More publishers exist to perpetuate myths-about celebrity, self-help, money-making, politics, history-than to dispel them, Americans apparently preferring their book reading soft-core and, sometimes foolishly, trusting newspapers and other forms of journalism for factual information. It was in order to counter this trend that the journalist Lawrence Lifschultz and his wife, Rabia Ali, a scholar of Read More
“I’ve always operated on the principle that I have nothing to lose,” said Lucianne Goldberg, by phone, on Jan. 27, the day after The Transom followed her around a Manhattan book party. She said that she was using that attitude to “help Linda”-meaning of course Linda Tripp, the lady who taped blabbing ex-White House intern Read More
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Los Angeles, another soap opera of revenge and recrimination has overtaken the city. This time, a feud of Spellingesque proportions-a serial drama of tarnished reputations, an atavistic confrontation between high and low culture-involves a world usually studiously ignored there: publishing. And at the red-hot Read More
In a genre that was already going stale around the edges, the publication in 1994 of Lucy Grealy’s memoir of growing up with a face disfigured by a childhood bout of cancer, Autobiography of a Face , was greeted with relief and praise. Around the same time, at the other end of the publishing spectrum, Read More
There is no greater social trespass in New York than being out of step with the times, and the annual gala of Poets & Writers Inc. on Dec. 9 had the slightly confused air of a holdover from another era. The dinner and awards ceremony was one of those uptown-meets-downtown affairs-held at the Puck Building, Read More
To hear some of his colleagues tell it, Harold Evans saw Ann Godoff coming a mile away, and planned accordingly. But then, so did she.
Long before Nov. 25, the day he announced he was stepping down as president and publisher of Random House Inc. to become editorial director of Mortimer Zuckerman’s mini-media empire, the Read More
When publishing toffs and literary celebrities opened their invitations to the 48th National Book Awards ceremony this fall and saw the words “Marriott Marquis,” an audible sniff was heard. But they got over themselves, and on the evening of Nov. 18, they gamely made their way to Times Square to mark a year of bombs Read More
Steven Spielberg’s heart bleeds for many worthy causes, and as a filmmaker he has tried to resurrect some woefully neglected chapters in the history of human rights. But on Oct. 17, a $10 million copyright-infringement suit was filed by novelist Barbara Chase-Riboud against his studio, Dreamworks SKG, in United States District Court in Los Angeles, Read More
The pressure cooker that is the annual Frankfurt Book Fair-9,600 companies from 106 countries in 184,000 square meters of crisp German convention center-reached its boiling point around 2 P.M. on Day 3 of the weeklong event. Alberto Vitale, chief executive of Random House Inc., was trying to add yet more meetings to those already scheduled Read More
Simon & Schuster Inc. could be kicking itself about a book it canceled, but the somewhat unlikely success of Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb hasn’t left its author, Bernard Lefkowitz, particularly happy, either. Despite front-page attention and a favorable review by Russell Banks in The New Read More
