The Hot Seven from Perseus

It is too hot out. The heat is frying my brain, and bringing me shamefully close to some cheesy, morning-radio-caliber metaphors for the publicity hits we’ve been getting this week. So with very little fanfare, let me give you the “Hot 7” from Perseus (that’s not a weather reference!) – a quick list of titles that are seeing some good action:

Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (Nation Books, 9781568584232): we’re thrilled to be getting a boost from that unlikeliest of Oprahs, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. Since he gave President Obama a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America, interest in this great writer has spiked. Justifiably: as the LA Times assessed, he “deserves mention alongside John Dos Passos, Bernard DeVoto, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” Pleased to be able to pounce on the interest, Nation Books has pushed up its publication of Mr. Galeano’s newest opus, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, for an early release, May 5; we’ve also confirmed that Mr. Galeano will appear on “Bill Moyers’ Journal” on PBS. I’ve attached a little sell sheet the folks at Nation have put together, highlighting Mr. Galeano’s superb reputation and some of the new publicity. We’ve been getting a lot of interest from the national accounts (including, astoundingly, airports!), and have just gone back to press for another 10,000 copies – as many of those as you like can be yours! I’ve also got a couple galleys still lying around - let me know if you’d like one.

Daniela Drake and Elizabeth Ford, Smart Girls Marry Money (Running Press, 9780762435173): I’d love to see Eduardo Galeano on Oprah; until that happens, though, I’ll settle for Ms. Drake and Ms. Ford. They’ll visit with Ms. Winfrey on Friday, April 24, through the magic of Skype. They will be the focus of the “Hot Topics” segment – this is the same segment that launched the hysteria over Oprah Twittering. It gets attention. Ideally, this would have come next week, but Ms. Winfrey is not a woman to be kept waiting, so it’s turning into a big publicity hit before the book is quite available. Some of you might have it in time; the rest will get it next week. But this gives the book a good push out of the gate, and gives the Running Press publicity department a good springboard – as you’ll see on the attached sheet. Please don’t be shy on this one.

Alec Russell, Bring Me My Machine Gun: the Battle for the Soul of South Africa, from Mandela to Zuma (PublicAffairs, 9781586487386): South Africa holds elections Wednesday. Alec Russell has been the recent point person for a rundown on what lies in store under the leadership of the controversial Jacob Zuma, who is sure to win in a landslide. Mr. Russell had an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook; he was interviewed yesterday on NPR’s “Morning Edition;” he was interviewed today (Tuesday) on PRI’s “The World;” and, of course, he has written this fine book. The Economist raves: “It is a relief to view South Africa’s past two decades through Alec Russell’s gentler, insightful, sometimes humorous, sometimes bleak, but always kaleidoscopic prism. He robustly addresses the doleful issues of governance…. But his portrait of South Africa, alive with delicious vignettes across a range of humanity, is more nuanced—and more readable.” And in the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Kaminski calls it “an engaging chronicle of the post-apartheid years… nuanced.”

Dara Chadwick, You’d Be So Pretty If…: Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies Even When We Don’t Love Our Own (Da Capo, 9780738212586): the producers at the “Today Show” were so impressed with Ms. Chadwick that they’ve bumped their segment on her book up from May 1 to April 29 (next Wednesday). They’ll be interviewing Ms. Chadwick and her daughter, and introducing the segment with a longer string of interviews with Moms on the Street. It should be a good segment, and will definitely raise the profile of this paperback original. Please check to be sure you have it in stock.

Mark Arax, West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State (PublicAffairs, 9781586483906): a great weekend out of the gate for this. Item 1, the San Francisco Chronicle review: “As a native Californian with deep roots in both Northern and Southern California, Arax is the perfect cicerone through the heavenly and hellish landscapes and historical evolutions he has chosen to chronicle. He does not shy away from the gritty or the infernal, but is also alive to the incredible riches of this continually unfolding promised land. A longtime newspaper and magazine feature writer, he has a nose for a good story, and in this book, freed from the constraints dictated by those media, he has the time and space to follow up on multiple angles where they will be fruitful. So the tales here are never hurried but unfolded in a measured, controlled manner for maximum context and texture.” Item 2, the LA Times review: “Arax is trying to put his finger on the shifting nature of the place where he grew up and to which, as an adult, he returned…. [L]ike all good reporters, he has the knack of putting us there, fixing an era and making us reassess our relationship to an economic and geographic landscape that never stops changing.” Item 3, a feature article in the San Diego Union Tribune, praising its mix of “the rigor of investigative journalism and the personal voice of a memoir.” And if you want a better taste of what exactly they mean, you can listen to Scott Shafer’s interview with Mr. Arax on “The California Report,” airing on a public radio station near you (and online: http://www.kqed.org/servlets/playClip?programId=RD8&episodeId=R904171630&segment=ca). And to all of you who got this on the SCIBA Bestseller List last week, our hearty thanks!

Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran, 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (Basic, 9780465002214): Saturday’s LA Times ran a feature article on Drs. Harpending and Cochran, and the research that is chronicled in this book. The article focused on one of the more attention-getting claims – in the Times’s words, “Ashkenazi Jews have a higher rate of some deadly genetic diseases -- and of high IQs. Scientists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending say that's no coincidence.” (You can see the entire piece here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-jewish-iq18-2009apr18,0,2228388.story.) For a while, this was the most e-mailed article on the website, and it has since been picked up by papers across the country. Yahoo news ran a similar article from McClatchy newspapers.

Francis Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic, 9780465013623): the “Science Times” section of the New York Times ran an outstanding Q & A with Dr. Wrangham this morning…and I subsequently got some galley requests! (I choose to believe that that’s because the book sounds interesting, not because Dr. Wrangham mentioned that Jane Goodall once prohibited him from running around naked with a bunch of chimpanzees.) The book is to be published in May (at the same time as Mirrors), and has been assigned for review at numerous papers and magazines. I think it will get noticed. Get ready!

So there you have it – a strong lineup indeed. Let me know if you can use more of anything…and stay cool.