Waxman Literary Agency Rights List Spring/Summer 2020
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443 Park Avenue South Suite 1004 New York, NY 10016 Telephone (212) 675 5556 www.waxmanliteraryagency.com WAXMAN LITERARY AGENCY RIGHTS LIST SPRING/SUMMER 2020 Scott Waxman: [email protected] Ashley Lopez: [email protected] Susan Canavan: [email protected] FRONTLIST HIGHLIGHTS A SCHEME OF HEAVEN by Alexander Boxer THE GOOD ASSASSIN by Stephan Talty 140 DAYS TO HIROSHIMA by David Dean Barrett THE COBBLER by Steve Madden LAST MISSION TO TOKYO by Michel Paradis THE GIRL AND THE BOMBARDIER by Susan Tate Ankeny OUR LIVEABLE WORLD by Marc Schaus MOM GENES by Abigail Tucker BACKLIST HIGHLIGHTS LABYRINTH OF ICE by Buddy Levy RAISING HELL by Jon Wiederhorn THANK YOU FOR MY SERVICE by Mat Best HUNGRY by Jeff Gordinier EVERY TOOL’S A HAMMER by Adam Savage SUPERBUGS by Matt McCarthy GO LIKE HELL by A.J. Baime FRONTLIST Jon Wiederhorn RAISING HELL: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends (Diversion) Foreword by Gary Holt of Exodus and Slayer Music / UK: Abner Stein, Translation: WLA, NA: Diversion, Poland: Wydawnictwo Kagra Krzysztof Grausz Manuscript available / Publishing January 2020 From the author of celebrated classic Louder Than Hell comes an oral history of the badass Heavy Metal lifestyle—the debauchery, demolition, and headbanging dedication—featuring metalhead musicians from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot to Disturbed, Megadeth, Throwdown, and more. In his song “You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll” Ozzy Osbourne sings, “Rock and roll is my religion and my law.” And that’s why RAISING HELL is a must-have for anyone who wants to read about the iconoclastic culture of headbangers and the wild lives they lead. The book contains the crazy and funny, and sometimes horrifying, anecdotes musicians have told about a lifestyle both invigorating and at times self-destructive. The metal genre has always been populated by colorful individuals who have thwarted convention and lived by their own rules. For many, vice has been virtue, and the opportunity to record albums and tour has been an invitation to push boundaries and opened a Pandora’s Box of wild experiences. Even before they joined bands, the urge for metalheads to rebel and a seemingly contradictory need to belong was ingrained in their DNA. Whether they were oddballs who didn’t fit in or angry kids from troubled backgrounds, metal gave them a sense of identity. Alexander Boxer A SCHEME OF HEAVEN: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data (Norton) Science / Translation: WLA / NA: Norton, UK: Profile, Russia: Azbooka-Atticus Manuscript available / Publishing January 2020 Humans are pattern-matching creatures, and astrology is the universe’s grandest pattern- matching game. In this refreshing work of history and analysis, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines classical texts on astrology to expose its underlying scientific and mathematical framework. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world’s most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a monumental data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history’s most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler. Astrologers became the first to stumble upon the powerful storytelling possibilities inherent in numerical data. To correlate the configurations of the cosmos with our day-to-day lives, astrologers relied upon a “scheme of heaven” or horoscope, showing the precise configuration of the planets at a particular instant in time as viewed from a particular place on Earth. Although recognized as pseudoscience today, horoscopes were once considered a cutting-edge scientific tool. Boxer teaches us how to read these esoteric charts—and appreciate the complex astronomical calculations needed to generate them—by diagramming how the heavens appeared at important moments in astrology’s history, from the assassination of Julius Caesar as viewed from Rome to the Apollo 11 lunar landing as seen from the surface of the Moon. He then puts these horoscopes to the test using modern data sets and statistical science, arguing that today’s data scientists do work similar to astrologers of yore. Looking back at the algorithms of ancient astrology, he suggests, we can better recognize the patterns that are timeless characteristics of our own pattern-matching tendencies. At once critical, rigorous, and far ranging, A SCHEME OF HEAVEN recontextualizes astrology as a vast, technological project that foreshadowed our data- driven world today. Bill Ripken STATE OF PLAY: An Old School Guide to New School Baseball (Diversion) Sports / UK: Abner Stein, Translation: WLA Manuscript available / Publishing February 2020 Over the last few years the Sabermetric and Analytical (S&A) craze has infiltrated MLB front offices, dugouts, and news. S&A has certainly made contributions to better the game of baseball, but not to the extent that people seem to think it has. New terms, phrases, and unrealistic statistics like launch angle, spin rate, and pitch framing have been thrown at us and are being used as punchlines with little real meaning when it comes to how the game is actually played. Former 12-year major league veteran and current MLB Network analyst Bill Ripken argues that new analytical terms are being introduced to the baseball lexicon before they’ve become completely validated ideas. He believes these new terms require qualifiers to make it clear to confused baseball fans that these new statistics and analytics aren’t necessarily relevant to the fundamental truths of the sport. These new ways of thinking, Ripken argues, are actually damaging to the way people experience and understand the game. STATE OF PLAY looks at these so-called new and improved statistics and methods and points out what makes sense and what doesn’t in a larger, historical context. Baseball common sense is the main focus. Ripken reconciles the old with the new, arriving at a modern baseball philosophy that accounts for both. Bill Ripken is a 12-year major league veteran and current studio analyst appearing across MLB’s Network’s programming, including the Emmy Award-winning flagship studio show MLB Tonight. A three-time sports Emmy nominee, he captured the award for Outstanding Studio Analyst in 2016. Ripken is also a bestselling author. Jonathan W. Jordan & Emily Ann Jordan THE WAR QUEENS: Extraordinary Women who Ruled the Battlefield (Diversion) History / UK: Abner Stein /World English Only Manuscript available / Publishing March 2020 In gripping, cinematic detail, father-daughter duo Jonathan and Emily Jordan uncover the ingenious wartime tactics of some of history’s most powerful female leaders across millennia and continents, from the stifling battlefields of ancient Egypt to the frigid waters off the Falkland Islands. History’s killer queens come in all colors, ages, and leadership styles. Elizabeth Tudor and Golda Meir played the roles of high-stakes gamblers who studied maps with an unblinking, calculating eye. Angola’s Queen Njinga, possessing limited resources but unmatched ferocity, was willing to shed (and occasionally drink) blood to establish a stable kingdom in an Africa ravaged by the colonial slave trade. Caterina Sforza defended her Italian holdings with cannon and scimitar, and Indira Gandhi launched a war to solve a refugee crisis. From ancient Persia to modern-day Britain, the daunting thresholds these exceptional women had to cross—and the clever, sometimes violent ways in which they overcame them—are evoked in vivid detail by Jonathan and Emily Jordan. This gripping narrative sidles up to each war queen in the most dire, tumultuous moments of her reign and examines the deft, brilliant methods and maneuvers they each used to defend themselves and their constituents from enemy forces. In the end, we come away with a new awareness of the resilient, extraordinary power and potential of women in history who walked through war’s kiln and emerged from the other side—some burnished to greatness, others burned to cinders, all of them legends. Stephan Talty THE GOOD ASSASSIN: How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) History / Translation: WLA, NA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, UK: Amberley Manuscript available / Publishing April 2020 Before World War II, Herbert Cukurs was a famous figure in his small Latvian city, the “Charles Lindbergh of his country.” But by 1945, he was the Butcher of Latvia, a man who murdered some thirty thousand Latvian Jews. Somehow, he dodged the Nuremberg trials, fleeing to South America after war’s end. By 1965, as a statute of limitations on all Nazi war crimes threatened to expire, Germany sought to welcome previous concentration camp commanders, pogrom leaders, and executioners, as citizens. The global pursuit of Nazi criminals escalated to beat the looming deadline, and Mossad, the Israeli national intelligence agency, joined the cause. Yaakov Meidad, the misfit Mossad agent who had kidnapped Adolf Eichmann three years earlier, knew if Cukurs was not captured soon, he may never be brought to justice. In a thrilling undercover operation unrivaled by even the most ambitious spy novels, Meidad traveled to Brazil in an elaborate disguise, befriended Cukurs and earned his trust, while negotiations to extend Nazi innocence neared a boiling point. THE GOOD ASSASSIN uncovers this little-known chapter of Holocaust history and the pulse-pounding undercover operation that brought Cukurs to justice. David Dean Barrett 140 DAYS TO HIROSHIMA: The Untold Story of Japan’s Last Chance To Surrender (Diversion) History /