In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address as president coined a term that reverberates still: the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe warned against granting the "military-industrial complex" too influential a position in the U.S. In the intervening 50 years, in addition to taking center stage in the economy and in politics, that military-industrial complex has also stepped into the cultural spotlight. The act, the planning, the execution, the aftermath of war in general—not any particular conflict—now constitute a key subject in our national dialogue.
That means books about war and warfare in general are growing in number. In November, Norton will publish a compendium of conflicts, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White, which includes everything from the Second Punic War to the Rwandan genocide. Senior editor Brendan Curry says, “Reading Matthew’s book is probably the only time—outside of Monty Python, of course—that I’ve belly laughed at the Crusades. And yet, you can tell that his project is animated by more than just humor. There’s a sense of justice, of looking out for the little guy, that pervades the book.”
Also coming in November is Conquered into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battles Along the Great Warpath That Made the American Way of War (Free Press) by Eliot A. Cohen. According to senior editor Alessandra Bastagli, “Cohen draws parallels between two centuries of deadly battles [against Native Americans] and our current wars, showing how the American way of war was shaped in those pivotal years.”
Readers of war and military books are demanding. Says Penguin Press publisher Scott Moyers, “Because this is a category whose core constituency is very knowledgeable, has high standards, and is relatively wired together, a book really has to say something new and say it with great authority.” In January Penguin Press will publish Paula Broadwell’s All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, written with Vernon Loeb. Moyers notes, “Broadwell is an Army Reserve Special Forces officer whose long, deep embeds with General Petraeus and the U.S. leadership cadre around him has yielded a book about modern war unprecedented in its revelations and insights.”
The University Press of Kansas has done unusually well in this category. Editor-in-chief Michael Briggs reports, “Four of our top 10 bestselling titles of the last fiscal year were in military history, with WWII—especially books on the Eastern Front—still very strong. But we’re seeing a lot more interest in current wars and military doctrine, with an emphasis on lessons learned.” Coming in September is a comprehensive work by Walter E. Kretchik—U.S. Army Doctrine: From the American Revolution to the War on Terror.
WWII, and to a lesser degree the Civil War, are perennially popular topics for this category—a trend that shows no signs of waning. Da Capo senior publicity director Lissa Warren calls these titles “the old reliables” and points out that while Da Capo has successfully published titles on Iraq and Afghanistan in the past, it has no such books this fall.
“We’re still seeing proposals or books on the current entanglements, but they’re fewer, and somehow they just don’t seem as fresh as they did a few years ago. Perhaps this reflects the war fatigue many Americans are feeling,” says Warren. Out next month is The Sword of St. Michael, a history of the 82nd Airborne Division, and in December—scheduled to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—Da Capo will publish Pearl Harbor Christmas by Stanley Weintraub.
Berkley senior executive editor Natalee Rosenstein says, “WWII memoirs continue to do very well for us. These are timeless stories of true American heroes who are leaving us at a very rapid rate. It makes it even more urgent that their stories be presented now for the generations to come.” In September Berkley Caliber will publish Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII by Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila, and NAL will publish Undersea Warrior: The World War II Story of “Mush” Morton and the USS Wahoo by Don Keith in November.
Skyhorse associate publisher Bill Wolfsthal says, “Great history, like great fiction, comes from great stories. It just happens that WWII continues to provide great storytelling.” Due in November are Angus Whitson and Andrew Orr’s Sea Dog Bamse, about a WWII Navy crew and its St. Bernard mascot, and The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The History of the Black Hunters by Christian Ingrao and Phoebe Green.
At National Geographic, director of communications Ann M. Day says, “We have built our presence in this category through a combined direct response and retail strategy, with an emphasis on Civil War and WWII titles.” These include October’s The Untold Civil War by Civil War scholar James Robertson, which, editor Neil Kagan explains, “brings history to life in a collection of 132 true stories revealing the personal dramas that took place as great events unfolded.”
Additional WWII titles include Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 by Ian W. Toll (Norton, Nov.), the first in a trilogy. In September, Penguin Press will publish Ian Kershaw’s The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945, followed in October by Osprey’s 7,500-copy printing of Always Faithful: U.S. Marines in WWII Combat by Marine Corps historian Eric Hammel. And coming in April 2012 from Aquila Polonica is Report: Auschwitz by Witold Pilecki.
Naval Institute Press offers two October hardcovers: Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway by Elliot Carlson and Fighting for MacArthur: The Navy and Marine Corps’ Desperate Defense of the Philippines by John Gordon. The publisher is also currently reissuing in paperback Samuel E. Morison’s multivolume history of U.S. naval operations in WWII, originally published by Little, Brown more than 50 years ago. Volumes in the first round of reissues (published in 2009 and 2010) have gone into multiple printings.
John Wurm, marketing manager at Quayside Publishing Group, which includes Zenith Press, says, “WWII continues to drive military history in the book trade.” He adds, “The key to success in the marketplace continues to be a good story, well told.” This fall, Zenith will publish Voices of the Bulge: Untold Stories from Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge by Michael Collins and Martin King and Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide.
With Tarnished Victory: Finishing Lincoln’s War (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Nov.), William Marvel, winner of the Lincoln Prize, the Douglas Southall Freeman Award, and the Bell Award, completes a four-part series on that conflict, and in October, Sterling will publish Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, in addition to The Civil War Years: An Illustrated Chronicle of the Life of a Nation (Aug.) by Robert E. Denney.
Casemate managing editor Steven Smith reports that what he terms “readers’ unending fascination for WWII” continues to flourish. In October, Casemate will publish William Mortimer Moore’s Free France’s Lion, a biography of the man behind Charles de Gaulle, and The Pacific War Uncensored by Harold Guard, a British war correspondent whose writings were censored at the time.
That doesn’t mean Casemate is ignoring current conflicts. “Military history publishing has entered a new stage in the past year,” Smith says, “not just because of technical convolutions in the industry, but because America’s current wars have finally lent themselves to calm perspectives. Casemate has never been an ambulance chaser for small-unit action narratives. However, we’ve always kept attuned to the larger perspectives, as they now emerge from our long years at war in the Mideast.” The house’s bestselling title this spring was the memoir Shade It Black by Jessica Goodell, a young Marine in a mortuary affairs unit in Iraq. Due next month is Awakening Victory by Army colonel Michael Silverman, described by Smith as a figure “central to our shift in strategy in Iraq, when we finally started forging partnerships with those people instead of trying to kill them.”
While WWII remains the most frequent topic in this category, there’s a steady stream of titles about Afghanistan, some more directly related to that war than others. Killing the Cranes: A Reporter’s Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan (Chelsea Green, Sept.) is by Edward Girardet, who has reported widely in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere since the late 1970s. Chelsea Green publisher Margo Baldwin acknowledges that the book—which has been endorsed by Sebastian Junger—may seem an unusual choice for the publisher at first glance. She explains, “We don’t usually do books on military and war subjects, but we do publish political books, and we see this as very much a political book as well. We’ve had several political bestsellers over the years: Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff [2004], The End of America by Naomi Wolf [2007], and Obama’s Challenge by Robert Kuttner [2008]. We see this book as being slightly more historical, but well in line with our position that America has become an empire that is rapidly losing its place in the world community.”
Ballantine Bantam Dell has found that publishing books on current conflicts creates opportunities for media appearances. Rusty Bradley and Kevin Maurer are the authors of Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds, a June hardcover about NATO’s Operation Medusa. Bradley, an active duty U.S. Army Special Forces commander, has appeared as an expert on NPR, Fox, and CNN. Even publicity materials for The Korean War: A History by Bruce Cumings (published in hardcover in July 2010 and in paperback by Modern Library Chronicles in July 2011) play off of parallels between that conflict and the Afghanistan War.
In May, Hyperion/Voice published a 40,000-copy first printing of Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse by Suraya Sadeed. The daughter of the one-time governor of Kabul, Sadeed emigrated to the U.S. after the Soviet invasion in 1979, but later returned to her native country and founded Help the Afghan Children. Senior editor Christine Pride says, “With all of the harrowing unrest around the world, readers remain interested in learning about the personal, human stories behind the headlines.”
Indeed, perhaps in reaction to these current wars still marching on, feel-good stories about war are increasingly popular, as evidenced by the success of Medal of Honor: Portraits on Valor Beyond the Call of Duty, which will have a third edition out from Artisan in November, timed to both Veterans’ Day and the medal’s 150th anniversary.
The hardcover will have a jacket price of $45, and a limited edition with slipcase and commemorative coin will also be available at $100. When published in 2003, Medal of Honor hit the New York Times bestseller list; the second edition came in 2006. To date, it has seen 13 printings, totaling 271,000 copies. The third edition will include portraits of Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, who won the medal in 2010, and Sgt. First Class Leroy Petry, who won it in 2011—the first and second living soldiers to receive the medal since the Vietnam War.
Also in a personal vein, Interlink is set to publish this fall American Veterans on War: Personal Stories from WWII to Afghanistan, author Elise Forbes Tripp’s second collection of oral histories. Free Press senior editor Alessandra Bastagli says, “The current wars are very confusing to readers—there are hot spots everywhere and some fatigue for readers, but heroic stories seem to dominate. These are tales of the human spirit, of courage, and of extraordinary people in war.” Bastagli puts Owen West’s The Snake Eaters (Mar.) in that category.
Among Rowman & Littlefield’s extensive list in this category are two titles on mental health issues that confront returning veterans. PW called last fall’s Combat Trauma: A Personal Look at Long-Term Consequences by James Johnson “an incredibly courageous exposé [and] a strikingly honest look at an issue that is becoming more apparent in our society as combat veterans return from Iraq and Afghanistan.” Coming in October is Leah Wizelman’s When the War Never Ends: The Voices of Military Members with PTSD and Their Families (Oct.). In an attempt to make this subcategory more accessible, the publisher is issuing more paperback editions and making special efforts to get books stocked at post exchanges.
Readers of war and military books may be attracted to books about strict discipline and toeing the line, but when it comes to their buying habits, they tend to be adventuresome and innovative. They are certainly cottoning to e-books. Casemate’s Smith reports that growth in e-books has been “exponential,” and Da Capo executive editor Robert Pigeon says that “the strong growth of e-book sales in all areas of military history is even stronger than the overall growth of e-books in other nonfiction areas.”
Nonbookstore outlets also constitute a solid channel for this category. John Tintera, Osprey sales and marketing director, reports that the house’s Campaign series and New Vanguard series, trade paperbacks under $20, sell “primarily through independent hobby stores, with about 45% of the sales coming from the online and book chain channels.”
“In terms of marketing trends,” Tintera continues, “a small but growing marketing and sales channel for us is the regional consumer event circuit. Our customer base is segmented into several different hobbies, including plastic model building, war-gaming, re-enacting and living history, and toy soldiers—and they all have their own events. We go to about 50 shows a year.” Osprey also participates in organizing the annual Military History Weekend (www.mhwshow.com) every October in Williamsburg, Va., which includes activities for kids, such as a medieval sword contest and a Civil War boot camp, and a Saturday night dinner-lecture for adults.
Some publishers are providing bookstores with extra help. In October, Thomas Nelson will add volumes on Pershing and Sherman to its the Generals series, bringing the total to six. Director of marketing Kristi Henson says, “Feedback from many retailers told us that many of the Generals titles were being shelved individually, either by author’s name or title of the book. Unfortunately, this was spreading the series out through numerous shelves in bookstores’ biography or history sections. So we’ve created shelf-talkers to group the series titles together to increase exposure and drive in-store sales.” The company is also in the process of creating a small Web site for retailers to adapt for use in their own online retail environments. “Retailers began racking the series books together and have experienced much more enthusiasm from consumers and sell-through of the series,” Henson concludes. In other words, the plan of attack is working.
Homecoming
In February 2012, Bethany House will publish an updated third edition of Heroes at Home: Help and Hope for America’s Military Families by Ellie Kay. The book’s first edition dates back to 2003, before the Iraq War began. Author Kay, who’s guested on ABC News and other media outlets, is married to a former fighter pilot and has two children enrolled in military academies. The new edition, a $13.99 paperback, reflects recent changes in military structures and financial advice for avoiding bad loans and other scams. Chapters include tips for surviving a move (a frequent event for military families) and portraits of figures Kay calls “hidden heroes,” the family members of those serving. As Kay points out in the introduction, “Over 6.2 million Americans are serving or have served in our nation’s military defense, and those numbers continue to rise as the war on terrorism continues”—providing this title with a growing audience.—N.D.
Pritzker Goes to Carlo D’Este
In June, it was announced that the 2011 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing will be awarded to Carlo D’Este, author of several major works on WWII, beginning with Decision in Normandy (Dutton, 1983) and continuing through Bitter Victory (Dutton, 1988) and Fatal Decision (HarperCollins, 1991). D’Este’s recent work has included biographies: Patton: A Genius for War (HarperCollins, 1995); Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 1890–1945 (Holt, 2002); and Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874–1945 (Harper, 2008). D’Este will receive the $100,000 award, established in 2007, and a medallion in Chicago on October 22. At the same ceremony, Marine Corps veteran Karl Marlantes will receive the Colby Award for his widely lauded bestselling novel, Matterhorn (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010). The Pritzker Military Library is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute.—N.D.
The SEAL Test
Before May 1, 2011, the elite force of Navy SEALs kept a low profile, but after Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team Six, that changed overnight, and books followed quickly.
John Parsley, Little, Brown senior editor, says, “Interest in SEAL Team Six has never been higher, but Inside SEAL Team Six [Oct.] is one of those books you’d leap to publish at any moment because of its extraordinary author, Don Mann. Not only did Don fight with SEAL Team Six, he has been involved with the SEALs for the past 30 years and has seen every aspect of the unit’s operation in his decades of service.”
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published Eric Greiten’s The Heart and the Fist, the memoir of a humanitarian who became a Navy SEAL, in April and saw strong numbers. Bruce Nichols, senior v-p and publisher, adult and reference, credits some of the strong sales “in warehouse clubs, at Target, and in airports in addition to chains” to the capture of bin Laden.
Osprey published SEALs: The U.S. Navy’s Elite Fighting Force by Mir Bahmanyar and Chris Osman (a former Army Ranger and a former SEAL, respectively) in 2008 and went back to print four times in just one year. The title was republished in paperback in February. Publisher Kate Moore says, “The book tells the whole history of the unit from its founding to the present day, covering all the key operations from Panama and Bosnia up to and including the ‘war on terror,’ as well as describing command structure and training and their impact upon the effectiveness of the SEALs.”
Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin’s Seal Team Six, published by St. Martin’s in May, this week marks its 14th week on PW’s bestseller list, and Naval Institute Press has seen success with Seal of Honor: Operation Red Wings and the Life of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, USN by Gary Williams, about a Medal of Honor recipient killed in Afghanistan. Now out in paperback and electronic editions as well as the original hardcover (2010), the title continues to sell briskly. And Zenith Press is rushing to print an expanded update of Hans Halberstadt’s U.S. Navy SEALs (2006), which now includes a detailed, minute-by-minute account of the mission to capture bin Laden.
SEALs are even the subject of new fiction. Coming from St. Martin’s in September is Suffer in Silence by David Reid. Executive editor Marc Resnick discovered the self-published title on Amazon while researching comps for military nonfiction works and was so impressed that he tracked down the author and acquired the book. Resnick reports, “The author went through Phase One BUDS training and Hell Week himself, so he knows precisely what these guys go through to become SEALs (he was medically discharged during Phase Two of SEAL training).”—N.D.
PS: War in Graphic Form
In September, Abrams ComicArts will publish PS Magazine by Will Eisner, a collection of the comic book–style preventive maintenance magazine, published from 1951 through 1971, that Eisner drew and wrote to teach soldiers weapons safety and provide technical information. The work features hapless soldier Joe Dope and Connie Rodd, an attractive blonde pinup. (A sample: Joe is shown with a wrench in his hand alongside the limerick “Don’t deadline your truck or your jeep/’Cause your oil-seal shows signs of some seep./But a streaky wet leak/Needs attention this week/Or the heap’ll bog down to a creep.”) The magazine was titled PS because it was a postscript to standard technical manuals.
Abrams ComicArts editorial director Charles Kochman reports that the History Book Club is including the title in its catalogue, and the press hopes “to introduce this 20-year body of work to a wider audience for the first time, as it has, until now, gone uncollected, relegated to a handful of rare book dealers and die-hard collectors, as well as to the memories of the soldiers who served the U.S. Army in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Kochman notes that the press has done well with the similar The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read! by Jim Trombetta, a collection of horror comics from the 1950s published last fall and is now in its third printing. This fall, the house will also publish Government Issue by Richard L. Graham, comprising comics created by federal and state agencies to teach Americans about various issues.—N.D.
