Books I’ve brought out as publisher; essays and reviews I’ve published
Excited to see a brief item explaining that Kodansha, the Japanese publishing house I worked for from 1992-97, is planning their return to the U.S. scene. In 1996, as part of the Kodansha Globe series we published the first paperback edition of then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama’s debut book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
On January 14, 2009, I was laid off as the editorial director of Sterling Publishing’s Union Square Press, an imprint of narrative nonfiction books I had been recruited to run two years earlier. I recall the anxiety I felt upon being summoned to the office of the HR director; the sick-making sensation that shot through my gut upon receiving the news; that my email was shut off by the time I returned to my office; and the way I was instructed to leave Sterling’s office for the final time, informed that whatever personal effects I couldn’t grab then would be shipped to my home. If you’ve never had this happen to you, I must say it is not something you can prepare yourself for. Even though I was not surprised to get laid off in the middle of the worst financial crisis in eighty years, it nonetheless registered as a deep shock. Later that dark week, I sent an email to all my contacts, headed “Moving on From Sterling,” for that’s what I had already begun to do. In the weeks that followed, I incorporated a business in the state of New York, Philip Turner Book Productions LLC, and began cultivating clients for what would be my new editorial services business. // more. . .
Memories came flooding back this morning when I found online an article originating in the Oxford Times, headlined “Bodleian Library Gets an Upgrade.” Andrew Ffrench reports,
“Just over a year ago, library staff began transporting books to the South Marston site from Oxford, from its store in Nuneham Courtenay, and from a Cheshire salt mine, which was also being used to store part of its vast collection. The book move, the biggest since the library opened in 1602, was completed on schedule. One milestone was December 23, when the seventh million volume was shelved. The library, one of the oldest in Europe, and known to scholars as the ‘Bodley’ or ‘the Bod’, has 11 million volumes and is only second in size to the British Library. It is one of a handful of legal deposit libraries, which are required to keep a copy of every new book published. The completion of the move is part of the Bodleian’s plan to free up space and make its treasures more accessible for the public by providing larger display areas. Earlier this year, a collection of Franz Kafka’s letters to his sister went on display. The Treasures of the Bodleian exhibition included part of Jane Austen’s first draft of her unpublished novel The Watsons, which went on show for the first time since it was bought at auction earlier this year. Marco Polo’s travel manuscript from the 14th century, the Codex Mendoza, and a handwritten draft of war poet Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ also went on display. ” // more . . .
I suggest that the book industry view the cost savings from the diminishment of print as a kind of “peace dividend” for authors and publishers and other stakeholders like retail booksellers. Parties should share fairly in whatever windfall is to come. I would accuse the major publishers of being shortsighted and dumb and in thrall to old ways, but I fear that hyperbole like Chabon’s will only further degrade the debate and discussion that must proceed between publishers and authors, lest Amazon eventually become the monopoly publisher and bookseller many bookpeople nowadays fear is looming in our collective future. //more
In a weird and offensive article last Sunday that was headlined “Two Mitt Romneys–Wealthy Man, Thrifty Habits,” the New York Times reported on the Republican pol’s supposed ambivalence about his enormous wealth. I barely gave it a look at the time, quickly relegating it to the category of things I didn’t need to know about.
Siegfried Liebman, mannequin maker; Eddie Day, brakeman on the Cyclone at Coney Island; Helen Giamanco, salad maker, Horn & Hardart Automat; Joe Baffir, boxing trainer; Julius Hans, tailor of rabbinical robes; Veronica Parker Johns, owner, Seashells Unlimited, a Third Avenue Manhattan store; and David Turnowsky, counterman at Katz’s Deli–these are just some of the New […]
Until recently, I had not read even one of the fourteen books by the early- to mid-twentieth-century American writer Jim Tully (1886-1947) and knew little about him. Given my personal interest in Tully’s subject matter, which included circuses, hoboes, and riding the rails, springing from his twin milieux, rural Ohio and early Hollywood, I’m surprised at myself for having been slow to pick up on him. Now having sampled his work and discovered what an important and successful literary career he made in his life by reading the excellent new biography of him, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler, I’m going to do my part here to redress this widespread case of historical amnesia. I believe that now–especially in light of the Occupy movement and the attention it’s drawing to the economic distress afflicting millions in our society–is an ideal time for Jim Tully to be rediscovered. / / more . . .
In June 2006 I was sitting in a parked car listening to Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” while my wife and son were in a store finishing up some shopping. I didn’t mind the wait because I was transfixed by the interview and the voice of her compassionate guest. Dr. Paul Epstein was speaking about what for me were the hitherto unknown effects of climate change on public health. He described the advent of startling conditions such as malaria occurring at high elevations in Africa where mosquitoes were previously not even known to breed; tick-borne diseases occurring at latitudes where they were never known before, fueling the growth of Lyme disease and West Nile virus; and diesel particulates attaching to ragweed that was proliferating because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere and lodging in the airways of asthmatic city-dwellers. These signs all pointed to warming temperatures enabling the spread of disease vectors that were unknown until recent years. 
I recognized this was the special voice of a healer, for patients and the planet, and I was eager to sign him up to write a book on this imperative subject. When I cold-called him in his office at Harvard, he was very open to speaking with me, though he knew little about me at first. It would take a couple years, and a change in publishing houses for me, but I finally paired him with a co-author and commissioned a book that would be titled Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do About It. The authors had delivered virtually the entire manuscript and I’d nearly completed my edit when my job with that publisher ended in 2009, and the book contract was then canceled. Fortunately, it was soon resettled and finally published this past April by the University of California Press, with a Foreword by Jeffrey Sachs and endorsements from Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Dr. Paul Farmer. Paul sent me a copy of the book and I was proud to note his personal acknowledgment of me. We exchanged congratulations and shared the satisfaction of knowing that after five years the book was at last making its way into the world.
Sadly, I learned yesterday that Paul had been ill for some time, and died last Sunday in Cambridge, MA. I am so sorry for the loss of Paul and very grateful for the chance to have known him and worked with him. His humanistic contributions have been detailed in a New York Times obituary, on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog at Think Progress, in a Toledo Blade column by Tom Henry, and in this message from Physicians for Human Rights, which concludes with these words:
“For several generations of medical students and young professionals, he was a model of the physician activist, caring for the individual, one patient at a time, and at the same time crusading for the world so that we might leave behind us a chance for the health and well-being of entire populations and of the planet itself.
His knowledgeable and daring voice inspired countless health professionals and activists to campaign for basic human rights, to ban landmines, to prevent disease, and to preserve the planet. We will always remember opening up the paper and reading yet another important piece from Paul—he will be sorely missed.”
Dr. Paul Epstein investigating human rights violations among Kurdish refugees in 1991