genetic information is shaping whom we marry, the children we bear, even the personality traits we desire. UK: Granta “A harrowing, sharply observed, fascinating book – a journal of Gessen's compelling inner and outward journey through science, family, and fate.” –Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom CITIZENVILLE: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government Penguin Press (February, 2013) Editor: Ann Godoff Paperback edition available “Gavin Newsom is a clear-eyed public servant who has never been satisfied with the status quo. Citizenville makes a fascinating case for a more engaged government, transformed to meet the challenges and possibilities of the 21st century, and where technology brings the critical tools of our democracy closer to its citizens than ever before.” –Bill Clinton By integrating democratic government with cutting-edge American innovation, the lieutenant governor of California and rising star of American politics charts a bright future for open-source government. Citizenville is the story of how ordinary citizens can use new digital tools to dissolve political gridlock and transform democracy – in America, and around the world. As social networking and smart phones have changed the way we communicate with one another, these technologies are also changing our relationship with government. Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom explores the many ways in which technology can transform government and empower citizens: Opening up vast troves of government data, then letting people create apps to use them wisely. Harnessing the popularity of online games to establish a kind of “Angry Birds for Democracy.” Inventing new feedback loops so people can take active part in every facet of governing. Lt. Governor, California (2011-) Mayor, San Francisco (2004-2011) 90,000+ followers on Facebook 1million+ followers on Twitter All rights available Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with thought leaders in business, tech and government, Citizenville charts Newson’s quest to bring government into the 21st century. Gavin Newsom is the forty-ninth lieutenant governor of the State of California. A former two-term mayor of San Francisco and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, he has founded fifteen small businesses in the San Francisco Bay area. “A passionate and well-reasoned argument for a new style of government that would treat the citizenry not just as spectators but as collaborators.” –Booklist (starred) “With Citizenville, [Newsom] provides a blueprint for a government that can tap into the creativity, innovation and transparency that define digital and social media, and makes the case for using all the tools at our disposal to improve our government -- and our lives.” –Arianna Huffington, founder, The Huffington Post elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Alex Stone FOOLING HOUDINI: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks & the Hidden Powers of the Mind HarperCollins (2012) Editor: Tim Duggan An Amazon.com Best Book of the Year An exploration that probes the science of deception, the limits of consciousness, and the mysteries of the human mind. Fooling Houdini charts Alex Stone’s journey through the subterranean world of magic and magicians and his quest to join the ranks of the masters. It reveals an exclusive community shrouded in secrecy, stirred by obsession and brilliance, ingenuity and ambition, and organized around an implacable need to prove one’s worth by deceiving others. In trying to understand magic, he ends up asking questions about how the mind perceives the world and parses everyday experience, about how it can improve at distinguishing reality from illusion. Magic is, at its roots, about how the mind works – and why, sometimes, it doesn’t. Alex Stone is a writer and magician, who received his MA in Physics from Columbia University. He has worked as an editor at Discover magazine, and has written for The New York Times, Harper’s, Science, and The New Republic. Author speaks Spanish. “A cheery, inquisitive book about a world where math, physics, cognitive science and pure geeky fanaticism intersect…” –Janet Maslin, New York Times UK: Heinemann Canada: Doubleday Canada China: CITIC Hungary: HVG Japan: Tokuma Shoten Spain: Debate Taiwan: Business Weekly Publications “[S]tudded with historical factoids, charming anecdotes and a variety of behind-the-curtain insider secrets to classic magic trick… Magically engrossing.” –Kirkus “Stone has written a masterful story that is bursting with energy, inventiveness, and a sense of wonder on every page… I couldn’t put Fooling Houdini down!” –Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics “This book is clever and winning—and well written, too. In turning our attention away from the magic and towards the magicians, Stone has pulled off an excellent trick.” –The elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Sunday Times Jodi Kantor Little, Brown (2012) Editor: Geoff Shandler THE OBAMAS A New York Times Notable Book of 2012 New York Times Bestseller The inside story of Barack and Michelle Obama’s lives as President and First Lady. When Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, he also won a long-running debate with his wife. Contrary to Michelle Obama’s fears, politics now seemed like a worthwhile, even noble pursuit. He would lead the U.S. through a series of systemic reforms and together they would live the most normal and sane White House life possible. Then they moved in. Filled with riveting reportorial detail, emotional and psychological depth, and a keen eye for the ironies of public life, The Obamas is an intimate portrait that will surprise even readers who thought they knew the American President and First Lady. Jodi Kantor was the youngest person in memory to edit a section of the New York Times and in 2007 she started covering the Obamas for the newspaper. The recipient of a Columbia Young Alumni Achievement Award, was chosen as one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” rising stars. Author speaks Hebrew. UK: Allen Lane Estonia: Eram Germany: Droemer Knaur Holland: Atlas “A meticulous reporter, Ms. Kantor is attuned to the nuance of small gestures, the import of unspoken truths. She knows that every strong marriage, including the one now in the White House, has its complexities and its disappointments. Ms. Kantor also — and this is a key — has a high regard for women, which is why hers is the first book about the Obama presidency to give Michelle Obama her due.” –New York Times “A fascinating look at the intricate dynamics of an ordinary marriage, an unusual home, and an extraordinary presidency.” –Publisher’s Weekly (starred review) “Kantor’s book is one of the best portraits yet of the arguments in this particular White House.” –Ezra Klein, New York Review of Books elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Jenny Rosenstrach DINNER: A LOVE STORY Ecco (2012) Editor: Lee Boudreaux Inspired by her beloved blog, Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner: A Love Story is many wonderful things: a memoir, a love story, a practical how-to guide for strengthening family bonds by making the most of dinnertime, and a compendium of magnificent, palate-pleasing recipes. Rosenstrach, and her husband, Andy, regularly, some might say pathologically, cook dinner for their family every night. Even when they work long days. Even when their kids’ schedules pull them in eighteen different directions. They are not superhuman. They are not from another planet. Using the same straight-up, inspiring voice that readers of her award-winning blog, Dinner: A Love Story, have come to count on, Jenny never judges and never preaches. Every meal she dishes up is a real meal, one that has been cooked and eaten and enjoyed at least a half dozen times by someone in Jenny’s house. With inspiration and game plans for any home cook at any level, Dinner: A Love Story is as much for the novice who doesn't know where to start as it is for the gourmand who doesn’t know how to start over when she finds herself feeding an intractable toddler or for the person who never thought about home-cooked meals until he or she became a parent. This book is, in fact, for anyone interested in learning how to make a meal to be shared with someone they love, and about how so many good, happy things happen when we do. All rights available Jenny Rosenstrach is the creator of Dinner: A Love Story, a website devoted to family dinner, and a contributor to Bon Appétit magazine. “[Rosenstrach] exudes warmth and manic eccentricity. Her book is an engaging memoir first…a work of popular nonfiction that would stand on its own as literature.” –LA Review of Books “Warm, funny, packed with recipes and photos, and reassuringly nonjudgmental, it will help inspire the most faint-hearted of cooks to pre-heat the oven.” –Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project “[N]ot only a wonderful read, but a book studded with excellent recipes and tips.” –Amanda Hesser, co-founder of FOOD52.com elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Gayle Tzemach Lemmon THE DRESSMAKER OF KHAIR KHANA Harper (2011) Editor: Julia Cheiffetz New York Times Bestseller: Hardcover & Paperback The true story of a fearless young entrepreneur who brought hope to the lives of dozens of women in war-torn Afghanistan. When the Taliban closed her university, nineteen-year-old Kamela Sediqi’s dream of becoming a college professor came to an end. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity for women in her community, the headstrong young woman defied Taliban law and started her own sewing business, employing women in her neighbourhood and selling dresses to local clothing stores owned exclusively by men. This is the remarkable, inspiring account of how one young woman risked her life to help her country, employing over one hundred women in her community and helping them survive the dark years of Taliban rule. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon served as a broadcast journalist for nearly ten years with ABC News. She is currently contributing Editor-at-Large at Newsweek and deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she studies how women persevere in countries ravaged by war. Author speaks Spanish, German, French, and Dari. UK: John Murray Brazil: Seoman China: Beijing Booky Germany: Sudwest Verlag India (Marathi): Mehta Indonesia: PT Gramedia Pustaku Italy: Sperling & Kupfer Lithuania: Baltos Lankos Norway: Histoire & Kultur Poland: Proszynski Spain: Aguilar Taiwan: New Century “[A] transporting, enlightening book… [A] celebration of women the world over who support their loved ones with tenacity, inventiveness and sheer guts.” –People, 4/4 stars “Remarkable.” –New Yorker “The Dressmaker is pure inspiration…it reveals in acute detail the anxiety of ordinary people trying to fold their lives around the whims and laws of abusive regimes.” –Los Angeles Times “An Afghan family finds a way to survive in Kabul under Taliban rule in this awe-inspiring true story. Fans of Three Cups of Tea are sure to embrace this powerful and humbling book.” –Parade elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Eli Pariser THE FILTER BUBBLE: What the Internet Is Hiding from You Penguin Press (2011) Editor: Ann Godoff Why it matters that the Net knows your name In The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser takes on a phenomenon that has gone largely undetected: personalized filters are sweeping the web, creating individual universes of news, information and advertising. In a personalized world, we will increasingly be fed only information that is familiar, pleasant, and confirms our beliefs—and since these filters are invisible, we won’t know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, putting our creativity, our learning, and even our democracy in peril. Eli Pariser is the board president, and former executive director, of MoveOn.org, which at 5 million members is one of the largest citizens’ organizations in American politics. He is the co-founder of Upworthy, a new site devoted to promoting socially impactful contact via social media. He also co-founded Avaaz.org, a global online advocacy community, which has over 5.5 million members worldwide. Eli was a prominent speaker at TED2011, where curator Chris Anderson called Eli’s talk “explosive.” His talk has attracted hundreds of thousands of views: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html “[A] powerful indictment” UK: Viking UK Brazil: Zahar Germany: Hanser Italy: Il Saggiatore Japan: Hayakawa Korea: Sigongsa Russia: Mann, Ivanov, & Faber Taiwan: Rive Gauche -The Wall Street Journal “[A] valuable exposition of what living and learning through Google and Facebook will mean for our lives as citizens.” –The Atlantic “If you feel that the Web is your wide open window on the world, you need to read this book to understand what you aren’t seeing.” –Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Pauline Chen THE RED CHAMBER: A Novel Knopf (July, 2012) Editor: Jordan Pavlin Inspired by the classic Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber, a lyrical story of love, ambition, duty and destiny. Against the breathtaking backdrop of eighteenth-century Beijing, the lives of three unforgettable women collide in the inner chambers of the Jia mansion. When orphaned Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to take shelter with her cousins in the capital, she is drawn into a world of opulent splendour. She soon finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and hidden passions, reaching from the petty gossip of the servants’ quarters all the way to the Imperial Palace. When a political coup overthrows the Emperor and plunges the once-mighty family into grinding poverty, each woman must choose between love and duty, friendship and survival. Pauline Chen earned her BA from Harvard, her JD from Yale Law, and her PhD in East Asian studies from Princeton. She has taught Chinese language, literature, and film at the University of Minnesota and Oberlin College. She is also the author of the children’s novel Peiling and the Chicken-Fried Christmas. Author speaks Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. “With just the right blend of the highbrow literary and guilty summer pulp, Chen just might put this 18th-century classic on 21st-century bestseller lists.” –Library Journal “Bold and memorable… Chen retells and recreates in lush detail the daily life inside the Rongguo Mansion, where scandalous secrets and lies are hidden behind a grand façade.” –Chicago Tribune UK: Virago France: Robert Laffont Holland: De Bezige Bij Italy: Sperling & Kupfer Poland: Ksiaznica Spain: Maeva Thailand: Sanskrit “Pauline Chen has reimagined the characters from my very favorite novel to make a compelling new version of China’s great literary masterpiece. The Red Chamber…will transport you into an altogether new world.” –Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha “In Pauline Chen’s transporting interpretation of the Chinese classic, the byzantine machinations and behind-the-screen politics of the Jia family are so skillfully rendered as to bring to mind a delicate ink painting suddenly and vividly brought to life. A remarkable achievement.” –Janice Lee, author of The Piano Teacher elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Suzanne Rivecca DEATH IS NOT AN OPTION: Stories W.W. Norton (2010) Editor: Jill Bialosky Shortlisted, 2011 Frank O’Connor Short Story Award Winner of the 2011-12 Rome Prize 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist Story Prize Finalist California Book Award Finalist In her first collection, Suzanne Rivecca explores what it means to be whole and damaged as a woman in the world. Death Is Not an Option takes us into a world where girls and women try and often fail to negotiate the boundaries of their lives; where intimacy and attachment are woefully misunderstood; where trauma, sex and religion collide. Her next work will be a novel, The Habitants, about a cross country trip Walt Whitman took with his brother, a pivotal time in Whitman’s development as an artist and a man. Suzanne Rivecca’s fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices and Granta among other publications. A winner of the Pushcart Prize and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is a recipient of the 2011-12 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. All rights available “A gripping collection…all of Suzanne Rivecca’s stories examine what it means – and what it costs – to be saved.” –New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) “A ferociously intelligent debut collection…a rare pleasure.” –San Francisco Chronicle “Recalls early Gaitskill in its stark depiction of girls who lost their innocence long before they knew it was theirs to lose.” –Vogue “[Rivecca’s] talent allows her to impressively flex the muscle of fiction, making us keep our attention where it belongs—on these bracing stories promising a fine career.” –NPR “What is most unforgettable about this collection is its sharp language and rich detail, signifying the arrival of a wonderful new writer.” –Annie Tully, Booklist elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Benjamin Kunkel Random House (2005) Editor: Dan Menaker INDECISION: A Novel New York Times Bestseller Dwight B. Wilmerding is only twenty-eight, but he’s having a midlife crisis. Dwight lives a dissolute existence in a tiny apartment with three (sometimes four) slacker roommates, holds a mind-numbing job at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and has a chronic inability to make up his mind. When he is offered an experimental drug meant to banish indecision, Dwight jumps at the chance (after vacillating about the hazards of jumping) and swallows the first fateful pill. When all at once he is “pfired” by Pfizer and invited to a rendezvous in exotic Ecuador with the girl of his long-ago prep-school dreams, he finds himself on the brink of a new life. The trouble is that Dwight can’t decide if the pills are actually working… Deep in the jungles of the Amazon, Dwight’s would-be romantic escape becomes a hilarious journey into the foreign terrain of his changed mind. Benjamin Kunkel grew up in Colorado. He has written for Dissent, The Nation, and the New York Review of Books, and is a founding editor of the magazine n+1. “The funniest and smartest coming-of-age novel in years.” –Jay McInerney, New York Times Book Review UK: Picador Brazil: Rocco Catalan: Ediciones Proa Croatia: Algoritham Holland: Lebowski France: Belfond Germany: Berlin Verlag Greece: Ellinika Grammata Israel: Kinneret Italy: Rizzoli Norway: Bazar Poland: Muza Russia: AST Spain: Destino “…Kunkel may unfairly be compared to David Foster Wallace or Rick Moody, but unlike them he has succeeded in writing a novel that’s clever without being self-conscious. Dwight’s plot never plays second-fiddle to Benjamin Kunkel’s intelligence. My advice? Read this one.” –Washington Post Book World “[This] book really knocked me out.” –Michiko Kakutani, New York Times elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Nathaniel Rich THE MAYOR’S TONGUE: A Novel Riverhead (2008) Editor: Sean McDonald In the tradition of Italo Calvino, Nathaniel Rich creates a playful, magical world of captivating characters. Two narratives follow a young man and an old man, whose adventures take them from New York City to the mountainous borderlands of north-eastern Italy, a place where the line between thought and reality dissolves and stories take on lives of their own. Over this fairy tale landscape looms the Mayor, a mythic and monstrous figure considered a “beautiful creator” by his townspeople, whose pull becomes irresistible. Nathaniel Rich’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times Magazine. Born in New York City, he now lives New Orleans. “Surprising friendships, small intimacies of fidelity and kindness, large gestures of joy: The Mayor’s Tongue does all these so well, pointing the way to Nathaniel Rich’s promise as a fiction writer.” –New York Times Book Review “The Mayor's Tongue is a playful, highly intellectual novel about serious subjects—the failure of language, for one, and how we cope with that failure in order to keep ourselves sane.” –Washington Post “This is an elegantly-structured, brilliantly-told novel, by turns terrifying, touching, and wildly funny, and always generous and magical.” –Stephen King UK: Chatto & Windus Denmark: Ordenes By Holland: Anthos Italy: Neri Pozza “The Mayor's Tongue reminds me of Peter Carey's early work—the highest possible praise. It's clear from the very first pages that Nathaniel Rich can really write...all at once impossible and endlessly elegant.” –Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin “Ambitious, intelligent, hallucinatory, and, most important: heartfelt. Here is a young writer who is not afraid to give literature a kick in the pants, a writer deep in the thrall of language.” –Gary Shtyengart, author of Super Sad True Love Story elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com William Deresiewicz A JANE AUSTEN EDUCATION: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship and the Things that Really Matter Penguin Press (2011) Editor: Ann Godoff A vindication of the women’s novel, an eloquent memoir of a young man’s life transformed by literature, and a novel-by-novel account of the life lessons that Austen has to teach us all. Before Jane Austen, William Deresiewicz was a very different young man. A sullen and arrogant graduate student, he never thought Austen would have anything to offer him. Then he read Emma—and everything changed. In this unique and lyrical book, Deresiewicz weaves the misadventures of Austen’s characters with his own youthful follies, demonstrating the power of the great novelist’s teachings—and how, for Austen, growing up and making mistakes are one and the same. Honest, erudite, and deeply moving, A Jane Austen Education is the story of one man’s discovery of the world outside himself. William Deresiewicz was an associate professor of English at Yale University until 2008 and is a widely published literary critic who writes for a popular audience. His reviews and criticism regularly appear in The New Republic, The Nation, The American Scholar, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times. In 2008 he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. “Seeing a favorite critic expound at length on a favorite author is an undersung form of literary pleasure -- as close as you can get to reading two great writers at the same time.” –Laura Miller, Salon Brazil: Rocco Italy: Tea Korea: Jaeseung Book Gold Co. Russia: Tri Sovy Taiwan: Linking Publisher “Sharp, endearingly self-effacing . . . a profound truth lies embedded in Deresiewicz’s witty account.” –The New York Times Book Review “Like Austen, Deresiewicz is lucid, principled and knows how to think as well as how to feel, without ever sacrificing one to the other…. a delightful and enlightening book. –Slate “With A Jane Austen Education, Deresiewicz writes with discerning wit and quiet perception about the lessons in friendship, empathy, honesty, happiness, and love he learns from each of Austen's immortal novels. –CHICAGO TRIBUNE elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Alisa Solomon WONDER OF WONDERS: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof Metropolitan Books (October, 2013) Editor: Riva Hocherman A sparkling and eye-opening history of the Broadway musical that changed the world. In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark. In a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past, whether in Warsaw, where it unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a story that is “so Japanese.” Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising and enduring legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition. Alisa Solomon teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the Arts & Culture concentration in the MA program. A theater critic and general reporter for The Village Voice, she has also contributed to The New York Times, The Nation, Tablet, The Forward, and other publications. Her first book, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender, won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. She lives in New York City. All rights available “As rich and dense as a chocolate babka—so crammed with tasty layers that you have to pace yourself… As brilliant a piece of reporting as I’ve read this year.” –The New York Times Book Review “The aptly-titled Wonder of Wonders is the richest, deepest, most farranging, continuously and delightfully surprising book about a single work of theatrical art I’ve ever encountered.” –Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America “Exuberant.” –The Wall Street Journal “I have always been proud of Fiddler, but never more so than after reading this astonishing book.” –Sheldon Harnick, lyricist, Fiddler on the Roof elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com Thea Goodman THE SUNSHINE WHEN SHE’S GONE: A Novel Holt (March, 2013) Editor: Barbara Jones A Redbook “Must-Read” A hilarious, touching tour de force debut about love and the transfiguring impact of parenthood. Early one frigid, January morning, a new father spontaneously flees lower Manhattan with his eight-month-old daughter for a weekend in the Caribbean. It wasn’t a kidnapping, he wasn’t leaving his wife. John just wanted to give her a chance to sleep. When Veronica awakes, truly rested for the first time in nearly a year, she feels great – and embarks on a city adventure as misguided in its own way as her husband’s impulsive escape. Told from the couple’s alternating points of view, the story unfolds across one life-changing long weekend. Veronica tries to recapture who she was before the baby. John struggles to care for his daughter – far from the special homemade formula and high-end diapers she requires. Young professionals, John and Veronica both face the same question: how do you square the person you thought you were with the awesome responsibility of a new baby? It is a story about sacrifice and survival, but a love story all the same. Thea Goodman has received the Columbia Fiction Award, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and fellowships at Yaddo and Ragdale; her short stories have appeared in the New England Review, Other Voices and Columbia. Born in New York City, she holds an MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, and has taught writing at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children. “Sharp, intuitive, and empathetic. . . Goodman offers a wickedly incisive take on the pressures of parenthood and the resiliency of marital trust.” –Booklist All rights available “Snug and elegant. . . Goodman, a prodigiously talented first-time novelist, distils the keen drama of first-time parenting.” –Gemma Sieff, Town and Country “Thea Goodman shines in The Sunshine When She’s Gone.” –Vanity Fair “[A] page-turning portrait of a couple in crisis.” –Vogue.com (a Spring Breakout Debut) elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com elyse cheney literary associates, llc / alexander jacobs / alex@cheneyliterary.com
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