Short Takes
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 8/23/2004
A book by veteran military correspondent Thomas E. Ricks that traces America's involvement with Iraq over the past decade, embracing the war and its likely consequences, was signed for Penguin Press by Scott Moyers. Ricks is the Pulitzer Prize–winning military correspondent for the Washington Post and is ideally qualified, says Penguin Press head Ann Godoff, to write the definitive book on the subject. It was a world rights buy from agent Alice Martell, for publication early in 2006.... JoAnn Miller at Basic Books signed a book called The Mature Mind, in which author Gene Cohen describes his research among older people that suggests the brain continues to expand and develop beyond middle age. This was bought for world rights from Gail Ross, for publication next year.... A joint buy by Bloomsbury editors Colin Dickerman and Mike Jones, here and in the U.K., respectively, was of Send In the Idiots, a memoir by Karman Nazeer, a young Oxford-educated adviser to the British government, about his experiences at a school for autistic children and what happened in later life to his classmates. The world English buy was from Claire Patterson at Janklow & Nesbit.... The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, a bestseller for Marian Wood's imprint at Putnam, has been optioned as a movie by Sony Pictures Entertainment, with John Calley as producer. CAA's Sally Wilcox made the deal on behalf of literary agent Wendy Weil.
