Short Takes

Senior editor Doug Pepper at Crown bought a book about the founding members of the New Journalism movement and the changes they brought to American newspaper and magazine writing. It's called The Gang That Couldn't Write Straight and author Marc Weingarten, himself somewhat of a New Journalist, offers interviews with the likes of Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Hunter Thompson and other lights who put themselves into their pieces. Pepper bought North American rights from agent David McCormick and will publish, tentatively, in 2004.... Vicky Wilson at Knopf bought a book about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her early efforts for women's equality, long before she became a top scholar and lawyer, as well as her life as a wife and mother. Author Jane De Hart, a history professor at UC Santa Barbara, will have the justice's collaboration in preparing the book, for which Wilson bought North American rights from Coast agent Sandra Dijkstra and will publish early in 2004.... Agent Irene Goodman made her 21st consecutive contract for romance author Linda Lael Miller at Pocket Books, where Amy Pierpont bought two new novels for world rights, for Atria (hardcover) as well. The first, The Other Caroline, is a romantic thriller about a woman who sees mirror images of herself.... Arcade's Cal Barksdale bought a Canadian title that sets a deadline for the world to act on global warming. It's 2030: Confronting Thermageddon in Our Lifetime by author, activist and journalist Bob Hunter, one of the founders of Greenpeace; he estimates that's the year by which current climatic trends will be irreversible the way things are going now. Barksdale bought U.S. rights from McClelland & Stewart's rights director Marilyn Biderman.