Kurt Andersen, who took on an editor-at-large role at Random House in June, has acquired an untitled memoir by media entrepreneur Bob Nylen via David McCormick, who sold North American rights. Andersen, who will edit the book, likens it to Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for the boomer generation, also describing the work as a meditation on American male "toughness."
Nylen appears well-versed on the subject, having led a combat platoon as a green lieutenant in Vietnam, and more recently battled various kinds of cancer. At other points, Nylen helped to start Texas Monthly and founded both New England Monthly and beliefnet.com, the latter of which he just sold to Rupert Murdoch.
The book is "Studio 360" host and author Andersen's second acquisition for the house; his first, Douglas E. Schoen's Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-party System , will come out in spring 2008. A pub date for the Nylen book has not yet been announced; Jonathan Jao will be the book's in-house editor.
