Short Takes
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 3/11/2002
Now that daredevil events like half-pipe snowboarding have graduated to Olympic status, it's clear that extreme sports have moved to the forefront, and journalist David Browne has just sold an in-depth study of their rise to Bloomsbury USA. Karen Rinaldi and Colin Dickerman bought world English rights to Browne's Amped from agent Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency.... A book outlining steps that can be taken to avert Alzheimer's disease was bought by Nancy Hitchcock at McGraw-Hill from agent Anna Ghosh at Scovil Chichak Galen; it's The Memory Cure: New Discoveries on How to Protect Your Brain Against Alzheimer's Disease by Dr. Majid Fotuhi, an authority on the disease at Johns Hopkins. She bought North American rights and will publish in the fall.... Lauren Marino at Bill Shinker's new imprint at Penguin Putnam has lined up another trade paperback title for the line's launch. It's The Nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard), a lighthearted look at the sources of inspiration by seminar leader Jill Badonsky; the agent was Stephanie Kip Rostan at James Levine Communications.... Saving the Corporate Soul sounds like a good idea in these days of despair about Enron and corporate accountants and it's the title of a book just signed up at Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint, by senior editor Susan Williams; she paid six figures for world rights in the book by David Batstone, author, editor and ethics professor, to agent Mark Tauber at Agora Media.... Also at Wiley, Tom Miller signed a book by Microsoft training manager Marcia Conner on how to deal with information overload. It's called Learn More Now: A 7-Day Program for Learning Better, Faster and Smarter, and Miller bought world rights, also from James Levine....Binnie Kirshenbaum, whose well-received Hester Among the Ruins was published by Norton last month, is moving to Harper's Ecco for her next, where Julia Serebrinsky just bought North American rights from agent Jennifer Lyons at Writers House. It's called The Life of Valentine and tells of three generations of Jewish women in Brooklyn.
