No Policy of Containment
This season, publishers from across the spectrum jump into the political fray
by Steven Zeitchik -- Publishers Weekly, 10/7/2002
Politics, wrote Ambrose Bierce, is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. With a handful of each, publishers have pushed foreign policy books to the fore this season. Their blend of passion and profit motive has created the richest book environment the subject has seen in some time.
In the past, publishers have been slow to track foreign-policy events as they happened. But not this year. Unlike books that assess Afghanistan or offer tributes to 9/11, these fall titles aim not to dissect the past but to influence the present. They come to the market with ambition as sweeping as their ideological cast, seeking to matter both at the water cooler and the White House (and, of course, the cash register). And, perhaps most trickily, they seek to carry subjects ubiquitous in the media to deeper levels of insight without overwhelming their readers.
Capturing the full range of these books' missions is impossible. But as with policy itself, understanding both the extremes and the points between can be instructive. So we've aligned seven of these new foreign policy titles along a spectrum from doveish to hawkish. They won't all sell in big numbers and they won't all dramatically change the debate, but all should matter.
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New Press
publisher Colin Robinson is always trolling for signs of a public appetite for radical left-wing views. He may have found just the clue in a recent Liz Smith mention of this book, from Harper's
editor Lapham. "I didn't even think she knew who Lewis Lapham was," he said. Robinson, who published Lapham's three previous books at Verso, says he has sold in twice as many copies of this one. Most encouraging was a paid event in San Francisco that drew more than 1,000 people. Officially a collection of essays that ran in Harper's
before and after 9/11, the book's piece de resistance
is an original introduction in which Lapham tracks U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century. "It's all the same story. Here we are in chapter 33, and in order to better understand it, we need to read chapters 1 through 32," Lapham told PW.
page anti-invasion tract, in which William Pitt (who created Truthout.com) interviews former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who argues that Iraq doesn't presently have a nuclear capability. Though Context has printed a whopping 125,000 copies of the $8.95 paperback, the book's commercial performance is a secondary concern for Friedlander, who resolutely opposes both the war and those whose motives he questions, like the publisher of The Threatening Storm. "Anyone with an ounce of cynicism, regardless of their feelings about the war, is going to publish that book, because it's a safer bet if a war starts than a book opposed to the war," he said. "But I couldn't live with myself doing something like that."
Finding out
about an upcoming Bob Woodward book is about as easy as getting information on the Nixon White House. For nearly all of the journalist's titles, S&S has pursued a strategy of extreme stealth right up until publication. "The media will be the last to know," says publisher David Rosenthal, in what seems like an odd comment to make about an author who practically invented modern investigative reporting. What we know is this: The book will uncover the debates and dynamics within the administration, particularly as they relate to the war on terror. Woodward began working on it before 9/11 and continues, in all probability, even as you read this. (Pub date was originally set for November, but might be delayed until December.) Rosenthal promises a lot of hard news, so the house will conduct a tiered publicity campaign for its 600,000-copy first printing.
It's not easy
being a Jeremiah—no one wants to hear your gloomy prediction, and you probably don't feel like celebrating when it comes true. Having warned of a terrorist attack long before 9/11, former Clinton NSC staffers Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon find that systemic anti-Americanism in the Islamic world spells more dark days ahead, unless U.S. policies and PR strategies change. Unlike a few of the titles to the left, the authors' problems with American policy are strategic, not moral; in other words, it's not really America's fault that prejudice flourishes in the Muslim world, though it is America's problem. Random's Tom Perry said the house didn't rush the book after 9/11. Nor is it rushing to get publicity—the book was under embargo until last week, which helped it snag segments on 60 Minutes II
and Today.
Random House
executive editor Jonathan Karp knew he had stumbled onto something when he read Kenneth Pollack's article in the March issue of Foreign Affairs. "I was fascinated that a former Clinton staffer who supported containment and deterrence would view invasion as the best course," he said. After laying out the recent history of Iraq, its political system and its weapons program, Pollack, a former CIA intelligence officer, reviews all possible scenarios for U.S. involvement in the Gulf, concluding that invasion is the least evil option. "It reads like an intelligence report on Iraq," said Karp, explaining that the book is designed to appeal to people who realize that the best way to understand whether we need to dismantle Iraq is to understand how the country was put together. Pollack has been interviewed by George Steph-anopoulos on ABC and wrote an op-ed for the New York Times.
A national bestseller
with 150,000 copies in print, Regnery's Breakdown
has performed enviably from a sales standpoint, even though its subject—criticizing the mechanics of U.S. intelligence agencies—isn't likely to interest your average couch-potato or even Bill O'Reilly fan. "It is sort of a wonkish book," concedes publisher Al Regnery. The house's skill at courting conservative radio and TV viewers is fast becoming legendary. But given the book's release around the time Congress began hearings on the security failures that led to 9/11, this may also have been a case of serendipitous timing. And for all its mass-appeal, much of the book's success came from the Beltway crowd: the title climbed all the way to #3 on the Washington Post
bestseller list.
Many Americans
have never heard of philosopher and cultural critic Roger Scruton, who's a kind of English Allan Bloom. (ISI publisher Jeff Nelson calls him a "philosopher on horseback," a reference not only to his status as a defender of high culture but to his last book, a fox hunting memoir that caused a stir in England.) Here, Scruton's disdain for cultural relativism leads him to call on the west to re-educate itself on its religious and historical roots. He says we need to be more grounded in our own cultural identity when confronting an adversary with a clear sense of its own history and religion. Though Scruton tends to be read by conservative academics in this country, publisher ISI, a non-profit education organization, thinks Islam's trendiness will change that. The book "is for the interested generalist who's trying to pierce behind the hysterics and the histrionics," said Nelson.
