Norton's Perfect Hit
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 6/30/1997
Norton's The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, Sebastian Junger's account of the "storm of the century" -- the ferocious Halloween gale of October 1991 that killed the captain and his crew of five on the fishing vessel Andrea Gail -- was launched with rave reviews (including a starred PW and a front-page NYTBR) and a very effective pre-publication interview by Alex Chadwick on NPR's Morning Edition. The latter was particularly helpful in giving the book a buzz in the marketplace even before the May 19 pub date (two more NPR interviews are scheduled for the near future). It also didn't hurt that current top bestselling author Jon Krakauer was recommending Junger's book to audiences during his own tour for Into Thin Air. A standing-room-only June 16 crowd greeted the author at Elliott Bay in Seattle, the first stop on a coast-to-coast tour of more than 20 cities (C-SPAN will join him at one of the booksignings in New England). A CBS Sunday Morning camera crew, a People reporter and a Boston Globe columnist followed Junger to a Gloucester, Mass., bookstore signing that was a reunion for the author and families and friends of the men who perished in the storm, many of whom were interviewed for the book. For Norton, all this attention has resulted in four trips back to press and two more underway that will add up to 150,000 copies in print. The last two printings were approved, according to Norton, the morning after a Charlie Rose segment on summer reading (it aired June 25), during which PW's Sybil Steinberg talked glowingly about the book.
