Reads for radicals...and most everyone else, too

It has been a real joy to have Nation Books as part of the Perseus Books Group. We started off with quite a bang (forgive the choice of words): it was shortly after Nation came aboard that Blackwater USA guards were involved in a massacre of civilians on Baghdad streets -- this gave Jeremy Scahill's excellent book it's second surge of national interest. Blackwater's recent return to the news (and our book's attendant sales boost) has got me thinking about how Nation books succeed, and about the particularly strong lineup we've had this summer and fall.

Since I discussed Blackwater last week, I'll here add only a reminder that that book was selling extraordinarily well even before the national media caught on -- it had been out for 6 months when the September 2007 shootings occurred. What we had going for us then are the same things we count on now: bookseller attention and enthusiasm, and a great online publicity program. A few Nation Books have broken into the mainstream conversation already this summer, but even those that haven't offer lots to be excited about.

The book that I think generated the most bookseller interest last season was Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (9781568584232). This has been a great success, hitting the indie bestseller lists up and down our coast; and now it is finally getting the major media attention it deserves. Hopefully you saw the review in yesterday's New York Times:

Galeano's prose is nearly lulling in its lyricism, a quality that gives it an over­ridingly shamanic tone. His powerful voice reminds us, over and over again, of the responsibility of writers to be constantly in search of new forms of expression that may draw us out of our complacency, as he does so eloquently here. As in his previous books, he succeeds in capturing the bottomless horror of the state’s capacity to inflict pain on the individual, offering as effective an act of political dissent as exists anywhere in contemporary literature.

And in a very nice one-two punch, that was followed by NPR's "Morning Edition" earlier today. It's been a great pleasure to have Mr. Galeano on our list - and it looks like we will be reissuing some of his earlier works in the Spring, which is again a cause for celebration.

"Bottomless horror" sometimes seems the specialty of Nation Books. An odd specialty, it's true, but it does provide wonders: recently among them is Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (9781568584379), a true jeremiad against America's retreat from reality, and our diminishing ability to engage in, or even imagine, the serious discussion necessary for a functional democracy. Apparently, Mr. Hedges' revulsion at our national obsessions with fantastic spectacle has struck a chord -- even without major national review attention we've seen it hit the New York Times extended list. That's a credit to your efforts - thanks.

More in that vein - if with a somewhat lighter touch - is landing now, in Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (9781568583983). Perhaps because there is more genuine fascination and less out and out revulsion in its pages, Mr. Blumenthal's book is already getting the kind of attention we strangely had to wait for for Messrs. Galeano and Hedges: on top of a plethora of on-line activity (Daily Beast, TPM, crooksandliars, etc.), we 've locked up a September 10th appearance on "Fresh Air."

It's hard to imagine us topping that publicity lineup right out of the gate, but we do still have a couple real treasures on the way this fall. In late November, we'll publish a career capping opus from the wily old rabble rouser John Ross: El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City (9781568584249). You're in for a rollicking good time with this one, in the company of Beatniks and drug lords and other assorted reprobates. It's a love song to the city that has arisen at what the Aztecs called "the umbilicus of the universe," touched by sorrow at the loss of its demimonde, and awe at how this intense metopolis continually picks itself up, buries its dead, and forges insolently ahead. In his attention to the people whose stories are nearly always ignored, Mr. Ross is a kind of marvelous and peculiarly American cousin to Mr. Galeano.

And finally, this October, we'll publish what was to me the most surprising and affecting of them all: Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam (9781568584058), by Wayne Karlin. The odds are good you've heard me sing in praise of this already, so i'll keep this short. This belongs in the company of Tim O'Brien's books, not only because it is a unique, wise, and moving look at the Viet Nam war and its aftermath, but because of the quality of the writing. It takes a kind of magic (the consolation of art?) to bring uplift out of such a grim story, but this manages to do it -- almost literally putting the ghosts to rest. It is simply magnificent, my favorite book of the fall, and absolutely worth reading right now.