Collected Miscellany

In choosing what book to read next, I decided to go back to my book reading roots:  the Vietnam War.  Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken turns all of my previous thoughts and opinions on the Vietnam War on their head.  I would highly recommend this book.

The book generally covers the division of Vietnam in 1954, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s reign from 1954 to 1963, and President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to introduce significant numbers of U.S. ground troops in 1965.

Some of the first books I read on Vietnam (mainly Neil Sheehan’s Bright and Shining Lie and David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest) convinced me that it was a huge mistake to ever get involved in South Vietnam – that the war was unwinnable.  The facts seemed to be accurate and straightforward.

However, Moyar calls into doubt most of my fundamental beliefs on the war.  Moyar essentially argues that the war was winnable and that American policymakers dropped the ball on several occasions.

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This is supposed to be favorite authors week, but I have only posted one review at the half-way point!  Well, let me mention another.  I will post a review of WFB’s latest novel, The Rake, soon.  But I just picked up a his new non-fiction offering with the great title of Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.

Here is the description from the publisher:

Four decades of William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous (and infamous) wit in a volume that will be the political gift book of the season.

Who knew that William F. Buckley Jr., the quintessential conservative, invented the blog decades before the World Wide Web came into existence? National Review, like nearly all magazines, has always published letters from readers. In 1967 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and Buckley, the editor, began a column called “Notes & Asides,” in which he personally answered the most notable and outrageous letters.

The selections in this book, culled from four decades of these columns, include exchanges with such figures as Ronald Reagan, Eric Sevareid, Richard Nixon, A. M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.

Sounds like fun to me.

Interesting story in the New York Times about a lawsuit on the way Regnery Publishing handles author royalties from book sales with book clubs and other promotional deals:

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

[. . .]

 

In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price — for the book.

Mr. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,” Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

It seems to me that this is a legitimate complaint but that it should have been worked out in contract negotiations.  If you signed a contract that had these terms then you have to live with it.

As to the larger issue of equity, it does seem a tad harsh to make a pittance off a book club selection.  While the recognition and wider audience might very well be worth a lot, the financial reward shouldn’t be so minuscule.  That said, I am completely lacking in context or detailed knowledge about how royalties are structured.

Anyone reading with some knowledge of how this kind of thing works with standard publishers and book clubs?

Some literary podcasts I have stumbled upon:

– John J. Miller talks to David Baldacci about his latest novel, Stone Cold, a sequel to his novel of 2006, The Collectors. A lot more authors at Between the Covers

– Bat Segundo with Richard Russo, author of Bridge of Sighs and even more at the Bat archives (is that kind of like the Bat Cave?)

– And I wanted to note this earlier, but forgot: Sara Ivry from Nextbook talks with A.J. Jacobs about his book The Year of Living Biblically

The marketing team behind Kevin Wignall’s latest thriller, Who is Conrad Hirst?, did him a bit of a disservice by linking Hirst to Jason Bourne.  Sure both Bourne and Hirst are violent hit-men with identity problems but that is really where the comparisons end.

As a number of reviewers have pointed out, the style here is not that of Ludlum. Wignall is more about psychology than action and more literary noir than airport paperback.

But to be honest, publishers – and probably Mr. Wignall as well – would prefer sales that reflect mainstream success over apt descriptions that might put off readers no matter how accurate.  So my advice to readers is just to put Bourne our of your mind and approach Wignall’s work on its own terms.

And what are those terms?  Wignall writes psychological novels that have the action, tension and pace of the thriller or espionage genre but the style and depth or more literary works.  His sparse and sharp prose somehow adds to both the thriller and literary aspects.  His focus on the world of hit-men and his almost amoral perspective add a dark or icy edge; if I may mix my metaphors.

In the case of his latest work, the plot starts out pretty simple.  Conrad Hirst is a hit-man working for a German crime boss.  After an ugly time in the Balkans and the death of his girlfriend, Hirst preferred the mind-numbing violence and cash of his work.  But after his latest hit he decides he has had enough and needs to get out.  He sets about freeing himself from this life.

And as is usually the case with a mystery such as this, he immediately hits a snag in the form of a confession of a dying man: “everything is a lie.”  This snag soon becomes like the proverbially loose string on a sweater, what was supposed to be a quick solution threatens to unravel everything.

For more click the continue reading link below. 

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I know what you are thinking.  Is Kevin now a paid publicist for DK?  I mean how many of these books is he going to post about?

But it really isn’t my fault.  DK emailed me about China: People Place Culture History and I was intrigued because not only did I major in history in both undergrad and graduate school but my parents recently spent a couple of years in China teaching English.  Their stories and pictures piqued my interest in this remarkable country.  After reviewing the book, I was blown away by the photographs and information it contained.  My entire family has spent hours reading it.

So then they said, if you like history you should check out History: An Illustrated Guide to the Ideas, Events and People that Shaped the Human Story and I was again impressed with both the illustrations and text.

So when they recommended The Sports Book I had to check it out.  After all, I spend large chunks of my weekend watching or playing sports so it seemed like another great fit.  Plus, how can you not be fascinated by a book that has artificial turf on its cover?

For my take on this unique book see below.

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