OR Books
SUBSIDIARY RIGHTS
Contact: rights@wp.orbooks.com
NEW AND FORTHCOMING RELEASES
Alphabetical by author, as of October 2018
Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism
Edited by Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
“Here we have 49 women and men and queers and inter-sexuals throwing their everything at this moment in time when the patriarch is really shaking, and it looks like he’s about to tumble down. We’ve got this shiny new book. People are scared that nothing will be left after he falls except a bunch of poems. Pick up this glowing book as you’re crawling through the rubble, and poem by poem and page by page you’ll begin to know that you’ll be okay. You’re in there, and so are your friends. You won’t starve, you’re safe and strong thanks to all these proud, funny, violent, trembling words. Start memorizing. Cause the future is here and this stuff is true.”
—Eileen Myles
Representing the complexity and diversity of contemporary womanhood and bolstering the fight against racism, sexism, and violence, this collection unites powerful new writers, performers, and activists with established poets. Contributors include Denice Frohman, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sandra Beasley, Jericho Brown, Mahogany L. Browne, Danielle Chapman, Tyehimba Jess, Kimberly Johnson, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Maureen N. McLane, Joyce Peseroff, Mary Ruefle, Trish Salah, Patricia Smith, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zucker.
Inside Iran:
The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Medea Benjamin
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
How is it that Iran has become the primary target of American antagonism, when Saudi Arabia, a regime that is even more repressive, remains one of America’s closest allies? Medea Benjamin elucidates the mystery behind this complex relationship, recounting Iran’s history from the pre-colonial period, through the CIA-engineered coup that overthrew the country’s democratic leadership in 1953, to its emergence as the one nation Democrats and Republicans alike regularly unite in denouncing.Tackling the contradictions in Iran’s system of government, its religiosity, and its citizens’ way of life, Inside Iran makes short work of the inflammatory rhetoric surrounding U.S.-Iranian relations, and presents a realistic and hopeful case for the two nations’ future.
The Fragrant Pantry: Floral scented Jams, Jellies and Liqueurs
Frances Bissell
World rights. Finished pages available.
For Frances Bissell cooking with flowers is not a fad or a fashion, but a natural way of cooking which reflects the seasons, and which owes much to English culinary traditions going back over centuries. In these pages you will find recipes for preserves as diverse as myrtle-scented figs, peach and lavender mostarda, rum and jasmine mincemeat, wild garlic flower pesto, mango, jasmine and lime kulfi, elderflower, cucumber and lemon gin and “gorgeous
gillyflower grappa.” You will also discover how the delicate taste of rose petals can transform raspberry ice cream. And you will learn the way in which fresh edible flowers or floral extracts can be used to create exquisite preserves.
Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement: A Year Inside the Optimization Movement
Carl Cederström and André Spicer
World rights excluding Sweden.
Licensed to Korea (Maekyung), Germany (Tiamat), China (China Times), World English trade rights licensed to Counterpoint.
“Two crazy people try numerous crazy strategies, all so I don’t have to. I call that a result!” – Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series
Optimized is a highly entertaining diary by the authors of the widely praised The Wellness Syndrome (Polity) recounting their first-hand experience of the various techniques used by the burgeoning self-enhancement movement. It examines the use of wearable technology, apps, pharmaceuticals, online coaching, physical regimens and surgical experiments, all designed to maximize human productivity with, as it turns out, wildly variable degrees of success.
How to Read Donald Duck:
Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic
Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart
World English rights licensed to Counterpoint; licensed to the UK (Pluto Press).
How to Read Donald Duck reveals the capitalist ideology at work in our most beloved cartoons. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney—curiously parentless, marginalized, always short of cash—Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart dissect the narratives of dependency and social aspiration that define the Disney corpus. First published in 1971 in Chile, the entire third printing was dumped into the ocean by the Chilean Navy and bonfires were held to destroy earlier editions. Until now, no American publisher has dared re-release the book. A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck is once again available, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman.
Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production
Edited by Kareem Estefan, Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
The essential reader for today’s creative leaders and cultural practitioners, including original contributions by artists, scholars, activists, critics, curators and writers who examine the historical precedent of South Africa; the current cultural boycott of Israel; freedom of speech and self-censorship; and long-distance activism. Far from withdrawal or cynicism, boycott emerges as a productive tool of creative and productive engagement. Among the book’s contributors are Ariella Azoulay, Sean Jacobs, Svetlana Mintcheva, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hlonipha A. Mokoena, Ahmet Öğüt, Ann Stoler and Eyal Weizman.
Grabbing Pussy
Karen Finley
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
In a breathless cascade of poetry and prose, celebrated performance artist Karen Finley here lays bare the psychosexual obsessions that have burst to the surface of today’s American politics. Finley explores the Shakespearean dynamics that surface when libidos and loyalties clash in the public and private personas of Donald Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner, and latterly Harvey Weinstein. The aggression of intimacy, the disparity of gender, and the vital importance of hair are all encompassed in Finley’s exhilarating canter.
Trump U.: The Inside Story of Trump University
Stephen Gilpin
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
The first insider account straight from Trump University, by one of its in-house real estate coaches and mentors.
While the rants of the President of the United States seem inescapable, and we know his opinion on all things, we’ve yet to hear from someone who was at the heart of one of his signature outrages—Trump University, the infamous and elaborate scheme to con hundreds of earnest citizens out of their hard-earned dollars.
Until now.
Stephen Gilpin, a self-taught expert at leveraging properties, was once upon a time a great admirer of Donald J. Trump. When he was asked to join Trump University’s Trump Entrepreneur Initiative as a “Master Real Estate Coach,” he jumped at the chance. Little did he know that he would become an unwilling participant in a wide-ranging fraud that resulted in investigations, multiple lawsuits, and $25 million in fines.
Here is the true story of what it was like to work for the man who became 45th President of the United States.
Creating Chaos:
Covert Political Warfare, From Truman to Putin
Larry Hancock
World rights; World English rights to Counterpoint.
Surreptitious Russian involvement in elections in the U.S., the Ukraine, and elsewhere and many more such recent scandals are examples of the dark side of statecraft explored in Creating Chaos. Larry Hancock introduces the nature and history of such practices, examining a number of formerly secret American and Russian hybrid warfare and “active” measures. Ranging across the globe, from Guatemala, Iran, and Indonesia to the U.S. and Russia, Hancock’s book details the exponential increase in covert warfare—and the equally exponential risk and consequences involved.
The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP
Terry Heaton
World rights. North American trade rights to Counterpoint.
The bitter political and religious divides we see today in America have roots that go back many decades. The televangelist Pat Robertson was one of the first to determine how battlelines were drawn. Robertson, now a leading and unflinching Trump supporter, rose to national prominence in the 1960s with his Christian Broadcasting Network and his hit show The 700 Club. Heaton provides the inside story of how evangelical Christianity forced itself on a needy Republican Party in order to gain political influence on a global level. Using deliberate and strategic social engineering, The 700 Club moved Christians steadily into the Republican Party–and moved the party itself to the right.
#Charlottesville:
White Supremacy, Populism, and Resistance
Edited by Christopher Howard-Woods, Colin Laidley, and Maryam Omidi
World rights; North American trade rights to Counterpoint.
#Charlottesville: Before & Beyond untangles the meaning of the events that unfolded last August, when white nationalists and their supporters clashed with counter-demonstrators in the college town of Charlottesville over the removal of a Confederate statue, resulting in the death of one anti-racist activist and the wounding of thirty-five more. Part One of the book documents and comments upon the immediate aftermath of the violence. Part Two addresses the context, both before and after, for interpreting the violence: essays reflect on the social and cultural landscape of the nation, the role of the media, and the logic of “punching Nazis in the face.”
Law Versus Power:
Our Global Fight for Human Rights
Wolfgang Kaleck
World English rights.
Wolfgang Kaleck, best known as Edward Snowden’s lawyer, is a human rights activist extraordinaire. For more than two decades, he has travelled the world to fight alongside those suffering injustice at the hands of powerful players. His work has taken him to Buenos Aires, to stand with the mothers of youngsters “disappeared” under the Argentinian military dictatorship; to exiled Syrian communities, where he assembled the case against torture mandated by those high up in the Assad government; to Central America, where he collaborated with those pursuing the Guatemalan military for its massacres of indigenous people; to New York, to partner with the Center for Constitutional Rights in taking action against Donald Rumsfeld for the “enhanced interrogation techniques” he greenlighted after 9/11; and to Moscow, where he represents the whistle-blower Edward Snowden, “a likeable man whose talents go far beyond his technical skills.”
In recounting his involvement in such cases, Kaleck gives full voice to those he is representing, emphasizing the courage and persistence they bring to the global search for justice. The result is a book crammed with compelling and vivid stories, underscoring the notion that, while the world is often a terrible place, universal standards of human rights can prevail when people are willing to struggle for them.
Metaphysical Graffiti:
Rock’s Most Mind-Bending Questions
Seth Kaufman
World rights; North American trade rights to Counterpoint.
In a rich mix of original pieces, Kaufman not only examines the essential issues facing all rock fans, but delves into the deeper, metaphysical roots of these questions. The book is an innovative, critical work that in many ways mirrors the best rock ‘n’ roll. Funny, audacious, irreverent, and relentlessly creative, it stretches the parameters of traditional criticism by incorporating short fiction, “Moronic Dialogues,” and even a short mini-play, in order to explore philosophical concepts of Reality, Authenticity, Hype, and, ultimately, the purpose of music criticism itself.
Money and Class in America
Lewis H. Lapham
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint
With a New Foreword by Thomas Frank
And a New Introduction by the Author
Money and Class in America is a caustic, and often hilarious, portrait of a segment of the American population who, in the thirty years since the book was originally written, have become only further removed—both in terms of wealth and social awareness—from everyone else. In the United States, happiness and wealth are often regarded as synonymous. Consumerism, greed, and the insatiable desire for more is an American obsession. This skewering of America’s super-rich is perhaps still more pertinent today than when it first appeared.
Swords in the Hands of Children: Reflections of an American Revolutionary
Jonathan Lerner
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
“It is a powerfully written account of idealism undercut by submission to a rigid ideology… Lerner brings a unique perspective — that of a gay man — which no other book on the Weather Underground has expressed.” — Arthur Eckstein, author of Bad Moon Rising: How the Weather Underground Beat the FBI and Lost the Revolution
This short, lyrically written memoir by one of the founding members of the Weather Underground chronicles the rise and fall of one of America’s most notorious radical groups of the Vietnam Era. Lerner, the former “minister of information” and editor of the Weather magazine Fire!, speaks against the group’s misogyny and violence, but stands by its rejection of the Vietnam War and endemic racism.
Victory: How Pennsylvania Beat Gerrymandering and How Other States Can Do the Same
James B. Lieber
World rights.
In Pennsylvania, gerrymandering gave Republicans thirteen and the Democrats five seats in Congress—even though Democratic Party registration exceeds GOP registration in the state. Politics is a blood sport in Pennsylvania: legislators regularly put each other in jail, and the General Assembly is a famously do-nothing place ruled by right wingnuts.
And yet . . . in 2018, activists in the state engineered a brilliant legal effort to attack the lopsided redistricting, and won after fighting pitched battles all the way up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Based on in-depth interviews with the people involved, this is the story of how a few dedicated voters took up the issue of disenfranchisement and won—and how activists around the country can do the same. The next Congressional redistricting occurs after the 2020 census: progressives need to be ready well before then.
A New Hope for Mexico: Saying No to Violence, Corruption, and Trump’s Wall
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Edited and translated by Natascha Uhlmann
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint; UK rights licensed to Pluto Press.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador will become the next President of Mexico. AMLO, a progressive politician often compared to Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, participated previously in the 2006 and 2012 Mexican presidential elections. His decisive victory in the 2018 election seems likely to be related to the reaction of his fellow countrymen to the election of another outspoken politician, Donald Trump.
In A New Hope for Mexico, López Obrador presents a no-holds-barred condemnation of corruption in his own country and a sharp critique of what he regards as the baleful influence of the United States in Mexican politics, especially under the Trump presidency.
The election of a true progressive for the first time in recent history has substantial implications for the Mexican people, and for the United States, making A New Hope For Mexico essential reading for anyone interested in global politics.
The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World are One
Riccardo Manzotti
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint; licensed to Il Saggiatore (Italy)
In The Spread Mind, Riccardo Manzotti convincingly argues that our bodies do not contain subjective experience. Yet consciousness is real, and like any other real phenomenon, is physical. Where is it, then? Manzotti’s radical hypothesis is that consciousness is one and the same as the physical world surrounding us.
Drawing on Einstein’s theories of relativity, evidence about dreams and hallucination, and the geometry of light in perception, and using vivid, real-world examples to illustrate his ideas, Manzotti argues that consciousness is not a “movie in the head”: it is the actual world we move in.
Definable Traces in the Atmosphere: Selected Writings
Mike Marqusee
Edited by Liz Davies, with an introduction by Mark Steel
World rights.
This rich selection of Mike Marqusee’s writing illuminate the connections and contrasts between William Blake and Thomas Paine, Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali, cricket and the nation state, Jewish identity and the BDS campaign, flamenco music and the films of John Ford, and the vagaries of political activism, often working closely with those who, subsequent to Mike’s untimely death in 2015, went on to lead the Labour Party. Acute and erudite, the pieces that make up Definable Traces in the Atmosphere reveal an intellect both serious and engaged.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities (And Love)
Andy Merrifield
World rights.
In often dreamlike peregrinations around his home towns of Liverpool, London and New York Andy Merrifield reflects on what cities mean to us and how they shape the way we think. As he wanders, Merrifield’s reveries circle questions: Can we talk about cities in the absolute, discovering their essence beneath the particulars? Is it possible truly to love or hate a city, to experience it carnally or viscerally? Might we find true love in the city?
Merrifield does find love in the city: with his future wife, whom he takes on a date to see his hero Spalding Gray’s “It’s a Slippery Slope” at London’s South Bank and soon after moves in with, to a tiny place in Bloomsbury where they celebrate the brilliance of new romance by painting the walls turquoise and gold. And for the fellow urbanist Marshall Berman, another working class boy who went up to Oxford. Berman takes Merrifield under his wing and shows him the thrills available in Dostoevsky and Marx over cups of coffee in ordinary cafes on New York City’s Upper West Side.
The mood music to these love affairs is provided by a rich repertoire of intellects, from Jane Jacobs to Mike Davis, from Louis Malle to Walter Benjamin. John Lennon, a pupil, like Merrifield, at Quarry Bank school in Liverpool, enters the story; so too the novelist and critic John Berger. And providing tonality throughout is the stripped down, razor honed talk about love in the stories of Raymond Carver.
Beautiful Rising: Creative Resistance from the Global South
Edited by Dave Mitchell, Juman Abujbara, Marcel Taminato, and Andrew Boyd
World rights. Finished pages available.
Working directly with activists in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mexico, and the Middle East/North Africa, the Beautiful Rising project convened frontline activists and movements from across the Global South to articulate and document the most effective approaches and latest innovations in creative activism. The book Beautiful Rising is the product of a partnership between ActionAid and Beautiful Trouble, with support from an “innovative partnerships” grant from the Danish International Development Agency. The previous volume, Beautiful Trouble, was licensed to Brazil, France, Spain and Latin America, Turkey, Germany, and Canada.
The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power
Alex Nunns
World rights. Finished proofs available.
In September of last year an earthquake shook the foundations of British politics. Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong and uncompromising socialist, was elected to head the Labour Party. Corbyn didn’t just win the leadership contest, he trounced his opponents. The establishment was aghast. The official opposition now had as its leader a man with a plan, according to the conservative Daily Telegraph, “to turn Britain into Zimbabwe.”
Giving full justice to the dramatic swings and nail-biting tensions of an extraordinary summer in UK politics, Nunns’ telling of a story that has received widespread attention but little understanding is as illuminating as it is entertaining. He teases out a plot-line of such improbability that it would be unusable in a work of fiction, providing the first convincing explanation of a remarkable phenomenon with enormous consequences for the left in Britain and beyond.
With Ash on Their Faces: Yezidi Women and the Islamic State
Cathy Otten
World rights.
US trade rights to Counterpoint.
ISIS’s genocidal attack on the Yezidi population in northern Iraq in 2014 brought the world’s attention to the small faith that numbers less than one million worldwide. That summer ISIS massacred Yezidi men and enslaved women and children. More than one hundred thousand Yezidis were besieged on Sinjar Mountain. The US began airstrikes to roll back ISIS, citing a duty to save the Yezidis, but the genocide is still ongoing.
The headlines have moved on but thousands of Yezidi women and children remain in captivity, and many more are still displaced. Sinjar is now free from ISIS but the Yezidi homeland is at the centre of growing tensions amongst the city’s liberators, making returning home for the Yezidis almost impossible.
The mass abduction of Yezidi women and children is here conveyed with extraordinary intensity in the first-hand reporting of a young journalist who has been based in Iraqi Kurdistan for the past four years, covering the war with ISIS and its impact on the people of the country.
Otten tells the story of the ISIS attacks, the mass enslavements of Yezidi women and the fallout from the disaster. She challenges common perceptions of Yezidi female victimhood by focusing on stories of resistance passed down by generations.
Strongmen:
Putin • Erdoğan • Duterte • Trump • Modi
Edited by Vijay Prashad
World rights. North American trade rights licensed to Counterpoint.
We’re edging towards a new kind of global fascism driven by aggression and strident nationalism. In this energetic, focused book, a group of five accomplished writers confronts five would-be dictators.
• American playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) gets beneath the Day-Glo skin of Donald Trump.
• Danish Husain, Indian storyteller and actor, finds himself recounting the story not only of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but also of the ascension of the extremism of the Sangh Parivar.
• Burhan Sönmez, Turkish novelist, dissects the bewildering career of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
• Lara Vapnyar, Russian-American novelist and journalist, excavates the manly origins of the Supreme Leader of All the Russias.
• Ninotchka Rosca, Filipina feminist novelist, unravels the crazily macho world of Rodrigo Duterte.
These essays do not presume to be neutral. They are by partisan thinkers, magical writers, people who see not only the monsters but also a future beyond the ghouls. A future that is necessary. The present is too painful.
Pocket Piketty
Jesper Roine
World English rights. Finished proofs available.
Licensed to Canada (BTL) and UK/Europe (Zed Books); US trade rights to Counterpoint.
We all know the book: it’s been hailed as one of the most important documents on how the world economy works, or doesn’t work, and it’s been a colossal bestseller since it first appeared in 2014, with more than 1.5 million copies sold. But how many of us who bought or borrowed the book—or even, perhaps, reviewed it—have read more than a fraction of its 696 pages? How many more shuddered at the thought of committing $40 to such a venture? And how many of Piketty’s groundshaking concepts have gone unappreciated, all for want of intellectual stamina?
Deliverance is at hand in the form of Pocket Piketty, written in clear and accessible prose by an experienced economist and teacher–and one whose work was relied on by Piketty for his masterpiece. In this handy and slim volume, Jesper Roine explains all things Piketty.
Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, A New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet
Edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider
World rights. Finished proofs available.
US trade rights to Counterpoint.
Some of the most cogent thinkers and doers on the subject of the changing Internet here argue for a new kind of online economy: platform cooperativism, which combines the rich heritage of cooperatives with the promise of 21st-century technologies, free from monopoly, exploitation, and surveillance. We’ve rarely had such a buzz around one of our titles: as soon as we posted it, it had hundreds of Facebook “likes.”
The Wrong Story:
Palestine, Israel, and the Media
Greg Shupak
World rights. Finished proofs available.
The Wrong Story lays bare the flaws in the way large media organizations present the Palestine–Israel issue. It points out major fallacies in the fundamental conceptions that underpin their coverage, namely that Palestinians and Israelis are both victims to comparable extents and are equally responsible for the failure to find a solution; that the problem is “extremists,” often religiously-motivated ones, who need to be sidelined in favour of “moderates”; and that Israel’s uses of force are typically justifiable acts of self-defense. Weaving together the existing literature with new insights, Shupak offers an up-to-date and tightly focused guide that exposes the distorted way these issues are presented and why each is misguided.
Moment of Truth:
Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions
Edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner
World rights. World English rights licensed to Counterpoint.
Moment of Truth seeks to clarify what it would take to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, to assess the prospects of doing so, and to illuminate what is possible in Palestine. It assembles an unprecedented wealth of expertise—encompassing political leaders, preeminent scholars, and dedicated activists from Israel, Palestine, and abroad—in direct critical exchange on the issues at the heart of the world’s most intractable conflict. In a series of compelling, enlightening, and at times no-holds-barred debates, leading authorities tackle these and other challenges, exposing myths, challenging preconceptions, and establishing between them a more sober and informed basis for political action.
Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel
Written and illustrated by Eli Valley, with an introduction by Peter Beinart
World rights. Manuscript available.
Eli Valley’s comic strips are intricate fever dreams employing noir, horror, slapstick and science fiction to expose the outlandish hypocrisies at play in the American/Israeli relationship. Sometimes banned, often controversial and always hilarious, Valley’s work has helped to energize a generation exasperated by American complicity in an Israeli occupation now entering its fiftieth year. Brutally riotous and irreverent, the comics in this volume are a vital contribution to a centuries-old tradition of graphic protest and polemics.
President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire
John K. Wilson
World rights. Finished proofs available.
Licensed to Italy (Armando Editore) and the Netherlands (WPG Uitgevers België).
The unthinkable has happened, and the Orange One is leader of the Free World.
A hard job is made harder by a steady stream of self-contradictions. Sad! But if Donald gets confused about just who he is, he could do worse than to pick up a copy of President Trump Unveiled for a handy reference to all things Trump.
Some patterns are consistent: there’s racist Trump, sexist Trump, bankrupt Trump, lying Trump, paranoid Trump, clueless Trump, conman Trump, bullying Trump, and more. Here, in one lovingly researched and slim volume, is Trump stripped bare: the truth behind the glitz. Guaranteed no “fake facts”, no “alternative truths”: just sickening reality!
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BACKLIST
Alphabetical by author
PDFs/print editions available for all titles
When Google Met WikiLeaks
Julian Assange
World rights.
Licensed for Spanish world except Chile (Clave Intelectual), Chile (Editorial Catalonia), China (Beijing Huazhang), Portugal (Boitempo), India (Navayana), Israel (Dyonon-Paphyrus), Italy (Stampa Alternativa), North American trade (Counterpoint), Serbia (Albion), Turkey (Nefes Yayıları), Russia (Mann-Ivanov-Ferber).
“A fascinating conversation with one of the most far-sighted thinkers in technology. Assange is consistently ahead of the curve.” —Edward Snowden
The inside story of the hours-long encounter between Assange and Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google. For several hours the leader of the world’s most famous insurgent publishing organization and the billionaire head of the world’s largest information empire locked horns. The two men debated political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions engendered by the global network—from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin.
Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection
Medea Benjamin
World rights.
North American trade rights to Counterpoint.
The co-founder of CODEPINK has become famous for fearlessly tackling head-on subjects most of us studiously avoid. Sometimes, she does so in person—as during President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University, or during a reception for drone manufacturers and members of Congress, or in Cairo, where she was assaulted by police. Here, she’s researching the sinister nature of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”
Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace
World rights.
Licensed to Germany (Kunstmann Verlag), Italy (Lexis), North American trade (Counterpoint), Spanish world (Santillana Ediciones Generales), Taiwan (Good Publishing).
Who started the “War Against Drugs,” and why? what are its consequences in real terms, not mere statistics? Two legendary prize-winning writers, one Mexican and the other American, confront this issue head-on. Carmen Boullosa has received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in Mexico, the Anna Seghers and Liberaturpreis in Germany, and the Café Gijón Prize in Madrid. She is a member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores. Mike Wallace, Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York and director of the Gotham Center for New York City History, won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford University Press).
Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution
Assembled by Andrew Boyd and Dave Mitchell
World rights.
Licensed to Brazil (Edições Ideal), Canada (Between the Lines), France (Attac), Germany (Orange Press), Mexico (Paidós), Spain (Milrazon), Turkey (Bilgi Yayınevi), US trade (Counterpoint).
“The current political moment calls for bold leaps of imagination, new forms of organizing and a fearless blend of confrontation and celebration. Beautiful Trouble is a crash course in the emerging field of carnivalesque realpolitik, both elegant and incendiary.” —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo
Illustrations throughout in black-and-white. Also available in a pocket edition.
The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising
Patrick Cockburn
World rights.
Licensed to Arab countries (Dar al Saqi), France (Editions des Equateurs), Greece (Metaichmio), India (Prabhat Prakashan), Italy (Stampa Alternativa), Japan (Ryokufu Shuppan), Netherlands (Amsterdam University Press), Poland (Dom Wydawniczy PWN), Portugal (Self-Desenvolvimento Pessoal), Turkey (Agora Kitaplığı), Spain (Ariel Spain-Paidós), Sweden (Celanders), Taiwan (Good Publishing); US/UK trade rights to Verso.
The first and most insightful book on the subject by the internationally respected journalist; hailed as such by critical observers of IS around the world. The book has been cited in the New York Times by Roger Cohen, and, of all people and in all places, by US Senator Rand Paul in the Wall Street Journal.
The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto
Written and illustrated by Sue Coe
World rights.
Her paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including New York’s MoMA; indie stores may remember her book Dead Meat, which was published in 1996 and sold over 7000 copies in two editions from a small press (mine!). This is a black-and-white, square format, all-illustrated book of approximately 200 pages; the intention is to be reasonably priced and appeal to the graphic novel generation.
Bowie
Simon Critchley
World rights.
Licensed to Croatia (Editions Dezepna), Denmark (Klim), Finland (Into- Niko Aula), France (Editions la Découverte), Italy (Il Mulino), Korea (Key Publications), North American trade (Counterpoint), Spain (Sexto Piso), Turkey (Encore Kitap); UK trade (Profile).
“The most powerful and provocative philosopher now writing…”—Cornel West
In this concise and engaging excursion through the songs of one of the world’s greatest pop stars, Critchley, whose writings on philosophy have garnered widespread praise, melds personal narratives of how Bowie lit up his dull life in southern England’s suburbs with philosophical forays into the way concepts of authenticity and identity are turned inside out in Bowie’s work.
Black-and-white illustrations throughout by Eric Hanson.
Extinction: A Radical History
Ashley Dawson
World rights.
North American trade rights to Counterpoint.
“Ashley Dawson’s slim and forceful book … makes a case for being the most accessible and politically engaged examination of the current mass extinction … a welcome contribution to the growing literature on this slow-motion calamity.” —Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Yale University, in the Los Angeles Review of Books
Today, extinction of flora and fauna is accelerating relentlessly across the globe. One species and one system are responsible for this disaster: Homo Sapiens and capitalism.
Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell
Mara Einstein
World rights.
Licensed to North American trade (Counterpoint), Russia (Alpina); audio rights to Audible.
The chronicle of the rapid rise of “sponsored content,” a strategy whereby advertisers become publishers and publishers create advertising—all under the guise of unbiased information. This latest and most insidious form of covert selling, mostly in the form of native advertising and content marketing disseminated via social media, has so blurred the lines between editorial content and marketing message that it has become virtually impossible to tell real news from paid endorsements. This has led to a fundamental paradigm shift in advertising: instead to telling us to buy, Buy, BUY, marketers must “engage” with us so that we will share, Share, SHARE—it is the ultimate subtle sell.
Dr. Mara Einstein teaches media studies at Queens College, City University of New York. Two of her previous books include Compassion, Inc.: How Corporate America Blurs the Line Between What We Buy, Who We Are and Those We Help (University of California Press, 2012), and Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age (Routledge, 2008).
Method and Madness
Norman Finkelstein
World rights.
Licensed to Germany (Laika Verlag); Spanish language rights to Ediciones Akal.
“Mr. Finkelstein[‘s]…research is certainly thorough. His characterizations, too, can be brilliant, and he spares nobody…”—The Economist
In the past five years Israel has mounted three major assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped behind its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile, a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions. As Norman G. Finkelstein sets out in this concise, paradigm-shifting new book, a close examination of Israel’s motives reveals a state whose repeated recourse to savage war is far from irrational. Rather, Israel’s attacks have been designed to sabotage the possibility of a compromise peace with the Palestinians, even on terms that are favorable to it.
Tales of Two Cities: The Best and Worst of Times in Today’s New York
Edited by John Freeman
World rights.
Licensed to Brazil (Bertrand Brasil), China (Shanghai Insight), France (Actes Sud), Italy (Stampa Alternativa), Spanish world (Nórdica); US/UK trade rights to Penguin Random House.
Two New Yorks—the American city with the grossest income disparity, according to the New York Times—unforgettably depicted by writers such as Junot Díaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Téa Obreht, Lydia Davis, Colum McCann, Hannah Tinti, and many others.
Illustrations throughout in black-and-white by Molly Crabapple.
Syria Burning: The Islamic State and the Death of the Arab Spring
Charles Glass
World rights.
Licensed to Greece (Diametros), Italy (Stampa Alternativa), Turkey (Matbuat Yayın Grubu); US/UK trade rights to Verso.
In this concise melding of reportage, history and analysis, the renowned Middle East commentator Charles Glass lays bare the origins of the current crisis in Syria and assesses the diminishing options for a settlement to a war that is tearing the country apart. Glass, an author, journalist, and broadcaster specializing in the Middle East, himself made headlines when taken hostage for 62 days in Lebanon by Shi’a militants. He was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent from 1983–93 and now writes regularly for the London Review of Books and The Spectator. Among other books, Glass is the author of Tribes With Flags (Grove Press), and Americans in Paris (published by Penguin Press in the USA and Harper Collins in the UK). Introduction by Patrick Cockburn; includes maps.
Chameleo: A Strange but True Story of Heroin Addiction, Homeland Security and Invisible Spies
Robert Guffey
World rights.
“Guffey is my kind of crazy. He understands that the universe is preposterous, life is improbable, and chaos rules: get used to it.” —Pat Cadigan, author of Mindplayers
“Robert Guffey’s writing has impressed, entertained, and enlightened me pretty much since I first met him, as one of my Clarion West students. My suggestion? If he wrote it, read it.” — Jack Womack, author of Random Acts of Senseless Violence
A mesmerizing mix of Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Philip K. Dick—a true account of what happens in a seedy southern California town when a small-time drug dealer/heroin addict gives shelter to a U.S. Navy sailor who’s stolen night vision goggles and perhaps a few top secret files.
Watchlist: 32 Short Stories By Persons of Interest
Edited by Bryan Hurt
World rights.
Licensed to Italy (Edizioni Clichy), Turkey (Tudem); North American trade rights to Catapult.
“A brave and necessary set of early flares of the literary imagination into the Panopticon we all find ourselves living inside these days.”—Jonathan Lethem
The anthology on surveillance: includes twenty never-before-published stories. Fiction by David Abrams, Aimee Bender, Chanelle Benz, Sean Bernard, Mark Chiusano, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Robert Coover, Lucy Corin, Paul Di Filippo, Cory Doctorow, Steven Hayward, Bryan Hurt, Mark Irwin, Randa Jarrar, Dana Johnson, Miracle Jones, Katherine Karlin, Etgar Keret, Miles Klee, Alexis Landau, Kelly Luce, Carmen Maria Machado, Lincoln Michel, Bonnie Nadzam, Alissa Nutting, Deji Bryce Olukotun, Dale Peck, Zhang Ran, Jim Shepard, Chika Unigwe, Juan Pablo Villalobos, and Charles Yu.
Love in the Anthropocene
Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam
World rights.
Licensed to Italy (Stampa Alternativa).
“Part of what’s mesmerizing about climate change is its vastness across both space and time. Jamieson, by elucidating our past failures and casting doubt on whether we’ll ever do any better, situates it within a humanely scaled context.” —Jonathan Franzen
Co-written by Bonnie Nadzam, novelist (winner of the 2011 first novel prize from NYC’s Center for Fiction), and Dale Jamieson (Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University and director of the Animal Studies Initiative there). A work of fiction rooted in fact: six stories imagining aspects of a world transformed by human action. This collaboration between philosopher and artist is a unique and thrilling attempt to depict the era of the anthropocene, when nature is subject to human manipulation, and to communicate its consequences in a viscerally understandable way.
Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News
Jeff Jarvis
World rights.
Licensed to Japan (Toyo Keizai), Germany (Plassen Verlag), Taiwan (Commonwealth Publishing), Spanish world (Deusto-Planeta).
Technology has disrupted the news industry—its relationships, forms, and business models—but also provides no end of opportunities for improving, expanding, reimagining, and sustaining journalism. Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News is a creative, thought-provoking and entertaining exploration of the possible future(s) of news by Prof. Jeff Jarvis (Gutenberg the Geek, What Would Google Do?, etc.), who leads the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Published by CUNY Journalism Press, an OR Partner.
Technocreep: The Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy
Thomas P. Keenan
World rights.
Licensed world English trade rights (Greystone Books), Spanish world (Melusina).
“Technology is rapidly moving into our bodies,” writes cyber expert Keenan, “and this book gives a chilling look ahead into where that road may lead us–on a one way trip to the total surrender of privacy and the commoditization of intimacy.” Here is the definitive dissection of privacy-eroding and life-invading technologies, coming at you from governments, corporations, and the person next door.
Videogames for Humans
Edited by merritt kopas
World rights.
Including games by nontraditional game authors that describe distinctly nontraditional subjects—struggles with depression, explorations of queer identity, and surreal, personal visions of breeding crustacean horses in a dystopian future—this anthology of work produced by the Twine movement to date, in conversation with games critics, authors, and other game creators, showcases the stories of those who have previously been voiceless within the games industry. Edited by Twine author and games theorist merritt kopas, the author of over two dozen digital games, including Consensual Torture Simulator, HUGPUNX, and LIM, as well as one of Polygon’s 50 Admirable People in Gaming in 2014.
Contributors include Winter Lake, Benji Bright, Maddox Pratt, Eva Problems, Tom McHenry, Elizabeth Sampat, Michael Brough, Aevee Bee, Bryan Reid, Mira Simon, Mary Hamilton, Jeremy Penner, Olivia Vitolo, Soha Kareem, Nina Freeman, Cara Ellison, Anna Anthropy, Sloane, Jeremy Lonien & Dominik Johann, Zoe Quinn, Christine Love, Kayla Unknown, Gaming Pixie, Mike Joffe, Leon Arnott, Rokashi Edwards, Lydia Neon, Riley MacLeod, Emily Short, Imogen Binnie, Naomi Clark, Patricia Hernandez, Avery Mcdaldno, Auriea Harvey, Austin Walker, Katherine Cross, Mattie Brice, Lana Polansky, Cat Fitzpatrick, Squinky, Toni Pizza, Leigh Alexander, Cara Ellison, Alex Roberts, Pippin Barr, Matthew S. Burns, John Brindle. Published by Instar Books, an OR Partner.
How I Lost by Hillary Clinton
Introduced and annotated by Joe Lauria, with a foreword by Julian Assange
World rights.
“Clinton lost the 2016 election, Trump didn’t win it. How I Lost by Hillary Clinton is a vital rallying call against the type of triangulating politics that may defeat Trump in 2020, but will never defeat Trumpism.” —Bhaskar Sunkara, editor, Jacobin
“Unreconstructed Hillaryites like to greet every outrage from Trump with ‘but her emails, amirite?,’ as if they didn’t matter. Joe Lauria expertly shows why they do—how they reveal what an awful candidate she was, and how we ended up with this dismal regime.” —Doug Henwood, author of My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency
Drawing on the WikiLeaks releases of Clinton’s talks at Goldman Sachs and the emails of her campaign chief John Podesta, as well as key passages from her public speeches, How I Lost By Hillary Clinton also includes extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Joe Lauria, and a foreword by Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
It provides, in the words of the Democratic candidate and her close associates, a riveting, unsparing picture of the disastrous campaign that delivered America to President Trump, and a stark warning of a mistake that must not be repeated.
Killer Care: How America’s Hospitals Are Killing Us
James B. Lieber
World rights.
What is the third leading cause of death in the United States, after cancer and heart attacks? hospital screw-ups. Misdiagnosis, wrong prescriptions, infections, callous staff, ignorant staff–a direct consequence of a system that’s largely based on a for-profit model. Do we have it better in the U.S.? statistics say we don’t; yet, we spend more than any country does per person on its health care. In the tradition of Ralph Nader’s classic Unsafe at Any Speed, Lieber, a lawyer (and finalist for the National Book Award for Friendly Takeover: How an Employee Buyout Saved a Steel Town) takes on the American medical profession.
Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World: Wandering the Globe from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar
Tom Lutz
World rights.
Tom Lutz is addicted to journeying. Sometimes he stops at the end of the road, sometimes he travels further. In this richly packed portmanteau of traveler’s tales, we accompany him as he drives beyond the blacktop in Morocco, to the Saharan dunes on the Algerian border, and east of Ankara into the Hittite ruins of Boğazkale. We ride alongside as he hitches across Uzbekistan and the high mountain passes of Kyrgyzstan into western China. We catch up with him as he traverses the shores of a lake in Malawi, and disappear with him into the disputed areas of the Ukraine and Moldova. We follow his footsteps through the swamps of Sri Lanka, the wilds of Azerbaijan, the plains of Tibet, the casinos of Tanzania, the peasant hinterlands of Romania and Albania, and the center of Swaziland, where we join him in watching the king pick his next wife. All along the way, we witness his perplexity in trying to understand a compulsion to keep moving, ever onward, to the ends of the earth.
Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce are Fragmenting the World Wide Web
Scott Malcomson
World rights.
Licensed to China (Citic), Taiwan (Walkers); audio rights to Audible.
There’s always been something universalizing about the Internet. The World Wide Web has seemed both inherently singular and global, a sort of ethereal United Nations. But today, as Scott Malcomson contends in this concise, brilliant investigation, the Internet is cracking apart into discrete groups no longer willing, or able, to connect. The implications of this shift are momentous.
Clint: The Life and Legend
Patrick McGilligan
World rights excluding UK, Spain and France.
“Pitiless.”—Le Monde
Updated and thoroughly revised to include Clint Eastwood’s remarkable escapades at the Republican National Convention, his repeated public death threats to fellow filmmaker Michael Moore, and his latest smash hit “American Sniper”—the story behind one of America’s great living icons. McGilligan is a leading historian of film, who has written highly acclaimed biographies of Cagney, Cukor, and Nicholson.
The Lost Tetrads of Marshall McLuhan
Marshall and Eric McLuhan
World rights. Finished pages available.
Licensed to Italy (il Saggiatore), Germany (Turia + Kant).
“The true masterwork of Marshall McLuhan.” —Douglas Rushkoff
Together with his media scholar son Eric, Marshall McLuhan (the visionary theoretician best known for coining the phrase “The medium is the message,” from his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man) worked on something called “the tetrads” shortly before his death. This was the ultimate theoretical framework for analyzing any new medium, a koan-like poetics that transcends traditional means of discourse. Some of the tetrads were published in a book, but only a few—and without much explanation. Now Eric has recovered all the “lost” tetrads that he and his father developed, and in this volume also provides the explanation for how tetrads work.
Folding the Red into the Black: Or, Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century
Walter Mosley
World rights.
North American trade rights to Counterpoint.
Walter Mosley is one of America’s bestselling novelists, known for his critically acclaimed series of mysteries featuring private investigator Easy Rawlins. His writing is hard-hitting, often limned with a political subtext, and aimed at a broad audience.
Mosley’s is an elastic mind, and in this short polemic he frees himself to explore some novel ideas. He draws on personal experiences and insights as an African-American, a Jew, and one of our great writers to present an alternative manifesto of sorts: “We need to throw off the unbearable weight of bureaucratic capitalist and socialist demands; demands that exist to perpetuate these systems, not to praise and raise humanity to its full promise. And so I propose the word, the term Untopia.”
Shell-Shocked: On the Ground Under Israel’s Gaza Assault
Mohammed Omer
World rights.
Licensed to China (Citic), Brazil (Autonomia Literária), and Taiwan (Good Publishing).
“Written with painful immediacy, these are more than dispatches from a war zone: They convey the human reality of people who manage to survive and endure in conditions that have grown grimmer and more inhumane over the years.” —Rashid Khalidi
The 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza resulted in the death of 2,200 Palestinians; another 10,000 were injured. Mohammed Omer lived through those days with his wife and three-month-old son: this is their vivid story of survival. Omer is an award-winning Palestinian journalist whose reporting has appeared in media outlets including the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The New Statesman, Pacifica Radio, Electronic Intifada, and The Nation.
Acorn
Yoko Ono
World rights.
Licensed to Brazil (Bateia), China (Thinkingdom), Denmark (Lemuel), France (Flammarion), Germany (Haffmans Verlag), Italy (Carlo Gallucci), Japan (Kawade), Spanish world (Santillana), Sweden (Bakhall), Taiwan (Yuan-Liu), Turkey (Pazartesi); US/UK trade rights to Algonquin Books.
“It’s nearly 50 years ago that my book of conceptual instructions Grapefruit was first published. In these pages I’m picking up where I left off. After each day of sharing the instructions you should feel free to question, discuss and/or report what your mind tells you. I’m just planting the seeds. Have fun.” —Yoko Ono, from the Introduction.
In Acorn, renowned artist and political activist Yoko Ono offers intriguing, enchanting exercises to open our eyes on better ways of relating to ourselves, each other, and the planet we co-habit. Throughout the book are drawings by Yoko, many never before seen.
Creditocracy: And the Case for Debt Refusal
Andrew Ross
World rights.
Licensed to Korea (Galmuri), Spanish world (Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires), Turkey (Ayrinti Yayinlari).
In the tradition of David Graeber’s Debt, Prof. Andrew Ross takes on what he calls the “creditocracy,” which occurs when debt-financing becomes the normal way to live in a society. “For the working poor,” Ross writes, “this arrangement is familiar, and has long outlived its classic forms under feudalism, indenture, and slavery. The legacy of their successor institutions–sharecropping, company scrip, and loan sharking–is alive and well today on the subprime landscape of fringe finance.”
The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor
Edited by Andrew Ross
World rights.
For several years, the Gulf Labor Coalition, an internationally-recognized group of artists and writers, has been pressuring the Abu Dhabi “franchises” of certain Western cultural brands (such as the Guggenheim, the Louvre, and the British Museum) to ensure worker protections. Gulf Labor has coordinated a boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and pioneered innovative direct action that has involved several spectacular museum occupations. As part of a year-long initiative, artists, writers, and activists submitted a work, a text, or an action. Contextualized by essays that trace how Gulf Labor has evolved, their contributions are reproduced in this book, first presented at the 2015 Venice Biennale.
Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and a social activist. A contributor to The Nation, The Guardian, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and Artforum, he is the author of many books, including, most recently, Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal.
Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship
Barney Rosset
World rights.
Licensed to China (People’s Oriental), Italy (Il Saggiatore), North American trade (Counterpoint).
Barney Rosset, the publisher who brought Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Kenzaburō Ōe and so many others to the United States—and unleashed writers such as William Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Jr., John Rechy and Kathy Acker on the rest of the world—began work on his autobiography a decade before his death in 2012. Now at last, in his own words, we have a portrait of the man who reshaped how we think about language, literature—and sex. Here are the stories behind the filming of Norman Mailer’s Maidstone and Samuel Beckett’s Film; the battles with the U.S. government over Tropic of Cancer and much else; the search for Che’s diaries; Rosset’s romance with the expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, and more. At times appalling, more often inspiring, never boring or conventional: this is Barney Rosset, uncensored.
The Strangest
Michael J. Seidlinger
World rights.
A 21st century reimagining of Albert Camus’s 1942 masterpiece. From narrative thrust to tone, The Strangest captures the social vacancy of the modern day, alongside the prevalence of technology birthed from the information revolution cohabiting our daily lives: an amoral (or hyper-moral?) protagonist, a death, a trial: by the celebrated author of The Fun We’ve Had, The Laughter of Strangers, and other titles.
Tales from the Great Disruption: Insights and Lessons from Journalism’s Technological Transformation
Michael Shapiro, Anna Hiatt, and Mike Hoyt
World rights.
Licensed to Taiwan (Walkers).
Written by three leading journalists (two of them professors at New York’s Columbia University School of Journalism) whose work appears in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, Tales from the Great Disruption has no grand theory. Instead, it presents original reporting about what did happen when the waves of change struck and what came in their wake. The first half of the book, “The Gathering Storm,” looks back for insight while its second half, “All the Space in the World,” explores the new context. Published by Big Roundtable Books, an OR Partner.
What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy
Tom Slee
World rights.
Licensed to Canada (BTL), China (Ginkgo [Beijing] Book Co.), France (Lux Éditeur), Germany (Kunstmann Verlag), Spain (Taurus/PRH), Taiwan (Briefing Press), AUS/NZ (Scribe), US trade (Counterpoint).
Slee, developer, blogger and author (No One Makes You Shop at Walmart, 2006) does a takedown of the “sharing economy”: the new wave of technology companies extending Internet technology into many aspects of everyday life and work, disrupting industries and challenging regulations in cities around the world as it does so. This first book-length critique is a call to push back against the venture capitalists funding the sharing economy. It argues that the sharing economy, far from its socially conscious image, is a damaging development citizens should resist rather than welcome. By extending the harshest of free-market practices into areas of our lives previously off-limits, this twisted offspring of the Internet Age presents the opportunity for a few people to make fortunes by draining communities and pushing vulnerable individuals to take on unsustainable risk.
Autopilot: The Art & Science of Doing Nothing
Andrew Smart
World rights.
Licensed to Brazil (Geração), Korea (Mediawill), Germany (Mosaik), Spain, Argentina, and Uruguay (Clave Intelectual/Capital Intelectual), Chile (Tajamar Ediciones), rest of Latin America and US Spanish (Paidós México), Turkey (Nail Kitabevi), Russia (Alpina), Italy (Indiana), Japan (Soshisha) Taiwan (Business Weekly).
There are so many things we should get done, but for no good reason . . . we don’t do them. Now steps forward Andy Smart, specialist in cognitive science and neurotechnologist, and one of the clearest, best science writers to appear on the scene since Oliver Sacks, to tell us not to worry: “This book is about being idle. I am going to convince you that being idle is one of the most important activities in life. This is despite the fact that all over the world our working hours are increasing and every time-management book on the market claims that you can, and should get even more done. …You should get less done; in fact you should be idle. I am going to use neuroscientific evidence to argue that your brain needs to rest, right now.”
Lean Out: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Start-Up Culture
Edited by Elissa Shevinsky
World rights.
Licensed to Italy (Casini).
Why aren’t the great, qualified women already in tech being hired or promoted? Does the tech industry deserve women leaders? Not everyone can be, or wants to be, a CEO; not everyone is able to embrace a workplace culture that diminishes the contributions of women and ignores real complaints. The very culture of high tech, where foosball tables and endless supplies of beer are de facto perks, but maternity leave and breast-feeding stations are controversial, is designed to appeal to young men. Lean Out collects 25 stories from the modern tech industry, from people who fought GamerGate and from women and transgender artists who have made their own games.
Trade Is War: The West’s War Against the World
Yash Tandon
World rights except France.
Licensed to Germany (Bastei Lübbe), Arabic countries (Obeikan Education).
Foreword by Jean Ziegler. The award-winning Ugandan scholar Tandon demonstrates how, in their ceaseless efforts to establish new markets, the World Trade Organization and other Western bodies destabilize countries in the developing world, often fanning violent conflicts. Trade Is War offers an alternative vision of a decentralized, democratic global economy.
“Yash Tandon demonstrates that ‘trade is war’ by the powerful against their traditional victims, adopting new means. This impressive study focuses on Africa, which has suffered hideous crimes. The global class war that is institutionalized in the misnamed ‘free trade agreements’ is also a war against the traditional victims of class war at home.” –Noam Chomsky
Old Demons, New Deities: Twenty-one Short Stories from Tibet
Edited by Tenzin Dickie
World rights. Finished pages available.
Licensed to India (Navayana) and the Netherlands (De Geus); US trade rights to Counterpoint.
“A long-overdue and brilliantly edited volume on the Tibetan experience.” — Gary Shteyngart
“Tenzin Dickie is to be congratulated on having gathered here these twenty-one short stories by arguably the best Tibetan authors writing today. Informatively introduced by her, this volume is a most welcome treat for anyone interested in literature per se and opens a much-needed window to the contemporary Tibetan short story for an international audience.” — Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp, Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Harvard University
The first-ever anthology of contemporary Tibetan writers, edited by a Tibetan (NYC resident): 21 stories by 16 Tibetans, some living in occupied Tibet or elsewhere in China, and some living in exile. Including dissenters such as Tsering Woeser, but most names will be unfamiliar to Western readers.
Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers
Joel Whitney
World rights.
Licensed to France (Actes Sud), North American trade (Counterpoint).
“Another odd episode steps out from the Cold War’s shadows. Riveting.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Finks is a tale of two CIAs, and how they blurred the line between propaganda and literature. One CIA created literary magazines that promoted American and European writers and cultural freedom, while the other toppled governments, using assassination and censorship as political tools. Defenders of the “cultural” CIA argue that it should have been lauded for boosting interest in the arts and freedom of thought, but the two CIAs had the same undercover goals, and shared many of the same methods: deception, subterfuge and intimidation.
Finks demonstrates how the good-versus-bad CIA is a false divide, and that the cultural Cold Warriors again and again used anti-Communism as a lever to spy relentlessly on leftists, and indeed writers of all political inclinations, and thereby pushed U.S. democracy a little closer to the Soviet model of the surveillance state.
Blood Splatters Quickly
Edward D. Wood, Jr.
World rights.
Licensed to Brazil/Portugal (Darkside Books), Italy (Gallucci), Spanish world (Caja Negra).
Ed Wood represents American kitsch so bad it’s good: he died in 1978, but the legacy of the cultural icon has only grown in importance. Wood speaks—not least for himself—as one of America’s “outsiders” caught up in the struggle to find acceptance inside—and never more directly than in the material in this book, which contains 32 short stories never before anthologized.
Illustrations throughout in black-and-white.
|
