'War and Peace': The Facts
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 7/16/2001
A book that describes Napoleon's 1807 campaigns in Russia from the Russian point of view has been signed by Viking Penguin executive editor Wendy Wolf in a transatlantic deal involving Penguin U.K. as well. It will be written by Dominic Lieven, a well-known British historian and biographer (and a professor of Russian Government at the London School of Economics) who is in fact descended from Baltic princes once close to the czar. The joint bid by Wolf and Simon Winder in London was a "significant" six-figure one for world English rights, to agent Natasha Fairweather of A.P. Watt in London. Executive editor Michael Millman, said Wolf, helped keep a couple of potential Anglo-American bidders at bay while the details were worked out. Lieven has discovered previously untranslated Russian primary sources that will give the home-front perspective on the French campaigns. The book is expected to be ready in time for the 200th anniversary of its subject, about five years from now.
