In the News, March 2010
Posted 03.11.10: Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System is #28 on the New York Times Best Seller list for the week of March 21st.
Posted 03.03.10: Diane Ravitch and her just published The Death and Life of the Great American School System are the subjects of a major article in today's New York Times, "Scholar's School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate," and of pieces in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, American Prospect, Forbes.com, and Slate.
Posted 03.02.10: Publishers Weekly on Victor Davis Hanson (“a major commentator on war making and politics”) and his forthcoming The Father of Us All, “A masterpiece of envelope pushing, and a comprehensive and dazzling analysis of why America fights as she does…. The pieces are well written, sometimes elegantly so, and closely reasoned. They address familiar material from original and stimulating perspectives…. His critics and admirers will be pleased to have these pieces available under one cover.” Bloomsbury Press publishes in May.
Posted 02.26.10: Marc A. Thiessen's Courting Disaster returns to the New York Times Best Seller list at #34 on the extended list for the week of Feb. 28th and at #35 for the week of March 7th. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden (and former NSA director and retired four-star general) has called Courting Disaster a must-read.
Posted 02.08.10: Marc A. Thiessen's Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack is #6 on The Washington Post bestseller list, #9 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and #14 on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list. Regnery published January 18th.
Posted 02.07.10: From Library Journal's starred review of The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch: "An important and highly readable examination of the educational system, how it fails to prepare students for life after graduation, and how we can put it back on track…. Anyone interested in education should definitely read this accessible, riveting book." Basic Books publishes next month.
Posted 01.15.10: Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong is #32 on this week's New York Times Best Seller list.
Posted 01.11.10: Gordon S. Wood reviewing Crisis and Command in The National Interest: "John Yoo has set out to explain what has happened to presidential power since its beginnings in 1789. Yoo is a professor of law at Berkeley and the author of some controversial memos as a member of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice in the administration of George W. Bush. Since Yoo's robust view of presidential power is well-known, any history of the presidency written by him might initially seem suspect and agenda driven. He realizes only too well that his book is apt to be read ‘as a brief for the Bush administration's exercise of executive authority in the war on terrorism.' But if it is a brief for an expansive understanding of presidential authority, it is a remarkably persuasive one. Although Yoo has mastered an extraordinary number of historical and political science studies of the American presidency, his book is not a full-blown account of the presidency from its beginnings to the present, including all its personal and political aspects; that would make for a far bigger and different book. Instead, Yoo's account is a highly focused and nicely compressed constitutional history of the office.”
Posted 12.22.09: Very Important Notice to all Writers' Reps clients:
The Southern District Court of New York has ordered the Opt Out date to the Google Book Settlement extended to January 28, 2010. We urge all of our clients, indeed all authors, to take advantage of this new opportunity to opt themselves out. While we continue to believe that the use of the opt out process chosen by these litigants is unconstitutional and a violation of copyright, we urge all clients to Opt Out anyway—as soon as possible. The Google Book Settlement is not a good deal for anyone. It compromises your very important future legal rights and the value of your economic rights in your copyrights. There is no predicting how much if any of this proposed settlement will survive further court scrutiny on grounds of lack of due process or other violations of law, so it is best for you to be safe rather than sorry. We are confident that Opting Out will not prejudice your future ability to get an as-good or far better deal than this with Google, should you ever choose to publish on Google in the future. For Google to discriminate against you in that way is likely in itself to be illegal on antitrust price-discrimination or other theories of law. Opting Out can be done by logging onto googlebooksettlement.com and registering your name and contact data under the “Opt Out” selection link. Note that there is no longer any requirement to list all one's works, or all other authors' works in which your works appear, due to the many objections that we and others have raised to this entire process. So, to avoid inconvenience to yourself, and to avert the possibility that only such works you actually list are considered to be effectively opted out, we suggest that you simply post the following notice in the box requesting information about works: “This opt out request should be considered to apply to all works whatsoever of mine that appear in any and all books either by myself or by others.” We believe this will be effective in putting the burden back where it belongs, on the publisher, to inform YOU of what precise uses it wishes to make of your work, and to make it clear that they may proceed to use your work without your clear written authorization, at peril of all your rights and remedies at law.