My wife Marilyn, an experienced editor and publisher, has prepared a seven-page handout on the new essentials of book promotion in a fast-changing publishing environment. The handout proved so popular at the recent Baltimore Book Festival that we have decided to make it available on request. Just send us an e-mail if you would like [...]
Read More...Never mind whether the Republicans and Democrats who voted against the $700 billion bailout of reckless banks are right or wrong, the Republicans who blamed Nancy Pelosi’s partisan speech for killing the deal are typical school yard bullies looking for scapegoats. For decades the Republican party has played bloody-nose politics, beating up on anybody who [...]
Read More...Surrealism: the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations… So that’s what President Bush is, a surrealist. He has introduced us to national surrealism in which the country is not unlike Salvador Dali’s famously melting [...]
Read More...In spite of a near apocalyptic rainfall—four inches courtesy of Hurricane Kyle—the Baltimore Book Festival Saturday proved once again that city’s durable literary vibrancy. Dozens of white tents tethered to parking meters, lampposts and weighted barrels housed an exuberant crowd of diehard writers, publishers, educators and just plain readers as electrical cables snaked through impromptu [...]
Read More...Language opens a window on the mind of the speaker. So when President George W. Bush warned conferees of both parties yesterday that if they didn’t approve his proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street “this sucker could go down” he just about summed up the class, intelligence and leadership he has brought to the [...]
Read More...How about an American policy that sets out to repair the rift between Protestants and Catholics? We could rearrange Europe, rewrite its history, heal all the wounds of Christendom. Then we could patch things up between the Muslims and the Hindus. Meanwhile, we could continue to deregulate Wall Street, cut taxes, and lie to our [...]
Read More...Either we’re overwhelmed by the size of a thing—large institutions have always crushed me—or our minds expand to embrace it. I first thought about this in the Navy as I observed the officers on our ship from ensign to admiral. The ship, an Essex-class aircraft carrier, either operated within the sphere of an officer’s mind [...]
Read More...When I listen to myself I don’t sound like me. Do you sound like you? The voice I hear has a cold and is resolutely adolescent, suggesting to me that at age 74 I’m losing my battle to grow up before I die. The fact that I have company in this failed endeavor is not [...]
Read More...The press often acts as if there isn’t much good news to report, but that has more to do with the press’s definition of good news than reality. Take the Arab world as a case in point. We hear about oil, about terrorism, about sectarian conflict, about the cultural chasm between that world and the [...]
Read More...Bill, It’s Del Marbrook. Her tone reminds me why I could never be a salesman. Now, Honey, it’s Del—that might offer some hope this relationship will survive the winter. But her tone suggests that heavy-of-foot Ole Bill is approaching that phone as if it were medicine, and God only knows what facial expressions are passing [...]
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