Booksellers Are Hot for Gore

by Craig Morgan Teicher -- Publishers Weekly, 3/22/2007 2:26:00 PM

Two months away from the release of Al Gore's next book, The Assault on Reason, Penguin Press is finalizing plans for a book tour that will undoubtedly have huge audiences turning out to get near the suddenly sizzling policy wonk.

Starting on May 22, the one-day laydown date for the book, Gore will visit 10-12 cities. Aside from still-undisclosed dates in New York, Washinton DC, and San Francisco, Penguin will piggyback on Gore’s existing lecture schedule for other promotional events. Associate Publisher Tracy Locke said Gore will do readings in lecture halls as well as bookstore appearances, though she speculated that most of the bookstores will rent larger venues to accommodate the audiences. Penguin isn't saying yet which stores will get to host the former almost-president-elect, but booksellers are eagerly lobbying for the privilege.

"We’d love to—we’re pursuing it," said Mike Giarratano, events coordinator at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washginton DC.

"He was here for An Inconvenient Truth and we had a huge signing for that," said Cathy Langer, buyer, Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver. "We of course would be pushing very, very hard to host him again, and we’re on his map."

Since Rodale published An Inconvenient Truth a little more than a year ago, Gore's celebrity has been heating up faster than a polar ice cap in a Hummer factory. In the last year, he's turned his book into a hit, Oscar-winning documentary, shared a stage with Leo DiCaprio, and, as of yesterday, brought the debate about global warming to the packed floor of congress. As for the book, according to Nielsen BookScan, An Inconvenient Truth has sold 315,000 since its original paperback release. Viking Juvenile will publish an abridged hardcover version of the book for young readers in April. "We’ll be including the children’s book in all of our events," Locke said.

While global warming has become about as controversial as gravity, Gore is moving on to more incendiary topics, according to the catalog description of his new book: "A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason." Says Locke, "You can expect this book to create a great, great deal of debate and conversation."