Authors/Books/Links

The Robert E. Shepard Agency is proud of its authors and their accomplishments. Here's a list of many of the Agency's published and forthcoming projects, plus seasonal features. You may order any of the published books by clicking on its jacket or title. You'll also find useful links below for book and publishing sites and sites related to the San Francisco Bay Area, the Agency's home since 1994. Look for "Works in Progress" to find out about our authors' next books.

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The Latest Titles

The Foie Gras Wars

How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired

The World's Fiercest Food Fight

by Mark Caro

"An admirably fair-minded yet always engaging account from the front lines of the Culture War. . . a must-have." --Anthony Bourdain, chef and author of Kitchen Confidential

"Essential reading for anyone who is interested in the ethics of using animals for food."--Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation and Animals Make us Human

 

When celebrity chef Charlie Trotter stopped serving foie gras at his legendary Chicago restaurant, he inadvertently triggered a controversy that engulfed chefs nationwide. The Foie Gras Wars pitted animal rights activists against foie gras producers and politicians against food writers, triggering a war of words, sabotage, and even death threats (Trotter jokingly suggested eating the liver of one of his rivals). And all because of a front page Chicago Tribune story by Mark Caro, which won a James Beard Foundation citation and led to Chicago's landmark, on-again/off-again foie gras ban. Then the controversy spread; similar legislation was introduced in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California, where foie gras will be history by 2012, and Philadelphia became another battleground, with activists picketing restaurants. In The Foie Gras Wars, Caro expands on the darkly comic story of the battle to explore the larger issues it raises. In many ways, foie gras was a convenient symbol: It was easy to support banning a dish that practically no one but rich snobs seemed to eat, especially if it involved torturing cute ducks. But were the ducks really tortured? And what about the chickens, cows, and pigs that people continued to eat every day, most of which endured a much more painful existence than the ducks used in foie gras? Was it right to draw lines, or was it wrong to eat all animals? And what did the French artisans who still produce foie gras the traditional way have to say about the controversy playing out on our side of the Atlantic? The Foie Gras Wars picks up where Fast Food Nation left off, an entertaining story that shows us not only how we decide what to eat but why we so often look the other way when faced with inconvenient truths about our food. Mark Caro is an award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune and was one of its two film critics from 1995 to 2004. He lives near Chicago with his wife and their two daughters.

 

Big Boy Rules

America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq

by Steve Fainaru

Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting

"An informative, dramatic look at a significant, often unexamined, aspect of contemporary military culture." --Kirkus Reviews

"Vivid reportage." --Publishers Weekly

"Steve Fainaru tells a story that is at the heart of the war in Iraq: the U.S. military's unprecedented reliance on mercenaries. It is a dark tale that until now has remained largely untold, and is related brilliantly here. To understand this war, you must read this book." --Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco

Steve Fainaru's 2008 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, followed closely by the Hal Boyle Award from the Overseas Press Club, capped an already-illustrious career as a journalist. His new book, Big Boy Rules (Da Capo Press) is destined to become another milestone. In this important narrative work, Steve describes the dangerous, poignant, often insane and always fascinating lives of men who have become known as "security contractors," Americans who have traded the safety of home for the unpredictability of life in Iraq. No one knows exactly how many of these mercenaries are at work, but they have become an alternative army, and they approach their work with different motivations: some for money, some to leave behind lives of failure and confusion, and some because they actually like shooting people. Steve joined a group of contractors on the highways of Iraq as they went about their business--which frequently included standing in for our regular military in places the generals have judged too dangerous for ordinary, sane soldiers. Along the way, though, he found the humanity--and even the dark humor--of these least-described men on America's frontline in Iraq. Like Fight Club mixed with Band of Brothers, Big Boy Rules is a powerful, shocking vivid, strange, and sometimes strangely funny narrative about American men on the fringes of war--and just plain on the fringes.

 

 

Art Deco San Francisco

The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger

by Therese Poletti

 

Therese Poletti has created a masterful homage to one of the West Coast's greatest--yet largely unsung--20th century architects, with Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger, published in October by Princeton Architectural Press. The work is only enhanced by Tom Paiva's magnificent photographs, along with many rare archival illustrations. Curiously missing from architectural literature until now, Timothy Pflueger (1894-1946) was a defining force in building modern San Francisco. His famous buildings go way back to the palatial Castro movie theater of 1922 and include many other movie theaters (including Oakland's beautifully restored Paramount), but his skyscrapers are among the best known on the San Francisco skyline. They include the Pacific Telephone tower, the 1928 "doctors' tower" at 450 Sutter Street in San Francisco, and the luxurious Pacific Stock Exchange Tower. Indeed, one of the greatest testaments to the quality and versatility of his work is the number of his creations that still exist. One need only drive over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, America's busiest toll crossing to this day, to understand Pflueger's indispensability. Some of his constructions are sadly lost, including the fantasia he created at the San Francisco World's Fair of 1939-40 and the St. Francis Hotel's Patent Leather Bar, but they survive in photographs by Ansel Adams, among others, that are featured in this lavish book. An architectural tour guide to San Francisco in her spare time, Therese Poletti is an award-winning technology columnist for Marketwatch.com and previously wrote for the San Jose Mercury News. She holds a master's degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism and lives in San Francisco.

A Few Seconds of Panic

A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL

by Stefan Fatsis

 

"An incredibly fascinating read"--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"A smart, funny, and relentlessly entertaining look at the strange, scary world of professional football"  --Will Leitch, author of God Save the Fan and editor of Deadspin

In his last narrative work, Stefan Fatsis immersed himself in the surprisingly dark world of obsessive Scrabble players and chronicled his journey in the international bestseller Word Freak. In A Few Seconds of Panic, he turns to a very different kind of game--pro football--and puts both mind and body to an incredible test: rebuilding his body and training with the NFL Denver Broncos to become a pro-grade kicker. He's unlike his teammates in some ways, but remarkably like them in many others, risking crippling injury, enduring the hazing that befalls all rookies, and slogging through twice-daily practices in blistering heat. And he begins to think like one of them, as well. Along the way, he finds out about a remarkable community of players who are seldom seen by fans: the kickers who enter the gridiron to do one thing and must do it perfectly every single time. Not since George Plimpton's Paper Lion, more than 40 years ago, has an author tunneled so deeply into the NFL, a league much transformed in the decades since that classic book. Fatsis suits up and goes on the field, but not before undergoing a physical and even a spiritual transformation Plimpton could never have imagined. With wry candor and hard-won empathy, A Few Seconds of Panic unveils the mind of the modern pro athlete and the workings of a storied sports franchise as no book has before. Stefan Fatsis, was a staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal covering the business of sports. He contributes sports commentaries every Friday afternoon on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and has also appeared as a commentator on ESPN. In addition to Word Freak, he is previously the author of Wild and Outside.

The Exhaustion Cure

Up Your Energy from Low to Go in 21 Days

by Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro

If you're like millions of people, you get home from a long day with barely enough energy to lift the remote control. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that fatigue and lack of energy affect more than 14 million people in the prime of life. We're not talking about people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but otherwise-healthy people who just don't have enough energy to do everything they want or need to do. People who lack energy can't work on big projects at work or home without the drive or desire--the oomph--to be productive.  Just think of all the wonderful business and personal goals people could accomplish if they only had the energy to get up and go!  The Exhaustion Cure, written for people who have too much to do and not enough energy to do it, teaches us how to eliminate the "energy bandits" that trip us up in all aspects of our lives, from our diets and work schedules to our relationships and leisure time. Then, we can at last find the energy we need to attain a full and productive lifestyle-- in 21 days! Anyone who must be productive, in any arena, will benefit from this upbeat book, from professionals to stay-at-home parents to retirees and college students. Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro addresses scores of corporate and organizational audiences a year, including Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Lucent, IBM, and Lockheed Martin. She is a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, and Day-Timer, which recently named a line of planners for her. Laura is an officer of the National Speakers Association and was vice-chair of the national Meetings Industry Council. She lives near Denver.  Visit Laura's website at www.theproductivitypro.com.

American Band

Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland

by Kristen Laine

 

Every year, three million teenagers take part in a unique American tradition, playing and marching in high school bands. The best, as Kristen Laine shows in American Band, published by Gotham Books (with a paperback due this fall), are serious in a way few of us appreciate. They spend all year preparing to compete against each other before expert judges, for state titles and national championships, striving for an almost unreachable ideal. And nowhere is "band" more serious than at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, where the entire community is involved in the success of the defending state champions, and the band director demands--and gets--perfection. In the state where high school bands may have originated, in the city that was the "band instrument capital of the world," band trumps football, basketball, and everything else as the centerpiece and rallying point for the community. It is almost a religion, and not the only religion in Kristen Laine's powerful, emotional narrative. American Band is also about the profound and changing role faith plays in a typical heartland community. Above all, it shows how "ordinary" teenagers and adults prove to be anything but ordinary. Kristen Laine is a writer, editor, and Indiana native who returned to her home state after 25 years to research this book. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she won the Fiction Prize at the University of Wisconsin, where she earned her M.A. in English and American Literature. She is a regular contributor to Vermont Public Radio, and lives with her husband and children in western New Hampshire. Read more about Kristen Laine and American Band, including photos and music, at www.americanbandbook.com.

"Kristen Laine's American Band is about much more than a season in the life of the .... Marching Minutemen. It is also the story of America--the America of Norman Rockwell and Chevy trucks and apple pies left to cool on windowsills...A remarkable job of journalism."--Seattle Times

"American Band has everything going for it, from tempo to heart to the grand bittersweet finale. What a gift for readers: a pitch-perfect tribute to kids and song and community."--Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle

"Kristen Laine has produced a captivating portrait of what it's like to be a teenager in middle America in the first part of the twenty-first century."--Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic

 

Your Symptoms are Real

What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong

by Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.

Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D. is the nation's leading expert on the "unexplained illnesses" tht plague 5 million American patients a year--patients who are frustrated when they receive a diagnosis of "There's nothing wrong with you" from physician after physician and specialist after specialist. Most of these patients are women, and the epidemic of discomfort caused by chronic fatigue, pain, difficulty concentrating, poor sleep, and other symptoms now accounts for nearly a quarter of all visits to doctors. In Your Symptoms are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong, Dr. Natelson shares the techniques he has used to help more than 1500 of his own patients get well--or at least feel much better--often after they spent years in this frustrating state of medical limbo. He shows readers how to communicate with doctors in the most effective way, explains what doctors really know about symptoms that don't fit the textbook definitions for CFS, Fibromyalgia, and other often-misdiagnosed illnesses, and shows how the symptoms for these and other conditions frequently overlap, further leading doctors astray. He shares a comprehensive program of exercise, coaching, stress reduction, sleep improvement, and even some alternative medical treatments that can help patients find great relief. And, in one of the book's most significant departures, he takes his colleagues to task for failing to respond adequately to patients' needs. Published by John Wiley & Sons. Dr. Benjamin Natelson has unmatched credentials as an authority on medically unexplained illnesses. He is professor of neurosciences at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Director of the New Jersey Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Fibromyalgia Center, which is devoted to patient care in these areas. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and its medical school, he is the author of two previous books.

"Thank God for this book. It provides the help that millions of Americans with 'silent illnesses' like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia have been waiting for. Dr. Natelson is a brilliant and compassionate clinician who covers the best treatments that medical science has to offer, along with a thorough consideration of complementary approaches. Short of cloning him, this book offers the specific help you need to work in partnership with your own physician."--Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind

The Rough Guide to Climate Change

2nd Edition

by Robert Henson

The Rough Guide to Climate Change is quite possibly the most important title published in the internationally acclaimed Rough Guides series' 25 years. Just a year after its worldwide-bestseller debut, it's been completely revised and updated for a new 2008 edition. Robert Henson provides a complete and unbiased guide to one of the most pressing problems facing humanity: global warming. From the current situation and background science to the government skeptics and possible solutions, this book covers the whole subject, including visible symptoms of change from the warming of the planet, what computer simulations of our climate reveal about our past, present, and future, what the skeptics say and their grounds for disagreeing with the scientific majority, and that most basic subject of all: how global warming really works. The book not only reviews the last several decades of media coverage of this complex set of issues, separating fact from fiction, but also describes solutions, including what governments and scientists are doing to try and solve the problem. The guide also includes lifestyle advice and tips for consumers who want to make a difference in tomorrow's climate, and comes complete with a glossary of websites for further information. The Rough Guide to Climate Change achieved notoriety last year when more than half the British House of Commons (including then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and Conservative Party leader David Cameron) responded to surveys on global warming that had accompanied copies of the book sent to them by the publisher. Robert Henson, a meteorologist by training, is also a writer/editor at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, one of the world's premier centers of weather research.

"At last, just what we've long needed: an authoritative, no-hysterics guide for climate crises to come. Bob Henson is one of the world's clearest and most engaging writers on the atmospheric sciences. "--Keay Davidson, author of Carl Sagan: A Life

"Scientifically up-to-date and clearly written, this courageous book cuts through mystery and controversy to explain climate change for readers who prefer facts. " --Richard Somerville, Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Also by Robert Henson

Robert Henson was honored as one of six shortlisted authors in the Royal Society's annual science book awards, considered the world's most prestigious prizes in the field. A new edition of his other Rough Guides title, The Rough Guide to Weather, was published in 2008. Whether you're one of millions of weather hobbyists, a traveler seeking climate details for Moscow or Buenos Aires, or simply curious about those charts on the evening news, this comprehensive book is perfect for you. Henson describes the differences between hail and sleet, hurricanes and tornadoes, and many more weather conditions, common and uncommon. He also provides detailed weather and climate data on more than 200 top travel destinations worldwide. Fully illustrated.

Find Your Focus Zone

by Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D.

Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D. literally wrote the book on the "Edison Trait," a term that describes children whose inability to pay attention masks dazzling intelligence and an active imagination. So it's no surprise that her latest book is for and about the millions of people--just about all of us--who must fight to pay attention in a world full of distractions, from digital gadgets and the Internet to the usual background noise in our homes and offices. In Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload, Dr. Palladino distills the latest research and makes the best new psychological tools accessible to everyone. She provides eight "keychains" that will help you find your personal focus zone by developing new emotional, mental, and behavior skills--plus the three keys that will help you unlock your potential in each of these areas. Imagine feeling confident that when co-workers interrupt your work, ads pop-up on your computer screen, and impulses jump into your brain, you'll still stay focused and get your work done on time. Picture knowing that the people you care about are secure in knowing how much you care because you listen attentively. If you are a parent, see yourself setting a good example for your child. Envision taking charge of the way others see you, because you have more awareness of how you look to them. Find Your Focus Zone will help you beat procrastination and face boring jobs; overcome obstacles and finish what you start; prevent overwhelm and burnout; build trust in your close relationships; boost your self-confidence; and increase your efficiency and effectiveness--all by paying better attention. This wonderfully helpful book is published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster. Visit Dr. Palladino's website at www.yourfocuszone.com for more incredibly helpful advice, updates on Dr. Palladino's speaking engagements, and much more!

"...a fun, entertaining, energeetic, and great resource, jam-packed with simple, ready-to-use perspectives that hep you understand more clearly the increasingly fast-paced world."--James Bauman, Ph.D., U.S. Olympic Committee Sport Psychologist

". . . a roadmap for eliminating the bombardment of daily distractions and focusing on the things that matter most to you, whether that be running a marathon, running a business, running a family, or just plain running your life."--Dean Karnazes, author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience

by Duncan Clark and Richie Unterberger

Sweatshops, fair trade, climate change, ethical investing, organic food. . . shopping can sometimes feel like a moral minefield. Which companies and products should we support or avoid? Which claims of social responsibility can we trust? The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience cuts through competing claims and increasing hype to answer these and many other questions. It digs deep to look at such issues as the hidden expenses associated with both organic and non-organic foods, explains both the ethics and the practicality of genetically engineered products, provides advice on "greening" your own household, and even looks at the merits of ethically concerned investment funds, mortgage providers, and other financial organizations. Loaded with ideas and helpful sidebars, this enormously helpful book is a one-stop shopping guide all by itself (produced on 100% recycled paper!). Duncan Clark, author of the original U.K. edition on which this book is based, is a writer and editor in London. Richie Unterberger is a writer and researcher in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as a noted music historian; he is the author of several books on the Agency's list.

Also by Richie Unterberger

Richie Unterberger's most recent book is The Unreleased Beatles. His other music titles include Turn! Turn! Turn! and Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock. On the Agency's list, he is also the author of The Rough Guide to Music U.S.A., a masterful tour of American music. Richie's 1998 book Unknown Legends of Rock and Roll (Backbeat Books) gave rise to a sequel, Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of 60s Rock, with even more profiles of pivotal artists, plus a CD with six classic songs. He's the co-author of The Rough Guide to Seattle, now in its fourth edition, and author of the upcoming Rough Guide to Jimi Hendrix.

 

Night Draws Near

by Anthony Shadid

Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Anthony Shadid's courageous Washington Post reports from Iraq earned him the Pulitzer Prize and a place as one of America's most distinguished foreign correspondents. Fluent in Arabic and possessed of tremendous knowledge of Iraqi history and culture, in Night Draws Near he brings life to the stories of ordinary Iraqis forced to cope with or succumb to dictatorship, war, and an uncertain future. From Karima, a widowed mother of eight sending her last son off to war, to Amal, her 14-year-old daughter, whose tattered diary is perhaps as powerful and poignant as that of Anne Frank, to Nasir, a government "minder" appointed by Saddam Hussein's government to watch over Anthony but later turns renegade, to Mohammed Ghani, an artist famous for his statue of Shehrazad who now finds his most powerful work surrounded by ruins, these vivid characters stand at the heart of the book. They humanize a city and a people who have been known to Americans only in caricature, as well as capturing the heart of a drama characterized in part by amgibuity. Honest, powerful, at times personal and always emotionally engaged, Night Draws Near is the definitive work to emerge from the collision between America and Iraq, and one of the most illuminating books ever written about contemporary life in the Middle East. Anthony Shadid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and numerous other prizes, he is also the author of Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam (Westview/Basic Books, 2002). A native of Oklahoma, he now divides his time between Lebanon and New England.

         About the author . . . Anthony Shadid

Night Draws Near won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Issues and the Ron Ridenhour Book Prize. It was also a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Henry Holt hardcover remains available. Piemme published the Italian edition, Dove la notte non finisce. Anthony Shadid is now at work on a new book about Lebanon, to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010.

"Incisive and eloquent"--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"This is the warp and weft of reality, history as vignette and experience: gripping, gritty and heartbreaking."--Ben Macintyre, The New York Times Book Review

"No one writing about Iraq today understands that tormented country and its people better than Anthony Shadid. Night Draws Near tells a timeless and powerful story of individuals caught in war's crossfire."--Rick Atkinson, author of 'In the Company of Soldiers' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'An Army at Dawn'

 

Women of Valor

by Ellen Hampton, Ph.D.

Their formal name was the Rochambeau Group, but to history, they've always been the Rochambelles. The story of these courageous women, ambulance drivers who risked their lives in World War II, deserves to be famous--and receives its chance with the publication of Women of Valor: The Rochambelles on the WWII Front . The book bears witness not only to the group's unflinching courage and sense of duty, but also to the camaraderie that grew between the women and their fellow soldiers. The Rochambelles owed their existence to Florence Conrad, a wealthy American widow who had served during the First World War and lived in France during the all-to-brief decades of peace that followed. When war came again to Europe and Conrad was forced to return home to the U.S., this remarkable woman decided to create an all-female ambulance corps. But since the U.S. Army refused to allow American women in combat, Conrad assembled a group of French women, many of whom had become stranded in the U.S. in 1940, convinced the U.S. military to train them, and provided the ambulances and uniforms herself. The Rochambelles served with distinction through the end of the war, the first women to be part of an armored combat unit, becoming celebrated heroes in France but remaining virtually unknown in the U.S. Women of Valor, published by Palgrave, tells their often death-defying story and is a vivid chronicle of women, each of them an outstanding character, who served heroically alongside their male comrades. Be sure to visit Ellen Hampton's Rochambelles website. Ellen Hampton was a journalist for Cox newspapers and covered, among other stories, the conflicts in Central America in the 1980s. She lives outside Paris with her husband and family.

Find More Time

by Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro

Laura Stack has shown thousands of Americans how to get more out of life by using their time well--not just efficiently, but to the fullest. In her bestselling Leave the Office Earlier, she showed readers how to keep their working lives productive and uncluttered so they'd have more time for the non-work part of their lives. And in Find More Time: How to Get Things Done at Home, Organize Your Life, and Feel Great About It, she turns her gaze to the home front, helping reader sort through piles of projects, accumulating bills, dishes in the sink, carpool schedules, and much more. You don't need more hours in the day--just different habits. Moms and dads who work from home full-time will get more done than ever before, learn ways to free up more time for leisure, volunteer work, and plain old "quiet time," and learn how to leave work behind at the end of the day. Single working adults will find more time for leisure activities, CEOs will finally be able to shop for groceries, stay-at-home parents will have time to play with their kids (and still have time for hobbies and chores), and even busy retirees will find techniques for making the most of their time. After reading this book, you'll feel like you control your life, instead of your life controlling you. From Broadway Books/Random House. Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro addesses scores of corporate and organizational audiences a year, including Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Lucent, IBM, and Lockheed Martin. For more information on Laura, including video clips of some of her appearances before audiences and on TV and her online newsletter, visit her website at http://www.theproductivitypro.com.

Also by Laura Stack:

In her previous book, the bestselling Leave the Office Earlier, Laura Stack introduced a vital, lifetime-learning approach to using time more productively in the workplace. With Laura's help, you can tailor a program that works best for you, Leave the Office Earlier has been published in Italy, Japan, the U.K., Korea, China and Taiwan. And also see The Exhaustion Cure, above in this listing--Laura's latest book of super-helpful advice!

Champagne

How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times

by Don and Petie Kladstrup

A New York Times "Editor's Choice"

We associate champagne with celebration and camaraderie. But beyond the bubbles and the elegant packaging, champagne (the wine) and Champagne (the region) have known and triumphed over tremendous hardship. Their history is the subject of Champagne, the latest book from the celebrated authors of the bestselling Wine & War; Although it isn't true that Dom Perignon invented bubbly--in fact, champagne's winemakers at first fought a losing battle to keep bubbles out of the wine--champagne has been beloved in every form it's taken. Champagne flowed like water at the coronations of French royalty and absolutely everywhere during the Belle Epoque. But its great turning point was World War I, which began and ended in the Champagne region. As the entire population of Reims moved underground, schoolchildren learned, orchestras played, and soldiers slept in the hundreds of miles of caves, carved from white chalk as long ago as Roman times, that have protected the precious bottles of sparkling wine for centuries. And still the wine was produced, in an uninterrupted flow that continues to the present day. Alone among French wines, champagne's sales continue to increase in the U.S. At last, this treasured wine is celebrated in print, and what better guides on a journey into the crayeres of Champagne than Don and Petie Kladstrup? Don Kladstrup, one of America's most distinguished news correspondents, reported for ABC News and, previously, CBS News before turning to writing full time. He's won three Emmy Awards and many other prizes. He and his wife, the award-winning journalist Petie Kladstrup, divide their time between Normandy and Paris

"The ideal book to read while sipping a flute."--Newsday

"A fascinating historical page-turner."--San Francisco Chronicle

Champagne has also been published in Germany, Brazil, Russia, the U.K., and Australia/New Zealand, and Lithuania and is forthcoming in China.

Also by Don and Petie Kladstrup: the worldwide bestseller:

Wine & War went straight to national bestseller lists when it was published by Broadway Books/Random House in 2001, with over 140,000 copies in print in the U.S. alone. It tells the "homefront" story of the French wine world during World War II. As France surrendered and occupation became inevitable, the nation's winemakers scrambled to save their vineyards, wineries, and most distinguished wines. Their goal: to rescue the commodity that is also part and parcel of the soul of France. In this gripping narrative, the Kladstrups chronicle the true story of this mission of salvation. They interview surviving vignerons and their children to hear how winemakers hid Jewish and other refugees, partisans, and also the best wines. There were traitors, too, collaborators with the Nazis who paid with their lives and reputations after the war. It's a rare glimpse directly into the world of French wine, with interviews not only with the winemakers and their children but the children of the German officers to controlled their industry during the occupation. Published in hardcover and paperback by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House and now in is 14th U.S. printing. Also published in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Brazil.

"An incredible tale"--Dominique LaPierre, author of Is Paris Burning?

"An engrossing addition to the popular literature of WWII--and a treat for oenophiles as well."--Kirkus Reviews ("starred" review)

"A well-researched, rousing read for the wine and history buff."--San Francisco Chronicle

 

Coming Soon

Newspaper editor Vivienne Sosnowski was pursuing her avocation as a photographer when some of the most distinguished winemakers of California's Sonoma County, many of them in their 90s, began describing their families' struggles during Prohibition. The time had come, they'd decided, to breach a decades-old code of silence and describe what really happened to their families in those 14 difficult years. Their families had carried a tradition of winemaking with them from Italy in the late 19th century and were completely unprepared when Prohibition came to California, then still a political backwater far from the centers of power in the East. Faced with a devil's bargain--abandon wine but face poverty, or make wine and risk jail--most families eventually chose the latter course. Now Sosnowski brings their remarkable stories to light for the first time, in When the Rivers Ran Red, to be published in June by Palgrave Macmillan. The winemakers were helped by unlikely allies, including the Archbishop of San Francisco and Sonoma County's own law enforcement authorities; but they also faced a badly understaffed but still potent force of Federal Prohibition agents sent by Washington to stop alcohol before it could reach speakeasies across the nation. Nonagenarian winemakers told Sosnowski of driving their parents' wine out of the wine counties by night as teenagers, their headlights dowsed to evade detection, and of paying off jailers by providing contraband bottles of brandy. In the tradition of Wine & War, this book not only describes an exciting, untold episode in American history but delivers a cautionary tale about a blundering political experiment gone awry. Vivienne Sosnowski , a longtime journalist in the U.S. and Canada, is also a gifted photographer whose photo essay on winemakers hangs permanently in the town hall of Healdsburg, in Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley. She lives in Vancouver, BC and Northern California.

Peter Firestein, CEO of New York-based Global Strategic Communications, Inc., is currently at work on Crisis of Character: Building Corporate Reputation in the Age of Skepticism to be published by Union Square Press in October. Executives no longer operate with complete independence, instead governing companies that must listen to many voices, from investors to NGOs to financial media, bloggers, their own employees, and a public hungry for clarity. This is today's expanded group of stakeholders--the influencers whose opinions can determine the destiny of any corporation. Wise executives and boards of directors will seize opportunities to make these groups partners and allies rather than critics and enemies. Instead of ignoring currents of opinion, they must listen to and learn from these influencers, using the information they gather to reshape their corporations. This book, through its groundbreaking Seven Strategies of Reputation Leadership, will show all C-level executives, top managers, boards of directors, and consultants how to implement practices and shape beliefs within companies that will, ultimately, earn them valid, valuable, and well-deserved reputations. Reputations can't be built overnight or invented by marketing campaigns; instead, they must be built over time and earned. This guide will help every company become more responsive to opportunities in its environment-- and, most important, to the best ideas within its ranks. Peter Firestein has been advising senior managers of corporations and government bodies, both in the U.S. and abroad, for two decades. He founded Global Strategic Communications in 2002 and, prior to that, led corporate consulting groups for a dozen years. A professional writer and editor as well as a business adviser, he also holds a degree in creative writing from Stanford University. He and his family live in New York City.

 

Bloomberg News columnist John F. Wasik has been writing on environmental, financial, and lifestyle issues for many years, and brings all three interests together in his next book: The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream, to be published by Bloomberg Press in June. More than 5 million American homes are sitting unsold, and the worst housing bust in a generation will take years to unravel. But don't blame sub-prime mortgages, which were only a symptom of the real causes. Instead, blame a myth: Buy bigger, consume more, move farther out of  town, send your kids to better schools, and you'll live out the American Dream. This mythology has resulted in the development of sprawling suburbs John calls "spurbs," sprawling regions of McMansions that aren't even tied closely enough to real cities to be regarded as suburbs. These pockets of unsustainable development are economically and ecologically untenable, as the mortgage meltdown partly showed, and they're not only endangering our health but consuming resources we don't have, demanding the construction of more and more expensive highways and other infrastructure, and (of course) undermining our economy. John shows how the spurb came about--and how a return to sensibly scaled living can bring us the true American Dream. John F. Wasik is author of 10 books; his weekly columns for Bloomberg News are read in more than 400 newspapers. His previous books on the Robert E. Shepard Agency list include Retire Early and Live the Life You Want Now, The Late-Start Investor, The Merchant of Power, and the forthcoming The Audacity of Help, a work about the Obama administration's economic programs that will be published in August.

 

 

Selected Titles from a Great Backlist

 

In the justly praised national bestseller Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, Stefan Fatsis recounts his remarkable rise through the ranks of elite Scrabble players while exploring the game's strange, potent hold over them--and him. The most talented players of this classic game, a fixture in more than 30 million American homes, inhabit a sphere far removed from the masses of "living room players." Theirs is a surprisingly diverse subculture that is often funny but at other times quite dark and even addictive. In the course of this brilliant narrative, published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin and in a Penguin paperback that is now in its 13th printing, Fatsis is transformed from a journalist on the outside, looking in, to one of the denizens of this strange world--someone who memorizes thousands of obscure words and fills his evenings with solo Scrabble played on his living room floor so he can begin to compete with the world's best players at tournaments. This is more than a book about a game; it's a book for everyone, a fascinating geography of obsession that celebrates the uncanny powers locked in all of us. Stefan Fatsis is also the author of Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland, published by Walker in 1995 and in paperback the following year, and of A Few Seconds of Panic (see above on this list). Stefan Fatsis was a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal and is a sports commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." He and his wife and daughter live in Washington, DC.

"Fatsis is a wonderful writer..."--The New York Times Book Review

"A can't-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage."--Los Angeles Times

"Drama, strategy, controversy, pathos: the rich panorama of emotion. Synchronized swimming? No. Scrabble. Who knew?"--Bob Costas, NBC Sports

The California condor, North America's largest bird, lives 50 years or more, is highy intelligent often mates for life, can fly 150 miles in a day, and was believed by Native Americans to have supernatural powers. But its strength and endurance were not enough to save it from near-extinction. Human greed and ignorance caused the great bird's decline; human ingenuity and insight became its only hope. Down to only 22 individuals by the 1980s, the condor owes its survival and recovery to a remarkable team of scientists who flouted conventional wisdom and pursued the most controversial means to save it. Writer and naturalist John Moir has been following the saga from its beginning in the 1980s and traces the story back even further. He puts a human face on the drama, introducing us to such characters as Jan Hamber--the woman who made the decision to capture the last condor still flying in the wild--but also makes some of the individual condors central characters in this remarkable narrative. In particular, we meet AC8 and AC9, inseparable mates and the adult condors who were directly responsible for saving the species, but whose own lives were touched with tragedy. For all the work of biologists, birders, environmentalists and volunteers to rescue the condor it is still too early to tell whether the condor is on its way to a full recovery. And yet, for anyone who has been able to see a condor in the air, there can be no doubt that the sacrifices of the humans and birds responsible for so much progress has been worth it. In John Moir's hands, their stories are the centerpiece of a lovely illustrated work.

Audubon himself would be delighted to read John Moir's exciting and authoritative account of the difficult, politically fraught, but ultimately rewarding effort to save the largest of all the living birds, a great shadow in the sky above the Western range. I certainly was. --Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes, author of John James Audubon: The Making of an American

Samuel Insull is one of the most fascinating characters in American business history, an English waif who talked his way across the Atlantic and into a job with his boyhood idol, Thomas Edison. In The Merchant of Power, award-winning author and journalist John F. Wasik tells the extraordinary rags-to-riches-to-rags story of this brilliant, largely misunderstood business leader. Insull became Edison's trusted secretary and rescued the inventor's notoriously ill-managed businesses from bankruptcy. It was Insull who consolidated Edison's companies into the giant General Electric Company. Later, he came to control a third of the nation's electric power. More than a tycoon, Insull believed in electricity's power to liberate the masses and set himself to revolutionizing the American city. But the Great Depression proved Insull's undoing, and he acquired a new foe in Franklin D. Roosevelt, who railed against him ("The Insulls' hand is against everyman!"). Hounded around the world, tried and acquitted three times for fraud, Insull nonetheless insisted on paying off his creditors, exhausting his own fortune. He died penniless in a Paris exile--an arresting contrast with the fate of today's power barons. His remarkable rise and fall is the subject of this wonderful biography, the first book about Insull to appear in decades and a critical reevaluation of this larger-than-life character. John F. Wasik's column for Bloomberg News is read in more than 400 publications worldwide each week, including the Financial Times. Formerly an editor of Consumers Digest magazine, he is the author of nine books; The Merchant of Power is his fifth on the Agency's list, and marks the first time this award-winning journalist and gifted author has turned to biography and business history.

Avast, ye landlubbers! Matthew David Brozik and Jacob Sager Weinstein have done it again, publishing the third title in their much-loved series of Government Manuals. The Government Manual for New Pirates takes you where no Government Manual has yet gone: sailing the ocean blue in search of treasure. But lest you be set upon by buccaneers even more dauntless than you are, this whimsical manual takes you on an ocean-by-ocean tour of all the pirate hotspots in the world. Along the way, you'll learn everything you need to know about pirate fashion, choosing and naming your ship, dealing with denizens of the deep (from sharks to Godzilla), and even favorite (and not so favorite) pirate chanteys. This latest "manual," published by Andrews McMeel, follows close on the heels of The Government Manual for New Wizards and The Government Manual for New Superheroes.  Matthew David Brozik is an attorney and writer whose fiction has appeared in such publications as Sycamore Review, Spout Magazine, Sidewalks, and Barbaric Yawp. A former standup comedian who edges ever closer to being a terrific novelist, he lives on Long Island. Jacob Sager Weinstein was an award-winning writer for HBO's "Dennis Miller Live" and a contributing editor to the Washingtonian magazine. A full-time writer and screenwriter, he lives in London with his wife and new daughter, Erin.

 

Steve McQueen kept his cancer a secret--until the media found out, and then all of America knew. McQueen's high profile case, and his sad end, changed forever the way the public perceived a dreaded disease and its treatment, and is just one of the stories of celebrity illness that Barron H. Lerner examines in When Illness Goes Public his first book since the celebrated The Breast Cancer Wars in 2001. Lerner describes the evolution of celebrities' illnesses from private matters to stories of great public interest. While celebrity illnesses have helped to inform patients about treatment options, ethical controversies, and scientific proof, the stories surrounding these illnesses have also assumed mythical characteristics that may be misleading. And the media's coverage of disease has undergone a profound evolution over the last 70 years, as the public's access to information has made it difficult to obscure the truth about celebrities' illnesses. Marrying great storytelling with an exploration of the intersection of science, journalism, fame, and legend, this book is a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of health and illness. Barron H. Lerner is a physician and the Angelica Berrie-Gold Foundation Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Columbia University. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Science Times section.

The intricate weaves of Persian carpets tell us a great deal about the people who made them. Persian rugs, Brian Murphy tells us, carry with them centuries of stories, the dreams and aspirations of families, and even, according to some, the souls of those who once owned them. They signify the human search for a perfection we can never quite achieve. In The Root of Wild Madder, published by Simon & Schuster and now available in paperback, Brian leads us through Iran and Afghanistan, introducting us to the weavers (often girls, who create some of the carpets for their dowries), the "mules" who move them from place to place, the tradesmen who sell them in the bazaars of Tehran and Isfahan, and the poets who write about them. We will meet a man who sells a treasured family carpet to provide food for his family, even though he believes his grandmother's soul is bound up in its knots, a poignant reminder that carpets are both art and commodity. And we'll even learn practical information about carpets-about the dyes, like madder root, that give them their vivid colors, the patterns, the different kinds of knots, and even how to tell a fine heirloom from a cheap copy. The Root of Wild Madder shows us how to look at carpets in a new way, understanding not only how we value them, but how their creators valued them. Brian Murphy, international religion reporter of the Associated Press and formerly AP bureau chief in Athens, is one of the only American journalists who reports regularly from Iran and other central Asian countries. He reported previously from Rwanda and from Rome. He and his family live near New York.

Also by Brian Murphy:

In The New Men (Putnam/Riverhead, 1998), Brian Murphy describes a year in the life of a prestigious but little known college in the shadow of the Vatican, where 40 young men from the United States prepare to become the leaders of their Church. What they learn about themselves, their chosen profession, and the collision between American values and their faith is at the heart of this remarkable book.

Barbara Freese was an assistant attorney general of the State of Minnesota when she became interested in humanity's long history of interaction with coal. The result is Coal: A Human History, a landmark work of science, history, and literature that immediately hit #3 on the prestigious Book Sense 76 list , and that was hailed as "engrossing and sometimes stunning" by The New York Times Book Review. For all its humble origins, coal remains the main energy source for our televisions, computers, and other conveniences of modern life, and the age-old problems associated with it have only grown more serious. For 700 years, coal has redefined the way people live. From 16th century England (where Queen Elizabeth complained about the smell and soot produced by coalburning) to the Industrial Revolution in America to developing China in our own time, coal has been a major player in world events, but different societies have dealt with its results--both pro and con--in very different ways. Coal, published by Perseus in hardcover and in a Penguin paperback, makes a complex topic fascinating for all of us. Coal has also been published in the UK, Taiwan, and China. 

Award-winning San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tom Abate is one of the nation's most influential observers of the biotechnology industry. In The Biotech Investor: How to Profit from the Coming Boom in Biotechnology (Holt/Owl, paperback) he provides the most comprehensive overview ever undertaken of this cutting-edge industry, giving investors the analytical foundation to understand the science, finances, time horizons, and technical and commercial potential of biotechnologies. From learning how to anticipate the impact of drug trials to understanding the role of the FDA approval process and how to analyze the patent protection strength of new ventures, investors will find the information they need to make smart decisions. They'll also learn all about the structures and directions of one of the world's most fascinating industries--one that trumps other technology sectors by producing products people absolutely need.

 

Robert Wojtowicz is one of the nation's leading experts on the life and work of Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), the great urbanist, critic, and social commentator. Mumford's many volumes include The City in History, which won the National Book Award. An early and little-known literary achievement, however, was a set of reviews he wrote for The New Yorker magazine between 1932 and 1937, under the heading "The Art Galleries." In Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s, published by the University of California Press and available this fall in paperback, Robert Wojtowicz gathers the best of these more than 40 reviews, which chronicled the arrival of art by some of the era's most distinguished contemporary artists. Mainly centered on the art galleries of New York, but including Mumford's travels to Europe, as well, these engaging reviews capture a time when Matisse was still considered modern and Georgia O'Keeffe was just rising to prominence, as well as showing how New Yorkers became increasingly aware of modernism abroad. Robert Wojtowicz is associate professor of art and assistant dean at Virginia's Old Dominion University, and literary executor of the Mumford estate.

Also edited by Robert Wojtowicz

Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s is the second of two Mumford collections deriving from his long association with The New Yorker. In 1998, Prof. Wojtowicz published Sidewalk Critic: Lewis Mumford's Writings on New York (Princeton Architectural Press; paperback 2000), which The New York Times named on of the top 10 architecture books that year. This time spanning the 1930s and 40s, the book includes Mumford's reviews of iconic New York buildings of the period. Also see Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis Mumford, below.

John M. Scalzi has the distinction of being equally at home as a writer in both the electronic and print realms--and of having a remarkable command of subjects as diverse as science fiction, astronomy, finance, and the craft of writing. So it's especially appropriate that he wrote a book with the intriguingly all-encompassing title of The Rough Guide to the Universe, recently published in a revised, second edition. It's a comprehensive guide to astronomy that will delight novice and accomplished space enthusiasts, alike. Loaded with star charts and dazzling illustrations, the book traces the history of people's fascination with the night sky--and the history of the universe, itself. It describes the sun, moon, Earth and other planets, and such heavenly bodies and phenomena as comets, meteors, asteroids, nebulas, supernovas, and more. It provides detailed information and resources on telescopes and other tools, and even a complete guide to planetariums, observatories, and places where the sky is especially dark at night. Nor is it a major leap from there to John's The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies. With background and capsule reviews of hundreds of sci-fi movies from around the world, this comprehensive guide is unparalleled, a must for any fan of the genre that will far surpass guides that merely summarize plotlines. It includes a complete history of science fiction movies, talks about what's real and not-so-real in the science behind sci-fi, and even devotes an entire chapter to aliens.

More about John Scalzi

John W. Campbell Award-winner John Scalzi's first science-fiction novel, Old Man's War (Tor), was nominated for the Hugo and Quill awards and was followed by The Ghost Brigades, The Android's Dream, The Last Colony, and Zoe's Tale. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Robert Wojtowicz edited Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis Mumford: Thirty Years of Correspondence, published by Princeton Architectural Press. It's a hugely important addition to the literature on both of these major figures in architecture and urbanism and the first time this unique correspondence has ever been collected. Over the course of decades, these two fascinating men exchanged warm, heartfelt, sometimes even vituperative letters that also contain a wealth of fascinating criticism of the architecture of the times. They are sure to be enlightening and enjoyable not only to scholars but also to general readers interested in the lives and work of both men. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer is vice president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, headquartered at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, and head of its archives, as well as the author of numerous books and articles about Wright. Robert Wojtowicz (see also above) is associate professor of art and assistant dean at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.