Ron Suskind, author of THE WAY OF THE WORLD, includes former CIA head of the Near East division and deputy director of clandestine operations Rob Richer as one of his on-the-record sources for the assertion that the agency was ordered to fake a document to help support the Administration’s case for war in Iraq. As wagons were circled when the book was released, Richer said in a statement “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habbush as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.” But Suskind has now posted […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
Buzz for Selden Edwards' Debut
The Santa Barbara Independent has a long piece on Selden Edwards in advance of the release of his debut novel THE LITTLE BOOK on August 14. The paper says “the buzz in the publishing world is that this impeccably crafted and suspenseful tale of a world-famous American rock star who wakes up one day in Vienna, Austria, in 1897, will be the hottest fiction title of the fall.” Edwards began the book back in 1974 “and submitted the first of many final drafts as part of the requirements for a master’s degree at Stanford…. More than six supposedly final drafts […]
Suskind Book Says White House Ordered Forgery
Ron SUskind’s just-released THE WAY OF THE WORLD charges that the White House instructed the CIA to “forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein,” Politico reports, “designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.” The book says: “The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between […]
'Breaking Dawn' Breaking Records
Hachette Book Group estimates that they sold 1.3 million copies of Stephenie Meyer’s BREAKING DAWN on Saturday. The company added a 500,000-copy reprint prior to publication, for 3.7 million copies in print. Borders announced that its stores and web site sold over 250,000 copies on opening day–“nearly 10 times what the retailer’s first-day sales were for Eclipse, the third book in the series.”Borders release
Rushdie Takes the Bait; Threatens to Sue
File it under smart people who do dumb things. Instead of ignoring, or laughing off, the book ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE by Ron Evans, who guarded Rushdie when he was in hiding, the knighted author is threatening to sue–which doesn’t really invalidate the book’s assertions. Rushdie tells the Guardian, “He is portraying me as mean, nasty, tight-fisted, arrogant and extremely unpleasant. In my humble opinion I am none of those things.” He gives them paragraphs of quotes and denials, culminating in this: “This is not a free speech issue, this is libel – there is a difference between those two […]
Italian Publisher Overspends to Bring Bestseller to US
The IHT reports on Italian publisher Baldini Castoldi Dalai’s efforts to put out an English translation of Giorgio Faletti’s 2002 book I KILL, “an Italian thriller about a serial killer on a murder spree in Monaco [that] has been translated into two dozen languages and sold five million copies worldwide.” The IHT adds, “For Italian novels, even best sellers at home, the situation is particularly difficult. A few, like Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, have managed to break through. But Susanna Tamaro’s Follow Your Heart, the biggest selling Italian postwar novel, with more than 14 million copies sold, according to its […]