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Bernstein Writes the Book on Hillary
Carl Bernstein's next book: A biography of Hillary Clinton. The deal is with Alfred A. Knopf, according to a press release issued this morning. The title, A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham...
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The War Over War and Peace
Two new translations of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace will be published in the United States this fall, one claiming to be the definitive version and the other claiming to be the long lost, more...
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Carving Out the Editors
James Campbell of The Guardian considers "restorations" through the publication of Raymond Carver’s short stories with handy slicing and rewriting work of his editor Gordon Lish taken out. On the Road...
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Marty Asher On His Departure from Vintage Anchor
Editors and other staff at the Knopf Publishing Group were informed this morning that Marty Asher, who has served as editor-in-chief of the company’s paperback division Vintage Anchor for two decades,...
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No Major Shake-Ups at Doubleday or Broadway as Random House Divisions...
What could have happened is Knopf could have swallowed Doubleday whole. That was the most extreme scenario floated whenever agents and other publishing people put their heads together over the past...
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The Wizard of Westchester: Definitive Biography of John Cheever Tells a...
CheeverBy Blake BaileyAlfred A. Knopf, 770 pages, $35 John Cheever was inordinately fond of the word “inestimable”: It shows up twice in the brief preface to The Stories of John Cheever (1978), the...
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Bai to Boo Boomers in New Book
Matt Bai did not want to write his second book just about Barack Obama. What he wanted, he said recently, were “stationary targets” that would allow him to run at his own pace. He wanted a subject that...
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Robert Gates Signs Two-Book Deal With Knopf
Gates. Robert Gates just retired from his job as secretary of defense. Now, of course, he is writing not one but two books. The first, to be published in 2013, will be a memoir about his experience as...
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Tao Lin Announces Five-Figure Sale of Taipei, Taiwan to Vintage; Tim...
Lin. As the foremost chronicler of the young novelist Tao Lin’s every whim, The Observer was hoping we might break the story of Tao Lin’s next book deal, which he announced he was shopping a couple...
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Elder Worship in Publishing: Respect or Sycophancy?
The appearance a few weeks back of “Send This as a Jpeg, or Whatever,” a blog that features “quotations from an iconic publishing veteran,” filled us with curiosity. Who is this cantankerous, yet nobly...
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Knopf Responds to Anti-Murakami Puritans in New Jersey: ‘We Are Disheartened’
Williamstown High School in New Jersey has removed two books from its summer reading list after complaints from parents. According to the Gloucester County Times, at issue was “a graphic depiction of a...
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Robert Caro's Fourth Volume of LBJ Bio Coming in May
Johnson. Having worked on his exhaustive biography of Lyndon B. Johnson for almost three decades, Robert A. Caro has delivered the manuscript for the fourth installment, leaving only one more volume...
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Knopf Remembers Longtime Editor Ashbel Green
(photo by Martha Kaplan) Last night, legendary Knopf editor Ashbel Green died while at dinner with his wife, Elizabeth Osha, and friends near their Stonington, Conn., home. He was 84. Mr. Green, who...
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Patti Smith Invites Fans to Join Her on the M Train This Fall
Critically acclaimed author, musician and all-around cool gal Patti Smith has announced the publication of her newest book, M Train.
View ArticleA Pair of Atheists Agree: Time to Let Go of God
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Alfred A. Knopf, 96 pages, $16.95. With the publication in 1976 of
View ArticleIt Takes a Village, or Three: Updike Goes Home Again—Again
Villages, by John Updike. Alfred A. Knopf, 321 pages, $25. Villages, by sad coincidence, is John Updike’s 21st novel. Comparing it with Philip Roth’s newly published novel, The Plot Against America...
View ArticleA Hugely Gifted Coquette, Munro Takes the Long View
Runaway, by Alice Munro. Alfred A. Knopf, 335 pages, $25. Does anyone know if the word “coquette” was in vogue in Canada in the 1940’s? Because if it was, you can be sure that the gravely gifted and...
View ArticleAn Overcast of Dank Suspense Fades Into Science Fiction
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Alfred A. Knopf, 288 pages, $24. In prose as bland as institutional pudding, Kazuo Ishiguro has compiled an unsettling horror story. It’s so constructed, or rigged,...
View ArticleAmerican Terrorist and Martyr, His Soul Goes Marching On
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, by David S. Reynolds. Alfred A. Knopf, 578 pages, $35. On Nov. 7, 1959, The Chicago Defender...
View ArticleA Pair of Atheists Agree: Time to Let Go of God
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Alfred A. Knopf, 96 pages, $16.95. With the publication in 1976 of The Selfish Gene, in which he argued that genes—not individuals—are the key units of...
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