$1m.-Plus for Pulitzer Historian
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 4/2/2001
Three publishers bid more than $1 million at auction February 23 to secure a new book by historian David M. Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer for his FDR-era history, Freedom from Fear (Oxford). It was the fourth bidder, Michael Millman at Penguin, who won out over Free Press, Random, Houghton and Harper. The object of all the excitement, which was also causing a lesser buzz at the London Book Fair last week, was a brief outline for a book Kennedy plans to call simply The Americans. It will be an examination of our society and culture today as a foreign visitor might see us (as Alexis de Tocqueville once looked at us two centuries ago), and Kennedy plans to deliver late in 2003 for publication in 2004. The sale, made by Michael Carlisle at his eponymous agency in association with former Norton chairman Donald Lamm, now coagenting with Carlisle & Company, was for U.S. rights only; the agency's Emma Parry was reporting strong foreign interest in London.
