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☆ Before He Died in Prison, Aleksei Navalny Wrote a Memoir. It’s Coming This Fall.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Alexandra Alter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

During the years leading up to his death in a Russian prison, Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was writing a memoir about his life and work as a pro-democracy activist. Titled “Patriot,” the memoir will be published in the United States by Knopf on Oct. 22, with a first printing of half a million copies, and a simultaneous release in multiple countries. Navalny, who rose to global prominence as a fierce critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, resisted the Kremlin’s repeated attempts to silence him through physical harm, arrests and imprisonment in a remote Arctic penal colony, where he died in February, at age 47. The book, telling his story in his own words, comes as a final show of defiance, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said in a statement, and could have a galvanizing effect on his followers.

Persons: Aleksei A, Vladimir V, Putin, Yulia Navalnaya Organizations: Knopf Locations: Russian, United States, Russia

☆ Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s memoir will be published in October
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Mariya Knight | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s memoir will be published posthumously this fall, his widow revealed Thursday. The book, titled “Patriot,” will be released on October 22 in multiple languages, including Russian, Yulia Navalnaya said in a post on social platform X. Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, described working on the book in a Telegram post on Thursday, writing that the Russian opposition leader had invited her to Germany, where he was undergoing medical treatment after the poisoning, to assist in the project. Navalny dictated parts of the book to Yarmysh at the time, but finished it while in prison after returning to Russia in 2021. He died on February 16 at age 47 in a Siberian prison north of the Arctic Circle, according to the Russian prison service.

Persons: Alexey Navalny’s, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalnaya, Kira Yarmysh, Navalny, ”, Alfred A Knopf, ” Navalny, Russia’s, Vladimir Putin’s, Putin Organizations: CNN, Penguin Random, Kremlin Locations: Russian, Soviet, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, United States

NEW YORK (AP) — One of the world’s largest and most influential publishers, Simon & Schuster, celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The list tells many stories, through the books selected, not selected, and the evolution of what has been highlighted. “A group of Simon & Schuster staffers took on the daunting challenge of selecting 100 titles from our history that are believed to best represent the breadth and depth of the company’s publishing program, across imprints,” the publisher announced Wednesday. “That book actually had an influence on the course of events.”Like many leading publishers, Simon & Schuster began as an independently owned company and vastly expanded after the 1960s. Along the way, Simon & Schuster acquired numerous other publishers, whose books are now part of the S&S catalog and its centennial list.

Persons: Simon & Schuster, Simon, Gregory Hartswick, Prosper Buranelli, Margaret Petherbridge, Richard Simon, Max Schuster, ”, Schuster, Jonathan Karp, Sloan, veteran’s, Karp, “, — Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Harper, James Baldwin, Alex Haley, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, ” Karp, Ntozake Shange’s, Jenny Han’s “, ” Carlos Eire’s “, ” Siddhartha Mukherjee's “, ” Jason Reynolds ’, Safiya, Wendy Sherwin, didn’t, John Irving, Bruce Springsteen’s, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer, Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Rivals ’, Barack Obama’s, Hillary Clinton, Scott Fitzgerald’s “, ” Ernest Hemingway’s “, Alan Paton’s “, Scribner, Judy Blume’s “, Margaret ”, Walter Isaacson’s “ Steve Jobs, Frederick Backman's, Ove, Dale Carnegie’s, Leon Shimkin, David McCullough's, Wright, Blume, Woodward Organizations: Simon &, New York, HarperCollins, Dial Press, Doubleday, Knopf, “, Rivals, KKR, Win, Carnegie Locations: ”, Snow, Havana

☆ What Drives Kaveh Akbar? The Responsibility of Survival
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Elizabeth A. Harris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When Kaveh Akbar was drinking, he would regularly wake up to find new bruises or gashes on his body, or to find that he’d lost his glasses, his wallet or his car. When he opened his eyes, he might find himself in an alley instead of in his apartment. Once, he got out of bed and realized he couldn’t walk. There was nothing in his life at the time, he said, to indicate it would turn out terribly well. “Eleven years ago, I was pissing the bed,” he said.

Persons: Kaveh Akbar, he’d, Knopf, ” Organizations: University of Iowa

☆ The Humiliation of Davos Man
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-16 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College in New York. He is also a member of Aspen Institute Italy and board member of Aspenia. Before joining Hudson, Mr. Mead was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books, including the widely-recognized Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). Mr. Mead’s next book is entitled The Arc of A Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Future of the Jewish People.

Persons: Walter Russell Mead, Curry, James Clarke Chace, Mead, Henry A, Alfred A ., Mead’s Organizations: Hudson Institute, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Humanities, Bard College, Aspen Institute, Hudson, Council, Foreign Relations, Kissinger, U.S . Foreign, Providence, Alfred A . Knopf, Jewish People Locations: New York, Aspen Institute Italy, United States, Israel

☆ ‘Eve’ Review: A Female Body of Science
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-02 | by ( David P. Barash | Cat Bohannon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Cat Bohannon’s book, “Eve,” erases any lingering misconception about the centrality of women, giving us a detailed look at women’s biology, focused on how—as the subtitle indicates—“the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution.”Grab a Copy Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution By Cat Bohannon Knopf 624 pages We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site. but otherwise, just the same as men’s,” and she critiques the persistent tendency of researchers and physicians to take male bodies as the norm. “From mouse to human, the male body is what gets studied,” she writes. In some circles, it is heretical to maintain that women and men are biologically different, largely because such differences have in the past been manipulated toward misogynist ends. Ms. Bohannon believes that “while the majority of scientists still effectively ignore the female body, there’s a quiet revolution in the science of womanhood brewing.”

Persons: Juan Roballo, Simone de Beauvoir, ”, Bohannon, Barnes, “ Organizations: Noble, Columbia University

☆ ‘Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties’ Review: Wide-Screen Wonderland
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-24 | by ( Tom Nolan | Foster Hirsch | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

What was the greatest decade in the history of American movies? Buy Book Amazon Barnes & Noble Books a Million BookshopAs exhilarating as that span was, the movie industry itself was experiencing a number of crises. As Mr. Hirsch observes in “Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties,” the government forced studios to sell their theaters on antitrust grounds, while increasing numbers of moviegoers stayed home to watch their new televisions. Creative types had provocative stories to tell, rousing the wrath of censors—even as congressional committees investigated the presence of Communists in the business. Mr. Hirsch, a professor of film at Brooklyn College and the author of many books, has written an entertaining survey of this productive and problematic period.

Persons: Foster Hirsch, Eve ”, “, Eden ”, —, Barnes, Hirsch Organizations: Foster Hirsch Knopf, Noble, Brooklyn College Locations: “ An American, Paris, “, Hollywood

☆ Jane Garrett, Book Editor With a Prizewinning Touch, Dies at 88
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Richard Sandomir | More About Richard Sandomir | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Jane Garrett, who as an editor at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house guided seven books to Pulitzer Prizes for history but watched another book lose its prestigious Bancroft Prize over scholars’ criticism of the author’s research, died on Oct. 12 at her home in Middlebury, Vt. She was 88. Ms. Garrett worked at Knopf for 44 years, initially as an editor and special assistant to Alfred Knopf himself, who had a strong devotion to publishing history books. At first she steered his projects to completion, but she soon began acquiring books on her own. In 1973, “People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the History of American Civilization,” by Michael Kammen, became the first of the books edited by Ms. Garrett to win a Pulitzer. Ms. Garrett was at a book party in Boston when she met Alan Taylor, who was starting to work on a book about William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, N.Y., and the father of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper.

Persons: Jane Garrett, Alfred A, Bancroft, Anne Eberle, Ms, Garrett, Alfred Knopf, Michael Kammen, Voyagers, Bernard Bailyn, Garrett’s, Robert V, Bruce, Alan Taylor, William Cooper, James Fenimore Cooper Organizations: Knopf, “, Modern American Science Locations: Middlebury , Vt, America, Harvard, Boston, Cooperstown, N.Y

☆ Appeasing Iran Has Failed
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ A Middle East Wake-Up Call
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-16 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

NEW YORK (AP) — Sister Helen Prejean remembered when she first spoke with Jake Heggie about adapting her book “Dead Man Walking.”“I don’t know boo-scat about opera,” she told him. It’s established in a lot of these abolitionist countries that there is no death penalty — the government, we don’t kill people for their crimes. The Met and Carnegie Hall plan to present excerpts at Sing Sing on Sept. 28 with DiDonato, Sister Helen as the narrator and inmates as the chorus. There have been 1,575 executions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Twenty-four states have death penalty laws, 23 do not and three have governor-imposed moratoriums, the center said.

Persons: Helen Prejean, Jake Heggie, ”, “, you’re, Tony, Olivier, Ivo van Hove, Joyce DiDonato, Helen, ” Heggie, it’s, It’s, ” Prejean, Saint Joseph of Medaille, Prejean, Jason Epstein, Knopf Doubleday, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Heggie, Frederica von Stade, Lotfi Mansouri, Terrence McNally, Mansouri, ” McNally, ” “ Sondheim, Stephen Sondheim's, Robbins, McNally, Joe Mantello, Susan Graham, von, ” Joshua Kosman, ” DiDonato, DiDonato, “ I’ve, ” Von Hove, Graham, de, I’ve Organizations: Metropolitan Opera, Knopf, UCLA, UCLA's Center, Art, Cal, San Francisco Opera, Opera House, von Stade, San Francisco Chronicle, New York City Opera, Houston, City Opera, Sing, Illinois Youth Center, Carnegie Hall Locations: New Orleans, New York, New, Madrid, Francisco’s, Ossining , New York, Chicago, U.S

A new box suddenly appears and there is Winfrey, holding Hill's novel in front of her. “I have an idea, why not choose it for Oprah's book club?” she says. Book!” Winfrey tells him, adding that the novel made her nostalgic for Chicago, where she used to film her talk show. OprahDaily.com, the online hub of Winfrey's book club, will include additional detail about Hill and his work. Her book club has been such a gift to readers, and includes some of my own literary idols.

Persons: Oprah Winfrey, Winfrey, Nathan Hill, Alfred A ., Hill, “, Abraham Verghese's “, Nix ”, she’d, ” Hill Organizations: Alfred A . Knopf, The Associated Press, Knopf, “ Wellness, 102nd, ”, Los Angeles Times Locations: Chicago

NEW YORK (AP) — Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's next book will be one for music lovers. Alfred A. Knopf announced Thursday that Ishiguro's “The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain,” coming out March 5, is a collection of lyrics written for the million-selling jazz singer Stacey Kent. The book combines older compositions dating back to 2007 and four “cinema” works for an upcoming project with Kent. “The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain” also includes an introduction by Ishiguro, illustrations by the Italian artist Bianca Bagnarelli and a QR code that links to an album of Kent performing songs by the author. Political Cartoons View All 1160 Images

Persons: — Nobel, Kazuo Ishiguro's, Alfred A ., ”, Stacey Kent, Ishiguro, Kent, ” Ishiguro, “, Bianca Bagnarelli, “ Kazuo Ishiguro, Stacy Kent, Jordan Pavlin Organizations: Alfred A . Knopf Locations: Ishiguro, Kent, Italian, American

☆ 34 Works of Fiction to Read This Fall
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-04 | by ( Kate Dwyer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Mr. Texas, by Lawrence WrightWright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and longtime resident of Texas, spins a satirical story about his state’s politics. After Sonny’s heroic actions during a fire, a lobbyist approaches him about running for his district’s seat in the Texas state Legislature. As Sonny, who cares deeply about doing the right thing, ventures deeper into his campaign, he must decide how far he’s willing to go to get ahead and save his ranch (and his marriage). Knopf, Sept. 19

Persons: Lawrence Wright Wright, Sonny, . Organizations: . Knopf Locations: Texas

☆ A Celebrity Lesbian Romance Changed My Life. (Even if It Never Happened.)
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Emmeline Clein | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The fan communities that have formed around these pairs are forged through wondering and wishing, in-jokes and lingo and those in the know. Our touchstone isn’t the friendship itself; it’s a feeling, an act of quiet yearning, a longing look and a passed note. For many queer women, first love means falling for a friend, hiding your feelings and hoping they’ll pass, pretending to like boys — and underneath all that, praying she feels it, too. Much has been written about the perverse parasociality of fandom, the blurring line between public displays of devotion and invasions of privacy. Queer fandoms often foster an especially ardent passion, passed among people who’ve felt misunderstood and judged for whom they love, finally publicly expressing adoration.

Persons: —, I’ve, I’m, they’ll, fandoms, who’ve, Emmeline Clein Organizations: Miss, Knopf Locations: Brooklyn

☆ Behind ‘Oppenheimer,’ a Prizewinning Biography 25 Years in the Making
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Andy Kifer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Outgoing, funny, and athletic, he is described by those who knew him as the opposite of neurotic. Sherwin, a history professor and the author of one previous book, had agreed to write a full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer two decades earlier. He’d done plenty of research — an extraordinary amount, actually, amassing some 50,000 pages of interviews, transcripts, letters, diaries, declassified documents and F.B.I. But Cameron, who had published Sherwin’s first book at Knopf — and who, like Oppenheimer, had been a victim of McCarthyism — insisted. So on March 13, 1980, Sherwin signed a $70,000 contract with Knopf for the project.

Persons: Martin Sherwin, Sherwin, J, Robert Oppenheimer, he’d, Angus Cameron, Oppenheimer, Cameron, Knopf —, — Organizations: Knopf

☆ Robert Gottlieb Didn’t Just Shape Manuscripts. He Shaped Dance, Too.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Alastair Macaulay | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The world of letters has been mourning Robert Gottlieb, who died last week at 92, as a reader and editor of qualities that became legendary. The world of dance has been mourning him as well. He neither performed nor choreographed, but he played a major role, often behind the scenes, in fostering American dance. He ran influential works of dance criticism as editor of The New Yorker, and he later became a dance critic himself for The New York Observer. Perhaps less widely known was the key role he played behind the scenes at New York City Ballet, where he served on the board of directors.

Persons: Robert Gottlieb, Alfred A ., Mikhail Baryshnikov, Arlene Croce, Margot Fonteyn, Lincoln Kirstein, Natalia Makarova, Paul Taylor, “, Alfred Knopf, ”, ” Gottlieb —, Bob, —, George Balanchine, Balanchine Organizations: Alfred A . Knopf, Yorker, The New York Observer, New York City Ballet, The, City Center, Ballet Society, City Ballet, Sadler’s, Ballet, Metropolitan Opera House Locations: New

☆ China Accepts the New Indo-Pacific Reality
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Cormac McCarthy’s Remarkable Career Could Never Be Reproduced Today - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-19 | by ( Dan Sinykin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The fact that the world is now celebrating the arc of Mr. McCarthy’s monumental career is a testament to the novelist’s undeniable talent. But it’s also due to his timely recognition that, without his protector, Mr. Erskine, and the vanished world of publishing that Mr. Erskine represented, he would need to change the way his books were published. In the 1960s, large corporations began acquiring publishing houses, consolidating the industry into fewer and fewer conglomerates. Literary agents became essential intermediaries, as publishing houses no longer riffled through submissions to find emerging talents. A poorly typed manuscript like Mr. McCarthy’s debut would struggle to make it into, let alone be rescued from, a slush pile.

Persons: it’s, Erskine, McCarthy’s, Robert Bernstein, Newhouse, Alberto Vitale, who’d, Mr, Vitale, ”, André Schiffrin, “, McCarthy, Lynn Nesbit, Robert Caro, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Tom Wolfe, “ I’ve, ” Mr, you’re, Amanda “ Binky, Urban, Sonny Mehta, Robert Gottlieb, MacArthur, who’s Organizations: RCA, S.I, Mr, Olivetti, Fiat, Random, Knopf, The New York Times

☆ Lorrie Moore’s Intimate Secrets
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-17 | by ( Dan Kois | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

In Moore’s stories, funny people banter with their loved ones as playfully as we all do, creating little bubbles around our relationships. After the publication of “Self-Help,” she became one of the most intriguing young writers in America, but her real life felt different. Loving Moore’s work, in those days, felt like belonging to a kind of secret society. “I call her the It Girl,” said Victoria Wilson, Moore’s editor of nearly 40 years at Knopf. Moore’s characters only sometimes resemble her, but the crises they’re undergoing always mirrored her own life, and thus the ongoing lives of the readers who loved her the most.

Persons: Cornell —, —, ”, Sidik Fofana, Moore, ” Moore, Dana Spiotta, “, ” Spiotta, Victoria Wilson, Lorrie, ” Ann Patchett, ” Patchett, ” Wilson, — women’s, Carver Organizations: Cornell, University of Wisconsin, Knopf, Iowa, ’ Locations: America, Manhattan, Madison, Wis

☆ Robert Gottlieb, Eminent Editor From le Carré to Clinton, Dies at 92
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Robert D. Mcfadden | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Unlike his revered and formal predecessor, who wore jackets and ties, saw people by appointment and was addressed as “Mr. Easing the apprehensions of many New Yorker aficionados, he made few and mostly minor changes over five years. New critics were hired, and Talk of the Town commentaries were opened to more writers and were no longer written anonymously. In 1992, Tina Brown, the British editor of Vanity Fair, replaced Mr. Gottlieb in an amicable transition and introduced splashy changes. “I can write perfectly well — anybody who’s educated can write perfectly well.

Persons: Mr, Shawn, ” Mr, Gottlieb, “, ”, Raymond Bonner, Judith Thurman, Diane Ackerman, Robert Stone, Richard Ford, Tina Brown, Eustace Tilley Organizations: Yorker, Knopf, The New York Observer Locations: Central, British

☆ Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Knopf, his publisher, said in a statement that this son, John, had confirmed the death. Mr. McCarthy’s fiction took a dark view of the human condition and was often macabre. He decorated his novels with scalpings, beheadings, arson, rape, incest, necrophilia and cannibalism. “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed,” he told The New York Times magazine in 1992 in a rare interview. While not quite as reclusive as Thomas Pynchon, Mr. McCarthy gave no readings and no blurbs for the jackets of other writers’ books.

Persons: Cormac McCarthy, grotesques, ”, Knopf, John, scalpings, “, Thomas Pynchon, McCarthy Organizations: New York Times Locations: American, Santa Fe

☆ What if Putin Loses His War in Ukraine?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Walter Russell Mead | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Children’s Books: Enchanting Art, Fickle Fashion
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Meghan Cox Gurdon | Dave Eggers | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The unusual design of Dave Eggers’s novel “The Eyes & the Impossible” hints at some sort of unusual content. The edges of the book’s pages are gilded, signaling refinement, while the front and back covers are chunky and made of wood. Grab a Copy The Eyes and the Impossible By Dave Eggers Knopf Books for Young Readers 256 pages We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site. Buy Book Amazon Barnes & Noble Books a Million BookshopLike the design, the story on offer combines rough nature with an elevated sensibility. More than that, it presents children ages 8-12 with one of the most appealing heroes in recent children’s literature.

☆ 2 Supreme Court justices failed to recuse themselves from cases involving their publisher after receiving exorbitant amounts in book advances and royalties
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Madison Hall | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

On two occasions, the Supreme Court has declined to take on cases involving publishing conglomerate Penguin Random House. There have been two cases that came before the Supreme Court involving publishing conglomerate Penguin Random House. In both situations, the Supreme Court declined to take on the copyright infringement cases, allowing the publisher to win at a lower court level. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was confirmed in 2017 and was also a member of the Supreme Court during the second case. Sotomayor and Gorsuch had both signed major book deals with the publisher before the cases occurred, and both justices declined to recuse themselves from the cases involving Penguin Random House.

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