2016 Ross Yoon Agency Foreign Rights Catalogue

Foreign Rights Catalogue
The Ross Yoon Agency 1666
Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009 USA
London Book Fair 2016
Contact: Dara Kaye
[email protected] | DC office: +1 202 328 3282
Table of Contents
New and Upcoming Releases ........................................................................................................... 1
WIRED FOR CONTROL by Dr. William Stixrud and Ned Johnson .................................................... 1
UNTANGLED by Lisa Damour........................................................................................................ 2
THE MONEY KINGS by Daniel Schulman ....................................................................................... 3
FRACTURED CONTINENT by William Drozdiak .............................................................................. 4
LOSING THE SIGNAL by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff .............................................................. 5
FEMINIST FIGHT CLUB by Jessica Bennett ..................................................................................... 6
WHAT THEY DO WITH YOUR MONEY by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, and David Pitt-Watson .... 7
IF AT BIRTH YOU DON’T SUCCEED by Zach Anner ......................................................................... 8
EARLY ACCEPTANCE by Rachel Simmons ...................................................................................... 9
A SPY IN WARTIME by Nicholas Reynolds ................................................................................... 10
MARCH 1917 BY WILL ENGLUND ................................................................................................ 11
HELLFIRE BOYS by Theo Emery ................................................................................................... 12
THE CELLS AND THE SCIENTISTS by Meredith Wadman .............................................................. 13
GHOSTLAND by Colin Dickey ...................................................................................................... 14
EUROSHOCK by Charles Dallara.................................................................................................. 15
INTO THE GRAY ZONE by Adrian Owen ...................................................................................... 16
SEOUL MAN by Frank Ahrens ..................................................................................................... 17
THE HUMANE ECONOMY by Wayne Pacelle ............................................................................... 18
WHY THE RIGHT WENT WRONG by E.J. Dionne .......................................................................... 19
Select Backlist ................................................................................................................................ 20
PROOF OF HEAVEN by Eben Alexander ...................................................................................... 20
THE MAP OF HEAVEN by Eben Alexander ................................................................................... 21
IRRITABLE HEARTS by Mac McClelland ....................................................................................... 21
THE FUTURE OF VIOLENCE by Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum ........................................... 22
MIDNIGHT’S FURIES by Nisid Hajari ............................................................................................ 22
WAR OF THE WHALES by Joshua Horwitz ................................................................................... 23
OVERWHELMED by Brigid Schulte .............................................................................................. 24
THE NURSES by Alexandra Robbins ............................................................................................ 24
THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM by Gabriel Sherman ............................................................ 25
ACID TEST by Tom Shroder ......................................................................................................... 26
SCRUM by Jeff Sutherland.......................................................................................................... 27
MIDNIGHT IN SIBERIA by David Greene ...................................................................................... 28
KEEP CALM AND PARENT ON by Emma Jenner ........................................................................... 28
THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD by Dan Jurafsky ................................................................................. 29
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA by Mark Perry ......................................................... 29
A CURIOUS DISCOVERY: AN ENTREPRENEUR’S STORY by John Hendricks ................................... 30
DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC? by Paul Offit .................................................................................. 30
THE ALCHEMISTS by Neil Irwin ................................................................................................... 31
A FIELD GUIDE TO AWKWARD SILENCES by Alexandra Petri ....................................................... 31
HEALING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND by Don Campbell and Alex Doman ...................................... 32
THE SECRET LIVES OF WIVES by Iris Krasnow .............................................................................. 33
THE MODERN BOOK OF THE DEAD by Ptolemy Tompkins........................................................... 34
UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING by Alfie Kohn............................................................................... 35
About the Ross Yoon Agency ......................................................................................................... 36
New and Upcoming Releases
Wired for Control by Dr. William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
A few years ago, eminent neuropsychologist Dr. William Stixrud and test prep entrepreneur Ned
Johnson were noticing the same problem, but from two different angles. Ned runs an elite
tutoring service, PrepMatters, in Washington, DC, where he and his staff teach students how to
perform better on standardized tests. Bill, meanwhile, helps young patients suffering from
learning disabilities, ADHD, depression, and other mental issues. When Ned and Bill started
trading notes about their work, they realized they were seeing the same trend: rich and poor,
boys and girls, slackers and overachievers alike, kids were feeling overwhelmed and stressed
because they felt they had no control over their lives.
We live in an age of unintentional overparenting. We want our kids to have the best, to be their
best, but the stress on them to perform well inside and outside the class are damaging the
modern family in every way. And as Bill discovered, it’s actually physically changing kids’ brains in
ways that can lead to lifelong problems. How do we fix this?
Ned and Bill have a solution. They want parents—and kids—to understand why feeling a sense of
control is so important from a neurobiological and psychological point of view. They want to give
parents the tools to instill that sense of control in their kids, which in turn relieves the pressure
parents are feeling about doing what’s best for their children. The goal for any parent, they argue,
is to prepare a kid for life, not for a single test score or college acceptance. Wired for Control will
provide an impressive combination of science, exposition, storytelling, and practical “what to do
tonight” how-to advice for parents to get closer to achieving that goal.
NORTH AMERICAN: Viking (Joy de Menil)
DELIVERY: January 2017
LENGTH: 80,000 words
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
1
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven
Transitions into Adulthood by Lisa Damour
**New York Times bestseller!**
Director of the Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls
and a top-tier therapist, researcher, and public speaker, Lisa
Damour brings wit and expertise to the topic of adolescent
development in UNTANGLED, a New York Times bestseller.
Adapted from her work teaching graduate clinical courses on
adolescent psychology, Damour’s “seven passages” help
budding clinicians assess and treat the distinct mental health
needs of teenage girls by considering turning points in their
road to adulthood and autonomy: parting with childhood,
joining a new tribe, harnessing emotions, contending with
adult authority, planning for the future, entering the
romantic world, and caring for themselves.
Fortified with knowledge previously accessible only to
clinicians and academics, parents will be able to better
understand and support their daughter as she moves through
each passage, using the book’s “When to Worry” and “What to Do” sections to recognize if and
when their daughter is facing unusual difficulty. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice
on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad
framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions.
Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow
with their daughters. Damour’s message, informed by decades of hands-on experience, is
refreshing, often counterintuitive, and always positive.
NORTH AMERICAN: Ballantine (Susanna Porter)
PUBLICATION: February 2016
INTERNATIONAL SALES: Brazil (Rocco), China (Beijing ThinKingdom), Germany (Kosel),
Korea (Sigongsa), Netherlands (Het Spectrum), Poland (Agora), UK (Atlantic)
2
The Money Kings, by Daniel Schulman
MONEY KINGS is the untold history of Wall Street’s
earliest days. It all began with Joseph Seligman, who
moved to the US in the 1840s and sold trinkets door-todoor. Then came Henry Lehman and his brother Emanuel,
who opened a general store in Montgomery, Alabama,
where they began paying set prices for “future” cotton
crops of local farmers. Next was Marcus Goldman, who
peddled tobacco and housewares in Philadelphia before
moving to New York to broker small merchant loans into
bundles of larger loans.
They were all German Jews who moved to the US in the
mid-1800s to escape oppression. Through innovation and
ingenuity, they would invent the field of investment banking and create some of the most
powerful and recognizable financial institutions in the world: JW Seligman, Kuen Loeb, Lehman
Brothers, and Goldman Sachs. They would form a tight-knit community that called itself “Our
Crowd,” but to others they were known as the Money Kings.
Author Dan Schulman is the Washington Deputy Bureau Chief of Mother Jones and the author of
the NYT bestseller Sons of Wichita. His second book, THE MONEY KINGS, will be Our Crowd
meets Lords of Finance meets Warmth of Other Suns—the saga of a group of German immigrants
who hustled and finessed their way to success, only to find themselves at odds with anti-Jewish
and anti-German sentiments here and abroad.
NORTH AMERICAN: Knopf (Andrew Miller)
DELIVERY: Fall 2018
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Brazil / Portfolio (Companhia), China/Citic, Netherlands/Hollands Diep,
Spain/Malpaso
3
Fractured Continent by William Drozdiak
Since he fell in love with Europe in the 1970s as a young
professional basketball player in Italy, celebrated journalist
and political advisor Bill Drozdiak’s career has been driven by a
fascination with Europe—by the way European countries
interact with each other and the way they act collectively as a
world power.
After earning a graduate degree in economics at the College
d’Europe in Bruges, Belgium, he spent twenty years as an
editor, chief European correspondent, and bureau chief for the
Washington Post. Based at various times in Bonn, Berlin, Paris,
and Brussels, he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the diplomacy leading to Germany’s
unification, the European Union’s adoption of a single currency, and the expansion of NATO and
the EU to embrace the new democracies in the East. For his coverage of NATO’s involvement in
the Balkan wars, he was selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for international affairs in 1999.
Over the years, many in the American and European media and international affairs sectors have
encouraged Drozdiak to write a book. But not until this fascinating and dangerous moment—for
Europe and the world at large—was he compelled to begin his first book, FRACTURED
CONTINENT. In it, he will provide a timely and compelling look at the forces pulling Europe apart—
and use his deep connections across Europe’s individual and collective governments to go behind
the scenes with the people and institutions fighting to keep it together.
Currently a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and a senior advisor for Europe for McClarty
Associates, Drozdiak intends to complete this manuscript of approximately 80,000 words by the
end of this year. Representing Fractured Continent: Europe’s Crises and the Fate of the West feels
particularly fitting to our agency, since over a decade ago Gail Ross sold TR Reid’s THE UNITED
STATES OF EUROPE, which, when published in 2004, sold 50,000 in hardcover and almost as many
in paperback.
WORLD ENGLISH: Norton (John Glusman)
DELIVERY: January 2017
Length: 80,000 words
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
4
Losing the Signal by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff
**Shortlisted for FT/McKinsey Book of the Year 2015**
In 2009, BlackBerry controlled half of the smartphone
market. Today that number is one percent. What went
so wrong?
Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that
toppled global giants before succumbing to the
ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is
not a conventional tale of modern business failure by
fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals
the dangerous speed at which innovators race along
the information superhighway.
With unprecedented access to key players, senior
executives, directors and competitors, Losing the
Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that
started above a bagel store in Ontario. At the heart of
the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary
engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard
Business school grad, Jim Balsillie. Together, they
engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for
presidents and CEOs. The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however.
At the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world's fastest growing company internal feuds
and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google's entry in
to mobile phones.
Expertly told by acclaimed journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining,
whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business
stories of the new century.
NORTH AMERICAN: Flatiron (Colin Dickerman)
PUBLICATION: May 26, 2015
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Holland/Spectrum, Canada/HarperCollins, Israel/Probook, UK/Random
House
5
Feminist Fight Club by Jessica Bennett
This is a pocketbook Lean In for the Buzzfeed
generation; the Worst Case Scenario Survival
Handbook, but for feminists; the Zombie
Survival Guide, but instead of zombies, we’re
battling the guys, gals, and sometimes
institutions who exhibit brainless (and sexist)
behavior. It’s a field guide for the modern
working woman: short, illustrated, funny.
Perfect for stuffing in a purse, bra, or cubicle
shelf. Women will give this book to each
other…and leave it on the desks of men who
need it. Men will give it to their girlfriends,
wives, sisters, daughters—to show they are
supportive. HR directors will give it to their staffs to help make everyone’s jobs easier.
Companies will embrace it, too, because they know (and if they don’t know, they should): more
women in power means better performance, higher returns, more market shares, higher
revenue and more profit. No, really.
The book will blend journalism, humor and the best academic and anecdotal research. It will
assign names to the clichés (and scenarios) that every woman has experienced: from the guy
who can’t stop “manterrupting”—yes, women get interrupted in meetings more than men—to
the ways women struggle to “own” a room. This book will unpack the gender bias and selfdestructive behavior that undermine women’s progress in the workplace—often unconsciously.
The book will provide simple tips on how to combat tricky situations and personalities—and
advice for how to deal with what is often our worst enemy: ourselves. Feminist Fight Club is a
call to arms: it will motivate women to be more proactive with what they know they should do
(negotiate) but have trouble acting out (what if my boss says no?). And they’ll have fun while
doing it (er… at least… while reading about how to do it).
Author Jessica Bennett is an award-winning journalist and critic who writes on women, sexuality,
and pop culture. She is a columnist at Time.com, covering women and the workplace, and a
contributing writer for the New York Times, where she writes on women, men, relationships,
pot, emoji, texting, and conducted the first print interview with Monica Lewinsky in a decade,
for a profile that ran as the Sunday Styles cover story. She is also a contributing editor for Sheryl
Sandberg’s women’s nonprofit, LeanIn.org, where she is the co-creator and curator of the Lean
In Collection, a photo initiative to change how women are portrayed in stock photography (more
power, less stripper heels).
NORTH AMERICAN: Harper Wave (Julie Will)
DELIVERY: October 15, 2015
LENGTH: 45,000 words
FOREIGN SALES: UK/Portfolio, Brazil/Rocco
EDITED MANUSCRIPT AVAILABLE SOON
6
What They Do With Your Money
by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, and David Pitt-Watson
No wonder people around the world are furious at
Wall Street.
Each year, we pay billions in fees to those who run
our financial system. The money comes from our
bank accounts and our pensions, and often we
aren’t told it has been taken. Financial institutions
regularly place their business interests first, charging
for advice that does nothing to improve
performance, employing short-term buying
strategies that are corrosive to building long-term
value, and sometimes even concealing both their
practices and their investment strategies from
investors.
In their previous prizewinning book, The New
Capitalists, the authors demonstrated how ordinary
people work together to demand accountability from
even the most powerful corporations. Here in What
They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System
Fails Us, and How to Fix It, they explain how a tyranny
of errant expertise, naive regulation, and a
misreading of economics combine to impose a huge stealth tax on our savings and our economies.
More important, the trio lay out an agenda for fixing it. With so much at stake, this is a book that
analysts, economists, policy makers, and anyone with a retirement nest egg can’t afford to ignore.
Written by respected practitioners from within the financial system, it addresses two simple
questions: How could we have made such a bad job of such an important industry? And how can
we find a new path that allows the finance industry to help serve us?
What They Do With Your Money offers a call to reboot capitalism and preserve $85 trillion in
retirement savings for their owners–not for use as the financial industry’s ATM. And What They
Do With Your Money offers clear solutions; Ones which will begin to put the finance industry back
on our side, rather than serving itself. It shows how a simpler but more rational system of
regulation would better protect our interests, and allow only those who offer good service to
prosper. It shows that with such an approach we could increase the value of our pensions by a
full fifty percent. With such an approach we could have more jobs, more economic activity, more
wealth.
NORTH AMERICAN: Yale University Press (William Frucht)
PUBLICATION: May 24, 2016
LENGTH: 296 pages
FOREIGN SALES: UK/Portfolio, Brazil/Rocco
GALLEYS AVAILABLE
7
If At Birth You Don’t Succeed by Zach Anner
"Meet Zach Anner...He's handsome, smart, and
funny [and] has won...legions of online fans."
—Tara Parker- Pope, The New York Times
Comedian Zach Anner opens his frank and
devilishly funny book, If at Birth You Don't
Succeed, with an admission: he botched his own
birth. Two months early, underweight and underprepared for life, he entered the world with
cerebral palsy and an uncertain future. So how did
this hairless mole-rat of a boy blossom into a viral
internet sensation who's hosted two travel
shows, impressed Oprah, driven the Mars Rover,
and inspired a John Mayer song? (It wasn't "Your
Body is a Wonderland.")
Zach lives by the mantra: when life gives you
wheelchair, make lemonade. Whether recounting
a valiant childhood attempt to woo Cindy
Crawford, encounters with zealous faith healers,
or the time he crapped his pants mere feet from
Dr. Phil, Zach shares his fumbles with unflinching
honesty and characteristic charm. By his thirtieth birthday, Zach had grown into an adult with a
career in entertainment, millions of fans, a loving family, and friends who would literally carry
him up mountains.
If at Birth You Don't Succeed is a hilariously irreverent and heartfelt memoir about finding your
passion and your path even when it's paved with epic misadventure. This is the unlikely but not
unlucky story of a man who couldn't safely open a bag of Skittles, but still became a fitness guru
with fans around the world. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall in love with the Olive Garden all over
again, and learn why cerebral palsy is, definitively, "the sexiest of the palsies."
NORTH AMERICAN: Henry Holt (Emi Ikkanda)
PUBLICATION: March 8, 2016
GALLEYS AVAILABLE
8
Early Acceptance by Rachel Simmons
Rachel Simmons, author of the New
York Times bestsellers Odd Girl Out: The
Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising
Authentic Girls with Courage and
Confidence, is at work on a new book
about the challenges girls face in late
adolescence—particularly as they
transition from high school to college.
At Smith College and elsewhere,
Simmons has been developing
programs to help girls reject the toxic culture of effortless perfection that has become epidemic
on campuses across the country. She is helping girls not “lean in” so much as “lean inside”:
teaching new skills and habits that help girls claim success as more than the sum of good grades,
filtered Instagram feeds, and salaries. In the process, her students have discovered a hidden
well of courage, skills, and character strengths that allow them to take greater risks, manage
setbacks, build support networks, and take control of their own lives.
Early Acceptance runs recon from high school and college campuses back to parents, showing
them how to help the young women in their lives raise their own architecture of authentic
success.
*NB: title subject to change.
NORTH AMERICAN: Gail Winston (HarperCollins)
DELIVERY: December 2016
LENGTH: 80-100k words
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
9
A Spy in Wartime by Nicholas Reynolds
According to author Nicholas Reynolds, who
spent a decade recruiting spies for the CIA in Latin
America, the most reliable way for a spy to
confirm contact with a handler is not through
code words or hand gestures, but through the use
of what’s called a “material recognition symbol.”
This could be a piece of paper or napkin, torn in
half. The spy keeps one half and matches the
other half when the recruiter or handler arrives.
Ernest Hemingway used American stamps as his verification symbol when he met with a Soviet
handler in 1940. Few people know that he agreed to spy for the Soviets. Even fewer people know
the story of how the Soviets tagged and recruited Hemingway during the 1930’s, how he ended
up ditching the Russians to work for the OSS, and how his relationship with Russia may have
affected his writing and his state of mind after the war.
A Spy in Wartime will be the first book to tell the full story of Hemingway’s relationship with the
Soviet and American intelligence agencies. Using his background in the CIA, his training as a
military historian (D.Phil. Oxford, Chief Field Marine Historian for the second Iraq War), and driven
by his love of Hemingway, Reynolds pulls together all of the disparate pieces of research and
information about Hemingway’s conflicted life as a spy into one very readable—and
commercial—book.
A Spy in Wartime is a cross between two successful hits: Ben MacIntyre’s A Spy Among Friends
and Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat (which covers the same time span in Hemingway’s life,
from 1935- 1961). The book will make Hemingway fans and scholars rethink everything they know
about this man and his body of work.
NORTH AMERICAN: William Morrow (Peter Hubbard)
DELIVERY: February 1, 2016
LENGTH: 80,000 words
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
10
March 1917 by Will Englund
“We are provincials no longer,” said
Woodrow Wilson on March 5, 1917, at
his second inaugural. He spoke on the
eve of America’s entrance into World
War I, just as Russia teetered between
autocracy and democracy in the fraught
calm between storms of violent
revolution. The timing of Wilson’s
declaration was no accident: That
month, March 1917, forces that had
been building for years in both countries
coalesced, sending America in one direction and Russia in quite another.
Pulitzer, Polk, and Overseas Press Club Award–winning journalist Will Englund, who covered
Russia for the Washington Post for twelve years, draws on a wealth of contemporary Russian and
American diaries, memoirs, and newspaper accounts to furnish texture and personal detail to the
story of March 1917, the month that transformed the world’s greatest nations. It is a book that
celebrates the dreams of 1917’s warriors, pacifists, activists, revolutionaries, and reactionaries,
even as it traces the way their successes and failures constitute the origin story of the modern
world.
NORTH AMERICAN: W.W. Norton (John Glusman)
DELIVERY: Spring 2016
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: China/Citic, Netherlands/Hollands Diep
11
Hellfire Boys by Theo Emery
Hellfire Boys, a historical narrative about the US gas warfare program
during WWI, centers on the young men who started a Manhattan
project-type program at American University in an area dubbed
“Mustard Hill.” These soldiers and chemists worked on offensive and
defensive gas measures: testing hastily-made gas masks, observing the
effects of mustard gas on goats and dogs and even humans, and
perfecting the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, lewisite, far more
lethal than mustard gas, which the US planned to unleash on Germans using another new
technology, planes. The book traces in parallel narrative the actions of the "Hellfire Battalion," a
group of US engineers who were trained in gas warfare and sent to the front lines in France to
launch multiple assaults against the Germans.
The book is a little Girls of Atomic City (you can call it Boys of Mustard Hill), a little American
Prometheus (given the moral and ethical questions about gas warfare), and a lot of good
straightforward war narrative. The story has everything, even a German spy chemist who's caught
in Cuba and forced to work near NYC on gas weapons and aerial ordnance for the US, with Thomas
Edison checking in periodically on his progress.
The author is Theo Emery, a freelance journalist who's written for the New Yorker, NY Times, and
Boston Globe. He's been working on the research for over a year and has uncovered a public and
private trove of unpublished research and documents. Theo is married to Audie Cornish (host of
NPR's All Things Considered) and has strong media contacts.
NORTH AMERICAN: Little, Brown (John Parsley)
DELIVERY: October 1, 2016
PUBLICATION: 2017
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
12
The Cells and the Scientists by Meredith Wadman
A Rhodes Scholar with a medical degree from Oxford
and an MS in journalism from Columbia, Meredith
Wadman had been covering medical research policy for
national media outlets for more than two decades when
she first became fascinated with the story of WI-38, a
cell line used in many vaccines.
Until 1962, vaccine research was done using non-human
cells. There simply was no line of healthy human cells
available until 1962, when Wistar Institute biomedical
researcher Leonard Hayflick created and then froze
roughly 800 tiny ampules of what he dubbed WI-38.
They were derived from the lungs of an aborted fetus.
Those cells would become the basis for vaccines that have immunized hundreds of millions of
people worldwide against polio, rubella, rabies, chicken pox, and measles, and continue to be
used in cutting- edge medical research. Over the decades, the cells would enrich companies
including Merck, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Wyeth. WI-38 would also spawn a lifetime feud between
Hayflick and his superiors at the Wistar, and an epic fight with the US government, first over
whether the cells were safe to use to make vaccines and then over who owned them.
The tale of WI-38 combines scientific discovery, rivalry, and timely questions about the tradeoff
between socially beneficial medical research and individuals’ rights. At its heart, it is also a
profoundly human story featuring larger-than-life characters.
NORTH AMERICAN: Viking
LENGTH: 125,000 words
EDITED MANUSCRIPT AVAILABLE IN 2-3 MONTHS
FOREIGN SALES: Transworld/UK
13
Ghostland by Colin Dickey
Imagine if Simon Winchester and Walter Benjamin
had a love child and then let him ride his Big Wheel
Danny Torrance-style around America’s creepiest
houses and hotels: such is the magic of Colin Dickey
and his new book, Ghostland. An intellectual feast for
fans of Sarah Vowell, Mary Roach, and Atlas Obscura,
the book takes readers on a road trip through some
of the country’s most infamously haunted places—
and deep into the dark side of our history.
Colin is a cult favorite writer in New York and LA
literary circles. Known for his Bryson-esque humor
and boundless curiosity, he speaks to sold-out
audiences around the country and writes frequently
for magazines such as Lapham’s Quarterly and the
Paris Review. Ghostland promises to be his breakout
book, written for the national audiences who have
already begun to pay attention to him.
Colin, who holds a PhD in comparative literature,
owes much of Ghostland to Benjamin’s Arcades
Project, which argued that a country’s true history lies visible in its ruins. From an Indian burial
ground in West Virginia to the empty factories of Detroit and a troubled café in modern-day New
Orleans, Colin applies this philosophy to American dereliction, revealing the difference between
the history in our textbooks and the history that comes back to haunt us in the night.
NORTH AMERICAN: Viking (Melanie
Tortoroli) PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: May 2016
PUBLICATION: October 4, 2016
14
Euroshock by Charles Dallara
Just a few years ago, Greece seemed poised to
collapse under the weight of its own debt—more than
$300 billion, almost twice the country’s GDP. If
Greece fell, it would finish off the already-wounded
global financial system, and could destroy the dream
of a united Europe for good. After months of weak
proposals, stalled planning, and bluster from some of
Europe’s biggest egos, the 200+ creditors of the
floundering Greek government were no closer to
striking a deal.
Just when negotiations threatened to fail, Charles
Dallara, the chief negotiator for the world’s largest
banks and financial institutions during the Greek Debt
Crisis, brokered a solution that may well have saved
the Eurozone. It was the largest debt restructuring in
history, requiring the combined efforts of a motley
cast of characters from the regal German Chancellor
Merkel to anguished Greek Prime Minister
Papandreou.
Unlike other commentators, Dallara was in the thick
of the negotiations, and EUROSHOCK is the first inside view of the Greek Debt Crisis of 2011–
2012. Dallara also moves beyond the events of those years to provide an informed vision for the
future: a detailed plan for preventing and treating further threats to the stability of the Eurozone,
and thus, to the world.
NORTH AMERICAN: St. Martin’s Press (Emily Carleton)
LENGTH: 70,000 words
PUBLICATION: November 8,
2016 MANUSCRIPT AVAILABLE
SHORTLY
15
Into The Gray Zone by Adrian Owen
Imagine yourself in a hospital bed after a traumatic
brain injury. You’re on life support. A feeding tube
surgically inserted into your stomach supplies you
with essential fluids and nutrients. A catheter drains
your urine. You have no control over your bowels,
and you’re in diapers. Doctors insist that you are in a
persistent vegetative state, with no more awareness
than a head of broccoli. They say you don’t
understand speech or have memories, emotions, or
volition, and that you’re can’t feel pleasure or pain.
They gently remind those nearest and dearest to you
that you require round the
clock care; the cost is high (about a million dollars a year if you’re in a residential facility). In the
absence of an advanced directive stating otherwise, you should be allowed to die. This is
doubtless what you would want. Tears flow and tempers flare. And through all of this, you are
aware of everything that is going on around you, unable to move or even twitch a muscle to show
the room you’re there.
This nightmarish scenario sounds like science fiction—or at worst, a one-in-a-million medical
anomaly. Unfortunately, however, as Dr. Owen and his colleagues are just beginning to discover,
it’s reality for an astounding number of patients in so-called vegetative or minimally conscious
states. Using fMRI brain scans, they have found that fifteen to twenty percent of these people are
fully aware of their surroundings. They can ask them yes or no questions and test their memories
and moods. They have found that they know who and where they are and are capable of making
decisions about issues as mundane as whether they would prefer to watch hockey or football and
as profound as whether they want to live or die.
Sourced in Dr. Owen’s experience as a global leader in brain imaging research, this book will take
readers to the edge of a dazzling, humbling frontier in our understanding of the brain: the socalled “gray zone” between full consciousness and brain death. People in this middle place have
sustained brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and
Parkinson’s. Many are oblivious to the outside world, as incapable of thought as their doctors
believe. But a sizeable number are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift deep
within damaged brains and bodies. When Dr. Owen discovered this population, it was a revelatory
moment in medical history—and the medical community has only just begun to grapple with its
implications.
NORTH AMERICAN: Scribner (Rick Horgan)
DELIVERY: September 1, 2016
LENGTH: 80,000 words
FOREIGN SALES: UK/Guardian-Faber, Germany/Droemer, France/Tredaniel
16
Seoul Man by Frank Ahrens
In 2009, Frank Ahrens was a middle-aged bachelor and 18year veteran at the Washington Post, known equally for his
business reporting and his enthusiastic coverage of Star
Trek. Then, however, he fell in love with a diplomat, and his
life and career changed dramatically. Following his fiancée
to her first appointment in Seoul, South Korea, Frank
packed up his journalism career and accepted a position as
director of global communications at Hyundai Motors.
There, he was one of fewer than 10 non-Koreans in a
building of 5000 employees— in a land whose population
is 97% Korean.
For the next three years, Frank traveled to auto shows and
press conferences all over the world, pitching Hyundai to
former colleagues while trying desperately to navigate
cultural differences back at the office. His finely-tuned
appreciation for absurdity enabled him to laugh his way
through many awkward encounters, but others were far
more serious— particularly as he rose through the ranks of corporate culture and his job
commitments began to take their toll on his marriage and family. Eventually, he became a vice
president— the highest-ranking American in the history of Hyundai—but at a nearly unbearable
price.
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Seoul Man chronicles Frank’s three years spent in Korea
with his wife, their baby daughter, and their two dogs. The book sheds light on a business culture
very few Western journalists have been able to penetrate and fewer have been able to experience
firsthand.
Seoul Man is Up in the Air meets Lost in Translation: a timely, page-turning fish-out-of-water story
that offers a funny reflection on global work pressures, relationship battles, and cultural clashes.
NORTH AMERICAN: Harper Business (Hollis Heimbouch)
PUBLICATION: August 2016
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
17
The Humane Economy by Wayne Pacelle
In the mid-nineteenth century, New Bedford,
Massachusetts, was the whaling capital of the world. A halfgallon of whale oil cost approximately $1,400 in today’s
dollars, and whale populations were hunted to near
extinction for profit. But with the advent of fossil fuels, the
whaling industry collapsed, and today, the area around New
Bedford is instead known as one of the best places in the
world for whale watching.
This transformation is emblematic of a new sort of economic
revolution, one that has the power to transform the future
of animal welfare. In The Humane Economy, Wayne Pacelle,
President/CEO of the Humane Society of the United States,
explores how our everyday economic decisions impact the
survival and wellbeing of animals, and how we can make
choices that better support them. Though most of us have
never hurt or killed an animal for profit, we are all part of an
interconnected web that has a tremendous impact on animal welfare, and the decisions we
make—whether supporting local, not industrial, farming; adopting a rescue dog or a shelter
animal instead of one from a “puppy mill”; avoiding products that compromise the habitat of wild
species; or even seeing Cirque du Soleil instead of Ringling Brothers—do matter. The Humane
Economy shows us how what we do every day as consumers can benefit animals, the
environment, and human society, and why these decisions can make economic sense as well.
The Humane Economy is a major new exploration of the economics of animal exploitation and a
practical roadmap for using the marketplace to promote the welfare of all living creatures, from
the renowned animal-rights advocate Wayne Pacelle, President/CEO of the Humane Society of
the United States and New York Times bestselling author of The Bond.
WORLD ENGLISH: Harper Voyager
PUBLICATION: April 2016
LENGTH: 75,000 words
GALLEYS AVAILABLE
18
Why the Right Went Wrong by E.J. Dionne
“Dionne's expertise is evident in this finely crafted and
convincing
work.”
—The
Los
Angeles
Times
From one of our most engaging political reporters and the
author of Why Americans Hate Politics; the story of
conservatism from the Goldwater 1960s to the present day
Tea Party that has resulted in broken promises and an
ideological purity that drives moderate Republicans away.
In a book London’s Guardian called “masterly,” Dionne
identifies a central paradox faced by governments and voting
publics worldwide: “A broad desire for governments to
reduce the levels of economic insecurity and expand
opportunity is constrained by a loss of confidence in the
capacity
of
government
to
succeed.”
Why the Right Went Wrong offers a compelling historical
view of the American right since the 1960s. Its core
contention is that the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater’s
worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. The radicalism of today’s conservatism is not the
product of Trump or the Tea Party; the Tea Partiers are the true heirs to Goldwater ideology. The
purity movement did more than drive moderates out of the Republican Party—it beat back
alternative definitions of conservatism.
Since 1968, no conservative administration—not Nixon, nor Reagan nor two Bushes—could live
up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics
fifty years ago. When George W. Bush undertook a partial modernization, preaching
“compassionate conservatism” and a “Fourth Way” to Clinton’s “Third Way,” conservatives
quickly attacked him as an advocate of “big government” and too liberal on spending,
immigration, education, and Medicare. A return to the true faith was the only prescription on
order. The result was the Tea Party, which Dionne says, was as much a reaction to Bush as to
Obama.
The Republican party has become white and older in a country that is diverse and young. It needs
to come back to life for its own health and that of the country’s and ultimately the world’s, and
in Why the Right Went Wrong, Dionne explains how.
NORTH AMERICAN English & Spanish: Simon & Schuster
PROPOSAL AVAILABLE
MANUSCRIPT: May 2016
PUBLICATION: October 4, 2016
19
Select Backlist
PROOF OF HEAVEN by Eben Alexander
**New York Times #1 Bestseller – More than 2.5 Million Copies in Print (USA) – Translated Into 40
Languages and Counting – Optioned for Film by Universal Studios**
**ALSO AVAILABLE IN A DELUXE EDITION WITH NEW AFTERWORD**
Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have
argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists.
A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are
simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.
Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the
brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut
down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered
stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.
Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies
elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world
and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of
super- physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the
universe itself.
NORTH AMERICAN: Simon and Schuster (Priscilla Painton/Jon
Karp) PUBLICATION: October 24, 2012
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Macmillan/ANZ, Sextante/Brazil, Fortuna/Czech Republic and Slovakia, Ansata/Germany,
Hayakawa/Japan, Bruna/Netherlands, Centrepolygraph/Russia, Piatkus/UK, Gimmyoung/Korea, Beijing
Fonghong/Simplified Chinese, Eurasian/Complex Chinese, Tredaniel/France, Mondadori/Italy,
Leya/Portugual, Agave/Hungary, Planeta/Spain, Laguna/Serbia, Lifestyle/Romania, VBZ/Croatia,
Hermes/Bulgaria, Poland/Znak, Afrikaans/Penguin ZA, Greece/Kleidarithmos, Achuzat Bayit/Israel,
Forum/Sweden, Avots/Latvia, WSOY/Finland, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Pilgrim Group/Estonia, Det Bla
Hus/Denmark, Morava/Albania, Eurgrimas/Lithuania, Turkey/Klan, Indonesia/Betang Pustaka,
Slovenia/Ucila, Nova Knjiga/Montenegro, Saraswati/Marathi, Nha Nam/Vietnam, Olaf Olsen/Faroe Islands
20
THE MAP OF HEAVEN by Eben Alexander
**From the New York Times #1/1.5 million copy bestselling author of PROOF OF HEAVEN**
In the two years since Dr. Eben Alexander released Proof of Heaven, countless men and women have approached
him via email and at public appearances, thanking him for giving them the courage to talk about their own
experiences of life beyond death. They have told him stories sharp in detail and astounding in their similarity.
In The Map of Heaven, Alexander and writer Ptolemy Tompkins will share dozens of these personal stories,
linking them up with what the world’s spiritual traditions have had to say in times past about the journey of the
soul. Each story is interesting in and of itself—but each is vastly more interesting, and powerful, when it is linked
with the larger traditional understanding of the afterlife that, until the arrival of the modern scientific
perspective, almost all people through history (and prehistory) believed in.
Can we dare to believe once again in such a universe? A universe in which we—each of us—truly survive the
death of our physical bodies?
Combining great stories with ancient theology and a neurosurgeon’s understanding of cutting-edge brain
science,
The Map of Heaven makes a compelling and convincing case for the immortality of the soul.
NORTH AMERICAN: Simon and Schuster (Priscilla Painton)
PUBLICATION: October 7, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Macmillan/ANZ, Sextante/Brazil, Fortuna/Czech Republic and Slovakia, Ansata/Germany,
Bruna/Netherlands, Piatkus/UK, Mondadori/Italy, Agave/Hungary, Tredaniel/France, Centrepolygraph/Russia,
Gimmyoung/Korea, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Forum/Sweden, WSOY/Finland, Planeta/Spain, Znak/Poland,
VBZ/Croatia, Hayakawa/Japan, Ucila/Slovenia, Hermes/Bulgaria, Gyldendal/Denmark, Lifestyle/Romania
IRRITABLE HEARTS by Mac McClelland
In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the lingering devastation of the
earthquake. Back home, McClelland finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence. She can’t sleep or stop
crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and
seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she’d reported from, places where she
thought she’d escaped emotionally unscathed. The bewilderment about this sudden loss of self-control is
magnified by her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Haiti who despite their brief connection seems to
have found a place in her confused heart.
With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland sets out to repair her broken psyche. Investigating her own illness and
the history of PTSD, she discovers she is not alone: traumatic events have sweeping influence. While we most
often connect it to veterans, PTSD is more often caused by other manner of trauma, and can even be
contagious—close proximity to those afflicted can trigger it in those around them. As McClelland confronts the
realities of her disorder, she learns to open her heart to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune
moment.
Vivid, suspenseful, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is an unforgettable exploration of vulnerability and resilience,
control and acceptance, and a compelling story of survival that expands the definition of what trauma is and
offers powerful hope for those who need to work through it.
WORLD ENGLISH: Flatiron Press (Colin Dickerman)
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: February 25, 2015
21
THE FUTURE OF VIOLENCE by Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum
From drone warfare in the Middle East to digital spying by the National Security Agency, the U.S. government
has harnessed the power of cutting-edge technology to awesome effect. But what happens when ordinary
people have the same tools at their fingertips? Advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology, and robotics mean
that more people than ever before have access to potentially dangerous technologies—from drones to
computer networks and biological agents—which could be used to attack states and private citizens alike.
In The Future of Violence, law and security experts Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum detail the myriad
possibilities, challenges, and enormous risks present in the modern world, and argue that if our national
governments can no longer adequately protect us from harm, they will lose their legitimacy. Consequently,
governments, companies, and citizens must rethink their security efforts to protect lives and liberty. In this brave
new world where many little brothers are as menacing as any Big Brother, safeguarding our liberty and privacy
may require strong domestic and international surveillance and regulatory controls. Maintaining security in this
world where anyone can attack anyone requires a global perspective, with more multinational forces and greater
action to protect (and protect against) weaker states who do not yet have the capability to police their own
people. Drawing on political thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to the Founders and beyond, Wittes and Blum show
that, despite recent protestations to the contrary, security and liberty are mutually supportive, and that we must
embrace one to ensure the other.
The Future of Violence is at once an introduction to our emerging world—one in which students can print guns
with 3-D printers and scientists’ manipulations of viruses can be recreated and unleashed by ordinary people—
and an authoritative blueprint for how government must adapt in order to survive and protect us.
NORTH AMERICAN: Basic (Lara Heimert)
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: March 10, 2015
FOREIGN RIGHTS: Amberley/UK
MIDNIGHT’S FURIES by Nisid Hajari
Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody—it was supposed to be an answer
to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protégé and the political leader of India, believed Indians were an inherently
nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand.
But in August 1946, exactly a year before Independence, Calcutta erupted in street-gang fighting. A cycle of riots
— targeting Hindus, then Muslims, then Sikhs — spiraled out of control. As the summer of 1947 approached, all
three groups were heavily armed and on edge, and the British rushed to leave.
Hell let loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and
widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border, searing a divide
between India and Pakistan that remains a root cause of many evils.
From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation, the searing tale told in Midnight’s Furies explains all too many
of the headlines we read today.
WORLD ENGLISH: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
PUBLICATION: June 5, 2015
COPIES AVAILABLE
22
WAR OF THE WHALES by Joshua Horwitz
**NYT Top 10 Bestseller—Science**
War of the Whales tells the unlikely story of an environmental lawyer named Joel Reynolds, who stumbled on
one of the U.S. Navy’s best-kept secrets. What Reynolds uncovered in 1994 was a submarine surveillance system
originally designed to mimic cetacean bio-sonar that evolved, ironically, into an acoustic assault on endangered
whales.
Like many serendipitous discoveries, its significance was not immediately apparent to Reynolds. But after patient
and persistent investigation, the knotted threads of evidence began to loosen and unravel, exposing a lengthy
trail of deception, denial, and death – and the truth behind an epidemic of mass whale-strandings.
War of the Whales narrates how Reynolds recruited a small band of whale researchers, including beaked whale
expert and Navy veteran Ken Balcomb, who shared his determination to hold the Navy accountable in a court
of law. Their refusal to back down from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful Navy galvanized a
divided community of biologists and conservationists to unite in protection of a magnificent species of marine
mammal.
The story of the space race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. is well-chronicled in books and films such as The
Right Stuff, Dr. Strangelove, and Apollo 13. But the parallel saga of the arms race below the ocean’s surface –
and its ongoing collateral damage to marine mammals – has remained, until recently, hidden beneath a veil of
military secrecy.
War of the Whales details how the rapid escalation of anti-submarine warfare during the Cold War unleashed a
Pandora’s box of lethal sound into the world’s oceans, threatening the survival of the most ancient marine
mammals. While this story begins at the end of World War II, its climax is unfolding right now, during the post9/11 war on terror.
The collision of Navy sonar and whales has become a legal, political, and societal test case of how we balance
the needs of national security and the security of our natural environment. The fate of the oceans, and the
marine species living there, hang in the balance as this battle moves towards a decisive showdown in the high
courts and on the high seas.
NORTH AMERICAN: Simon and Schuster (Jon Karp)
PUBLICATION: July 1, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Guanxi Normal University Press/China (Simplified Chinese)
23
OVERWHELMED by Brigid Schulte
**NYT Top 10 Bestseller – Hardcover Nonfiction** Can working parents ever find true leisure time?
According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is “that place in which we
realize our humanity.” If that’s true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we’re doing dangerously little realizing of our
humanity. In Overwhelmed, Schulte, a staff writer for The Washington Post, asks: Are our brains, our partners,
our culture, and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but “contaminated time”?
Schulte first asked this question in a 2010 feature for The Washington Post Magazine: “How did researchers
compile this statistic that said we were rolling in leisure—over four hours a day? Did any of us feel that we
actually had downtime? Was there anything useful in their research—anything we could do?”
Overwhelmed is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces
back together. Schulte speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents to tease out the
factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration.
She investigates progressive offices trying to invent a new kind of workplace; she travels across Europe to get a
sense of how other countries accommodate working parents; she finds younger couples who claim to have
figured out an ideal division of chores, childcare, and meaningful paid work.
Overwhelmed is the story of what she found out.
NORTH AMERICAN: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Sarah Crichton)
PUBLICATION: March 11, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Bloomsbury/UK, Gilbut/Korea, MIF/Russia, Novo Seculo/Brazil
THE NURSES by Alexandra Robbins
Nursing is more than a career; it is a calling, and one of the most important, fascinating, and dangerous
professions in the world. As the frontline responders battling traumas, illnesses, and aggression from surprising
sources, nurses are remarkable. Yet contemporary literature largely neglects them.
In THE NURSES, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Alexandra Robbins peers
behind the staff-only door to write a lively, fast-paced story and a riveting work of investigative journalism.
Robbins followed real-life nurses in four hospitals and interviewed hundreds of others in a captivating book filled
with joy and violence, miracles and heartbreak, dark humor and narrow victories, gripping drama and unsung
heroism.
Alexandra Robbins creates sympathetic, engaging characters while diving deep into their world of controlled
chaos—the hazing (“nurses eat their young”); sex (not exactly like on TV, but it happens more often than you
think); painkiller addiction (disproportionately a problem among the best and brightest); and bullying (by
doctors, patients, and others). The result is a page-turner possessing all the twists and turns of a brilliantly told
narrative—and a shocking, unvarnished examination of our healthcare system.
THE NURSES is a must-read both for the general public, who will learn hospital secrets that could save their
own or a loved one’s life, and for nurses, who will proudly share the book as a rallying cry for support and
celebration.
NORTH AMERICAN: Workman
PUBLICATION: May 5, 2015
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Knowledge Publishing House/ Vietnam
24
THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM by Gabriel Sherman
**NYT Top 10 Bestseller—Hardcover Nonfiction**
A deeply reported journey inside the secretive world of Fox News and the life of its combative, visionary founder.
When Rupert Murdoch enlisted Roger Ailes to launch a cable news network in 1996, American politics and
media changed forever. Now, with a remarkable level of detail and insight, New York magazine reporter
Gabriel Sherman brings Ailes’s unique genius to life, along with the outsize personalities—Bill O’Reilly, Sean
Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, and others—who have helped Fox
News play a defining role in the great social and political controversies of the past two decades. From the
Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to the Bush-Gore recount, from the war in Iraq to the Tea Party attack on the Obama
presidency, Roger Ailes has developed an unrivaled power to sway the national agenda. Even more, he has
become the indispensable figure in conservative America and the man any Republican politician with
presidential aspirations must court.
How did this man, whose life story has until now been shrouded in myth, become the master strategist of our
political landscape? In revelatory detail, Sherman chronicles the rise of Ailes, a sickly kid from an Ohio factory
town who, through sheer willpower, the flair of a showman, fierce corporate politicking, and a profound
understanding of the priorities of middle America, built the most influential television news empire of our
time.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Fox News insiders past and present, Sherman documents Ailes’s
tactical acuity as he battles the press, business rivals, and countless real and perceived enemies inside and
outside Fox. Sherman takes us inside the morning meetings in which Ailes and other high-level executives
strategize Fox’s presentation of the news to advance Ailes’s political agenda; provides behind-the-scenes
details of Ailes’s crucial role as finder and shaper of talent, including his sometimes rocky relationships with
Fox News stars such as O’Reilly and Hannity; and probes Ailes’s fraught partnership with his equally brash and
mercurial boss, Rupert Murdoch.
Roger Ailes’s life is a story worthy of Citizen Kane. The Loudest Voice in the Room is an extraordinary feat of
reportage with a compelling human drama at its heart.
NORTH AMERICAN: Random House (Jonathan Jao)
PUBLICATION: January 14, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Simplified Chinese/Citic, Korea/Media Tiger, Turkey/Zodyak, Marathi/Saraswati
25
ACID TEST by Tom Shroder
It’s no secret that LSD, MDMA, and other psychedelics have the ability to cast light on the miraculous reality
hidden within our psyche. Almost immediately following the discovery of LSD less than a hundred years ago,
psychedelics began playing a crucial role in the quest to understand the link between mind and matter. With
an uncanny ability to reveal the mind’s remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness,
compounds such as LSD and MDMA (better known as Ecstasy) have been proven to be extraordinarily effective
in treating disorders such as post-traumatic stress—yet the drugs remain illegal, out of reach of the millions of
people who could benefit from them.
Anchoring ACID TEST are the stories of three men: Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), who has been fighting government prohibition of
psychedelics for more than thirty years; Michael Mithoefer, a former emergency room physician who became
a ground-breaking psychiatrist committed to psychedelic therapy research for PTSD; and his patient Nick
Blackston, a former Marine who has suffered unfathomable mental anguish from the effects of brutal combat
experiences in Iraq.
Written by decorated journalist and editor Tom Shroder, ACID TEST covers the first heady years of
experimentation in the fifties and sixties, through the backlash of the seventies and eighties when the drug
subculture exploded and uncontrolled experimentation with street psychedelics led to a PR nightmare that
would set therapeutic use back decades. Meticulously researched and astoundingly informative, Acid Test is at
once a moving narrative of intertwining lives against an epic backdrop, and a striking and persuasive argument
for the unprecedented healing properties of drugs that have for decades been characterized as dangerous,
illicit substances.
WORLD ENGLISH: Blue Rider Press (Sarah Hochman)
PUBLICATION: September 9, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
26
SCRUM by Jeff Sutherland
We live in a world that is broken. For those who believe that there must be a more efficient way for people
to get things done, here from Scrum pioneer Jeff Sutherland is a brilliantly discursive, thought-provoking book
about the management process that is changing the way we live.
In the future, historians may look back on human progress and draw a sharp line designating “before Scrum”
and “after Scrum.” Scrum is that ground-breaking. It already drives most of the world’s top technology
companies. And now it’s starting to spread to every domain where people wrestle with complex projects.
If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity
gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid – or compelling– explainer of Scrum
and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty
years ago.
The thorny problem Jeff began tackling back then boils down to this: people are spectacularly bad at doing
things quickly and efficiently. Best laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross purposes to each
other. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Drawing on his experience as a West Point-educated
fighter pilot, biometrics expert, early innovator of ATM technology, and V.P. of engineering or CTO at eleven
different technology companies, Jeff began challenging those dysfunctional realities, looking for solutions that
would have global impact.
In this book you’ll journey to Scrum’s front lines where Jeff’s system of deep accountability, team interaction,
and constant iterative improvement is, among other feats, bringing the FBI into the 21st century, perfecting
the design of an affordable 140 mile per hour/100 mile per gallon car, helping NPR report fast-moving action
in the Middle East, changing the way pharmacists interact with patients, reducing poverty in the Third World,
and even helping people plan their weddings and accomplish weekend chores.
Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and many
other disciplines, Scrum is consistently riveting. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may
just help you achieve what others consider unachievable – whether it be inventing a trailblazing technology,
devising a new system of education, pioneering a way to feed the hungry, or, closer to home, a building a
foundation for your family to thrive and prosper.
WORLD ENGLISH: Crown
PUBLICATION: September 30, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN RIGHTS: Brazil/Leya, China/Citic, Germany/Campus, Italy/Etas ,Japan/Hayakawa, Korea/RHK,
Mexico/Oceano, Netherlands/Maven, Poland/PWN, Portugal/Leya, Russia/MIF, Slovenia/Zalozba Pasadena,
Spain/Planeta, Taiwan/Commonwealth, Thailand/WeLearn, Turkey/Buzgadi, Ukraine/FLC
27
MIDNIGHT IN SIBERIA by David Greene
Travels with NPR host David Greene along the Trans-Siberian Railroad capture an overlooked, idiosyncratic
Russia in the age of Putin. After two and a half years as NPR’s Moscow bureau chief, David Greene travels
across the country—a 6,000- mile journey by rail, from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok—to speak
with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years.
Reaching beyond the headline-grabbing protests in Moscow, Greene speaks with a group of singing babushkas
from Buranovo, a teenager hawking “space rocks” from last spring’s meteor shower in Chelyabinsk, and activists
battling for environmental regulation in the pollution-choked town of Baikalsk. Through the stories of fellow
travelers, Greene explores the challenges and opportunities facing the new Russia—a nation that boasts open
elections and new-found prosperity yet still continues to endure oppression, corruption, and stark inequality.
Set against the wintery landscape of Siberia, Greene’s lively travel narrative offers a glimpse into the soul of
twentieth-century Russia—how its people remember their history and look forward to the future.
NORTH AMERICAN: W.W. Norton (Maria Guarnaschelli)
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: October 7, 2014
FOREIGN RIGHTS: ANZ/Text, UK/Alma, Russia/AST
KEEP CALM AND PARENT ON by Emma Jenner
From a modern-day Mary Poppins and the former star of TLC’s Take Home Nanny comes a holistic and guilt-free
approach to parenting children ages seven and under. Emma Jenner lives, teaches, and nannies by this
philosophy: if parents are in control, they can enjoy their children more. And what could be more enjoyable than
well- behaved, respectful, healthy kids?
Keep Calm and Parent On effectively places parenting expert Emma Jenner on your shoulder, helping you see
your child’s behavior from an objective standpoint that puts you firmly in charge. Each chapter opens with a
checklist of questions to ask yourself when you run into a specific problem, whether it’s sleeping, nutrition,
communication, manners, consequences, or self-esteem. Jenner then breaks down each checklist, explaining
how bad behavior is really just a habit that needs to be corrected. By connecting the dots in all areas of your
child’s life, you can understand why he or she is acting out—and how to fix it. For example, the best discipline
techniques in the world won’t work if a child is sleep-deprived, and a child will not demonstrate good manners
if communication is faulty and he doesn’t understand what’s expected of him. Each chapter also features handy
sidebars, as well as instructive and memorable quizzes. A strong proponent of raising our expectations, Jenner
shows how parents can do more by doing less for their children.
With an interactive format and straightforward solutions, this invaluable guide is designed to give parents bitesize takeaways they can use immediately with their children. Jenner’s blend of British and American parenting
styles is more than advice; it is proof that all children are capable of behaving—and that you have the keys to
unlocking their potential.
WORLD ENGLISH: Atria (Greer Hendricks)
PUBLICATION: July 15, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Munhakdongne/Korea, Crown/Taiwan, Hachette-Phoenix/China, Gruner+Jahr/Poland
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THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD by Dan Jurafsky
Stanford University linguist and MacArthur Fellow Dan Jurafsky dives into the hidden history of food.
Why do we eat toast for breakfast, and then toast to good health at dinner? What does the turkey we eat on
Thanksgiving have to do with the country on the eastern Mediterranean? Can you figure out how much your
dinner will cost by counting the words on the menu?
In The Language of Food, Stanford University professor and MacArthur Fellow Dan Jurafsky peels away the
mysteries from the foods we think we know. Thirteen chapters evoke the joy and discovery of reading a menu
dotted with the sharp-eyed annotations of a linguist.
Jurafsky points out the subtle meanings hidden in filler words like “rich” and “crispy,” zeroes in on the metaphors
and storytelling tropes we rely on in restaurant reviews, and charts a microuniverse of marketing language on
the back of a bag of potato chips.
The fascinating journey through The Language of Food uncovers a global atlas of culinary influences. With
Jurafsky’s insight, words like ketchup, macaron, and even salad become living fossils that contain the patterns
of early global exploration that predate our modern fusion-filled world.
From ancient recipes preserved in Sumerian song lyrics to colonial shipping routes that first connected East and
West, Jurafsky paints a vibrant portrait of how our foods developed. A surprising history of culinary exchange—
a sharing of ideas and culture as much as ingredients and flavors—lies just beneath the surface of our daily
snacks, soups, and suppers.
WORLD ENGLISH: W.W. Norton (Maria Guarnaschelli)
PUBLICATION: September 15, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
FOREIGN SALES: Hayakawa/Japan, Across Publishing Company/Korea, Rye Field/Taiwan, Shanghai Literature/
China
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA by Mark Perry
At times, even his admirers seemed unsure of what to do with General Douglas MacArthur. Imperious,
headstrong, and vain, MacArthur matched an undeniable military genius with a massive ego and a rebellious
streak that often seemed to destine him for the dustbin of history. Yet despite his flaws, MacArthur is
remembered as a brilliant commander whose combined-arms operation in the Pacific—the first in the history
of warfare—secured America’s triumph in World War II and changed the course of history.
In The Most Dangerous Man in America, celebrated historian Mark Perry examines how this paradox of a man
overcame personal and professional challenges to lead his countrymen in their darkest hour. As Perry shows,
Franklin Roosevelt and a handful of MacArthur’s subordinates made this feat possible, taming MacArthur,
making him useful, and finally making him victorious. A gripping, authoritative biography of the Pacific Theater’s
most celebrated and misunderstood commander, The Most Dangerous Man in America reveals the secrets of
Douglas MacArthur’s success—and the incredible efforts of the men who made it possible.
NORTH AMERICAN: Basic Books
PUBLICATION: April 1, 2014
COPIES AVAILABLE
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A CURIOUS DISCOVERY: AN ENTREPRENEUR’S STORY by John Hendricks
In A Curious Discovery, media titan John Hendricks tells the remarkable story of building one of the most
successful media empires in the world, Discovery Communications.
John Hendricks, a well-respected corporate leader and brand builder, reveals that his professional
achievements would not have been possible without one crucial quality that has informed his life since
childhood: curiosity.
This entrepreneur’s story takes you behind the scenes of some of the network’s most popular shows and
greatest successes, and imparts crucial lessons from the network’s setbacks.
With insights, anecdotes, photographs, and real-world wisdom, A Curious Discovery is more than a powerful
autobiography and corporate history: It also a valuable primer for business innovators and entrepreneurs.
NORTH AMERICAN: Harper Business (David Hirshey)
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: June 25, 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Global Business/Complex Chinese, Citic/Simplified Chinese, ReadySetGo/Korea
DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC? by Paul Offit
In Do You Believe in Magic?, medical expert Paul A. Offit, M.D., offers a scathing exposé of the alternative
medicine industry, revealing how even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the
placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly.
Dr. Offit reveals how alternative medicine—an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims
or admit its risks—can actually be harmful to our health.
Using dramatic real-life stories, Offit separates the sense from the nonsense, showing why any therapy—
alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. He also shows how some nontraditional methods can do a
great deal of good, in some cases exceeding therapies offered by conventional practitioners.
An outspoken advocate for science-based health advocacy who is not afraid to take on media celebrities who
promote alternative practices, Dr. Offit advises, “There’s no such thing as alternative medicine. There’s only
medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”
NORTH AMERICAN: Harper (Gail Winston)
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: June 18, 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Fourth Estate/UK, Japan/Chijin, Korea/Purun Communication
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THE ALCHEMISTS by Neil Irwin
When the first fissures became visible to the naked eye in August 2007, suddenly the most powerful men in the
world were three men who were never elected to public office. They were the leaders of the world’s three most
important central banks: Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and
Jean- Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. Over the next five years, they and their fellow central bankers
deployed trillions of dollars, pounds and euros to contain the waves of panic that threatened to bring down the
global financial system, moving on a scale and with a speed that had no precedent.
Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management
we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of
all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then
progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence
over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with
a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are – the possessors of
extraordinary power over our collective fate. What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story
Irwin tells.
NORTH AMERICAN: Penguin Press
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: April 4, 2013
FOREIGN SALES: Business Plus/World English, Hayakawa/Japan, Econ/Germany, Cheers/Simplified Chinese,
Campus/Brazil, KPI/Korea, Planeta/Spain, Humanitas/Romania
A FIELD GUIDE TO AWKWARD SILENCES by Alexandra Petri
Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri turns her satirical eye on her own life in this hilarious new memoir...
Most twentysomethings spend a lot of time avoiding awkwardness. Not Alexandra Petri.
Afraid of rejection? Alexandra Petri has auditioned for America’s Next Top Model. Afraid of looking like an
idiot? Alexandra Petri lost Jeopardy! by answering “Who is that dude?” on national TV. Afraid of bad jokes?
Alexandra Petri won an international pun championship.
Petri has been a debutante, reenacted the Civil War, and fended off suitors at a Star Wars convention while
wearing a Jabba the Hutt suit. One time, she let some cult members she met on the street baptize her, just to
be polite. She’s a connoisseur of the kind of awkwardness that most people spend whole lifetimes trying to
avoid. If John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris had a baby…they would never let Petri babysit it.
But Petri is here to tell you: Everything you fear is not so bad. Trust her. She’s tried it. And in the course of her
misadventures, she’s learned that there are worse things out there than awkwardness—and that interesting
things start to happen when you stop caring what people think.
NORTH AMERICAN: NAL (Tracy Bernstein)
COPIES AVAILABLE
PUBLICATION: June 2, 2015
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HEALING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND by Don Campbell and Alex Doman
“Healing at the Speed of Sound . . . provides us with powerful tools to enhance our general health and
wellbeing as well as expand our spiritual awareness.”
—David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, ABIHM, author of Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment
“Healing at the Speed of Sound puts us in charge of our own sound health and well being. Life is good-but it
can be so much better with Campbell’s infinite illuminations contained in this wonderful body of work.”
—Barry Green, bestselling author of the The Inner Game of Music, The Mastery of Music, and Bringing Music to
Life
“From the moment of our birth . . . to the last breath we take, sound is a primary, shaping force in our lives.
Don Campbell and Alex Doman have authored a wonderful treatise helping us understand the role sound
plays in our lives and the means by which we can be productive, healthy and happy.”
—Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., author of the Power of
Resilience
Based on more than a decade of new research, Don Campbell, bestselling author of The Mozart Effect, and
Alex Doman, an expert in the practical application of sound and listening, show how we can use music—and
silence—to become more efficient, productive, relaxed, and healthy.
Each chapter of Healing at the Speed of Sound focuses on a single aspect of everyday life, providing advice,
exercises, wide-ranging playlists, and links so readers can use the music they love to create the perfect
soundtrack for any goal or task. Also included are “Sound Profiles”—brief stories showing how real people
creatively tap the power of sound to improve their own and other’s lives—as well as sound and video clips
available on the authors’ dynamic website, www.healingatthespeedofsound.com.
Inspiring, practical, and truly enjoyable, Healing at the Speed of Sound opens the door to a fuller, richer, and
much more harmonious life.
NORTH AMERICAN: Hudson Street Press
RELEASE DATE: September 29, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Sanchaek/Korea, Domain/Complex Chinese, L’Homme/French, Ascii/Japan
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THE SECRET LIVES OF WIVES by Iris Krasnow
*New York Times Bestselling Author
*Inaugural selection for The Talk book club
America’s high divorce rate is well-known. But little attention has been paid to the flip side: couples who
creatively (sometimes clandestinely) manage to build marriages that are lasting longer than we ever thought
possible. What’s the secret? To find out, bestselling journalist Iris Krasnow interviewed more than 200 wives
whose marriages have survived for 15 to 70 years. They are a diverse cast, yet they share one common and
significant trait: They have made bold, sometimes secretive and shocking choices on how to keep their marital
vows, “till death do us part,” as Krasnow says, “without killing someone first.”
In raw, candid, titillating stories, Krasnow’s cast of wise women give voice to the truth about marriage and the
importance of maintaining a strong sense of self apart from the relationship. Some spend summers separately
from their partners. Some make time for wine with the girls. One septuagenarian has a recurring date with an
old flame from high school. In every case, the marriage operates on many tracks, giving both spouses license to
pursue the question “Who am I apart from my marriage?” Krasnow’s goal is to give women permission to create
their own marriages at any age. Marital bliss is possible, she says, if each partner is blissful apart from the other.
“The Fine Line Between Marriage and Divorce,” Iris’s Huffington Post article on her vintage wives’ tales, has
been read by more than 1.5 million people and circulated across the globe, prompting interview requests from
the UK to Poland and Brazil. For the week leading up to publication, the book was on Amazon’s top-50 bestseller
list.
NORTH AMERICAN: Gotham (Lauren Marino)
RELEASE DATE: September 29, 2011
FOREIGN SALES: Commonwealth/Complex Chinese; Grand China/Simplified Chinese
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THE MODERN BOOK OF THE DEAD by Ptolemy Tompkins
**Collaborator on Dr. Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven and The Map of Heaven**
“A fascinating, impassioned hybrid of memoir and divine supposition.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A brilliant and absorbing exploration of our ideas about death and the afterlife, that brings much thought,
insight, and personal reflection to an area of experience we too often avoid examining. Some might consider
this morbid— mistakenly, I’d say—but it prepares the reader for the one spiritual adventure none of us will
miss, and can even make us look forward to it.”
—Gary Lachman
What happens to us after we die? All the world’s religions offer their own perspectives on what happens to us
after death, and even in the modern world, where the existence of the soul is so often questioned, channeling
and near- death experiences have kept those ancient questions alive all the same. So it is that in today’s largely
secular society, thousands still continue to turn to ancient texts like the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the
Dead for consolation and inspiration.
Like the world’s other great sacred works, these Books of the Dead offer wisdom, hope, and comfort. But
because they’re so old, the material they present needs to be seen within a modern context in order to be truly
useful. If “What happens to the soul at death?” remains perhaps the single most important question we can
ask, then whatever answer we find should incorporate not just ancient wisdom, but also the fruits of modern
experience. The Modern Book of the Dead does just that.
Author Ptolemy Tompkins grew up in a family where questions about the shape and fate of the human soul
were discussed on a daily basis, and he has explored those concepts in his critically acclaimed books The Divine
Life of Animals and Paradise Fever. Part memoir, part history of ideas of the afterlife, and part road map to
what might truly await each of us when we leave our bodies behind, The Modern Book of the Dead is a wise
and courageous book that approaches the question of the afterlife in a refreshingly intimate manner.
NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH AND SPANISH: Atria (Sarah Durand)
RELEASE DATE: February 14, 2012
FOREIGN SALES: Cygnus/UK, Agave/Hungary, Nar Kitap/Turkey
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UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING by Alfie Kohn
*Winner, 2006 National Parenting Publications Award
Most parenting guides begin with the question “How can we get kids to do what they’re told?”—and then
proceed to offer various techniques for controlling them. In this truly groundbreaking book, nationally
respected educator Alfie Kohn begins instead by asking, “What do kids need—and how can we meet those
needs?” What follows from that question are ideas for working with children rather than doing things to them.
One basic need all children have, Kohn argues, is to be loved unconditionally, to know that they will be accepted
even if they screw up or fall short. Yet conventional approaches to parenting such as punishments (including
“time-outs”), rewards (including positive reinforcement), and other forms of control teach children that they
are loved only when they please us or impress us. Kohn cites a body of powerful, and largely unknown, research
detailing the damage caused by leading children to believe they must earn our approval. That’s precisely the
message children derive from common discipline techniques, even though it’s not the message most parents
intend to send.
More than just another book about discipline, though, Unconditional Parenting addresses the ways parents
think about, feel about, and act with their children. It invites them to question their most basic assumptions
about raising kids while offering a wealth of practical strategies for shifting from “doing to” to “working with”
parenting—including how to replace praise with the unconditional support that children need to grow into
healthy, caring, responsible people. This is an eye-opening, paradigm-shattering book that will reconnect
readers to their own best instincts and inspire them to become better parents.
North American: Atria
Pub: 2006
Foreign: Complex Chinese/BusinessWeekly, France/ L’Instant Present,Germany/ Arbo, Indonesia/ Mizan Learning
Center, Italy/ Il Leone Verde Edizioni, Korea/ Uriga, Mexico/Patria, Poland/ Dariusz Syska, Romania/ Multi Media
Est, Simplified Chinese/ Tianjin Huawentianxia Books, Spain/ Crianza Natural, Turkey/ Gorunmez Adam, United
Arab Emirates/ Kalima, Vietnam/Quangvan
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About the Ross Yoon Agency
Ross Yoon is a literary agency specializing in serious nonfiction: everything from memoir and
history and biography to popular science, business, and psychology. Our clients include
CEOs, top doctors, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, academics, politicos, radio and
television personalities, and many, many New York Times bestsellers.
A boutique agency, we focus on a select list of high-end clients who share our core belief
that books change lives. Each client has a story with tremendous potential to uplift and
empower readers all over the country—if not the world—and we’re proud to have the
resources, connections, and experience to help them share it with the widest possible
audience.
Over the course of nearly 30 years in business, we’ve developed a reputation among major
publishers for representing substantive books that grab the attention of national media and
sell extremely well—not just in the weeks after publication, but through time.
Here’s what one client—a winner of the National Book Award, MacArthur Fellowship, and
Pulitzer Prize—wrote about us in the acknowledgements of her most recent book: “I owe
special thanks to my agent, Gail Ross, and her colleague Howard Yoon. They journeyed
outside the mapped terrain of agentry into inspiration, editing, guidance, nudging and handholding. There is no one in my professional life to whom I have been attached for so many
years as Gail, and this has been my good fortune.”
Visit us online at www.rossyoon.com.
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