I received a BA in American History at Columbia University and I have a strong interest in science, politics, education, pop culture, natural history, narrative nonfiction, music, and biography. My main focus is nonfiction, but I do occasionally acquire works of literary fiction, literary graphic novels and literature in translation, especially from Spanish.

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Spring 2010

The Blue Moment, Richard Williams – Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” the most popular jazz record of all time, is also notoriously, the only jazz album many people own. The Blue Moment evokes the essence of the music – identifying the qualities that make it so appealing – while drawing effortless connections to painting, literature, philosophy and poetry.

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt, Darren Dochuk – A history of the evangelical movement in Southern California from the 1930s to the Reagan presidential victory in 1980. Based on entirely new research, the manuscript has already won the prestigious Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians.

Fall/Winter 2009/2010

The Autobiography of Fidel Castro, Norberto Fuentes – famed Cuban writer Fuentes (Hemingway in Cuba, among others) presents an audacious biography of the ex-president of Cuba told in Castro’s own outrageous, bombastic voice. Akin to Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, the book is as imaginative and outsized as Castro himself.

Spring 2009

Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked, Ivan Vladislavi? – a shattering portrait of South Africa’s most fascinating city, as transporting as works by Ryszard Kapu?ci?ski or Jan Morris

In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan, Seth Jones – the definitive account of the American tragedy in Afghanistan from 2000-2008 by a Georgetown professor and Afghanistan expert.

The Annotated Wind in the Willows, Annie Gauger, with hundreds of original illustrations and notes, including an introduction on the history of the novel, this will be the definitive edition of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s story.

The Great Perhaps: A Novel, Joe Meno – Author of the cult bestseller Hairstyles of the Damned, Meno breaks out with this story of a Chicago family – two bumbling professors, two strange daughters, and a grandfather limiting himself to thirteen words a day, then twelve, then eleven, one less each day until he will speak no more.

Climate Change: Picturing the Science, Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe, foreword by Jeffrey D. Sachs – a leading NASA climate scientist and a master photographer present an unprecedented union of scientific analysis and stunning photography illustrating the effects of climate change on the global ecosystem. Winner of the Sierra Club Ansel Adams award for photography.

Fall/Winter 2008/2009

Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton – An arts journalists and contributor to Artforum and The New Yorker, Thornton presents a narrative journey through the booming international art market and the high-stakes global culture of production, criticism, buying, and selling that surrounds it. (Sold in eleven countries, B&N Discover pick.)

The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Paul Dickson – the definitive dictionary of the baseball lexicon, including new information on fantasy baseball, Latin American baseball, and SABR-metrics. Featured on All Things Considered (NPR).

Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill – Costa Award winner / New York Times bestseller. A memoir from famed British editor Diana Athill, examining aging with warmth and intelligence, and only a few, keenly-felt regrets.

Forthcoming

A Dog’s Funeral Thomas Pletzinger (trans. Ross Benjamin) – Journalist Daniel Mandelkern leaves Hamburg to interview a reclusive children’s author in Switzerland. Stumbling on a manuscript that tells of a complicated affair from Brazil to New York, this brilliantly plotted novel heralds a new German voice, reminiscent of Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safron Foer.

The Chitlin’ Circuit, Preston Lauterbach – a pop-cultural history of the black nightclubs and juke joints—an extraordinary underground network of clubs and conmen that “has managed to avoid much examination despite its embarrassment of brash characters, its intriguing plotlines and its vulgar glory... simply put, the chitlin’ circuit is the wrong kind of black.”

The Baroness of Bungo: An African Woman Slaver and the Illegal Atlantic Slave Trade, Lynne Duke – a former Johannesburg correspondent for the Washington Post, Duke is researching anatomy of the nineteenth-century pirate slave trade told through the hitherto neglected biography of Ana Joaquina dos Santos Silva, a fiery, enigmatic mulatta whose ships plied the waters from America and the Indies to Brazil and mainland Europe, often under illegal flag.

The Ayatollah’s Democracy, Hooman Majd – GQ, New Yorker, and New York Observer contributor Hooman Majd follows his acclaimed The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (An Economist and Los Angeles Times best book of 2008) with a new look at Iranian global influence and the paradox of Islamic democracy.
Climbing the American Mountain, Maurice Isserman – the author of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (a New York Times Notable Book in 2000) and Fallen Giants on Himalayan mountaineering (a finalist for several prizes) is writing a magisterial history of American mountaineering and its symbolic importance on our national culture.

The Cosmopolitan Canopy, Elijah Anderson – the acclaimed author of Code of the Street, now a distinguished professor at Yale, explores public spaces in which people of all classes and races interact (the “Cosmopolitan Canopy”) taking a nuanced and considered look at how race is lived in America today.

Saving Gotham: Thomas Frieden and the Fight for Public Health in New York City, Tom Farley, MD –The story of Farley’s year advising the manic, distractible, visionary Frieden, whose radical bans on smoking and trans-fats ushered in what may be the most audacious period of public health administration in American history.

Titanic Thompson: The True Story of a Card-Sharking, Gun-Slinging, Golf-Hustling American Legend, Kevin Cook – Alvin “Titanic” Thompson traveled with his golf clubs, a .45 revolver, and suitcase full of cash. He became a millionaire and lost it; he married five women and murdered five men. Cook’s rollicking biography captures the mood and energy of a freewheeling era and the man who gambled with Rothstein, conned Capone, and inspired Runyon’s “Guys and Dolls.”

The Measure of Manhattan: John Randel and the Surveying of America, Marguerite Holloway – a Columbia School of Journalism professor and frequent contributor to Scientific American presents the first biography of this misunderstood genius – a prismatic, historical look at conservation, city planning, and the science and symbolism of surveying.

Civil War Sketch Book, by Harry Katz and Vincent Virga, former Library of Congress photography curators present an elegant, heavily illustrated book on the Civil War illustrators, the “Specials,” like Winslow Homer and Alfred Waud, who illustrated the war for the American public. Tied to a traveling exhibition for the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War in 2011.

Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, Richard Aldous – A revisionist new telling of this uneasy Cold War alliance, by the acclaimed author of Gladstone-Disraeli biography, The Lion and the Unicorn

The Jazz Baroness: The Life and Times of Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, David Kastin – a biography of the British heiress and World War II heroine who reined as patron of the bebop masters and presided at the center of the mid-twentieth-century avant-garde arts scene in New York

On the Ropes, James Vance and Dan Burr – graphic novel, the sequel to the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning Kings in Disguise. A novel about dreams, politics, and growing up, set in the Great Depression.