LONDON BOOK FAIR April 14
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PMS 639, PMS 485, PMS 424 LONDON BOOK FAIR April 14-16, 2015 The Zoë Pagnamenta Agency, LLC 20 West 22nd St, Suite 1603 New York, NY 10010 Tel: 212-253-1074 Fax: 212-253-1075 Website: http://www.zpagency.com/ Rights inquiries: [email protected] List of Co-Agents attached. All rights are held by ZPA, unless otherwise stated. HIGHLIGHTS: Andrew Blum THE WEATHER MACHINE: A Journey Inside the Forecast US: Ecco Press; UK: The Bodley Head/ PRH UK; Canada: HarperCanada; Germany: Knaus It’s tempting to treat the weather as a banality: a topic for the taxi-driver and the hairdresser. But the way we know “the weather”, and what it will do next, depends upon one of the largest and most elaborate pieces of infrastructure humans have ever constructed: a globe-spanning machine, hidden in plain sight… In THE WEATHER MACHINE, Andrew Blum, author of TUBES, takes readers on another unique journey, deep inside the weather report. Mixing a fresh take on the recent history of forecasting with on-the-ground reporting of today’s sophisticated weather-watching technology, Blum once again illuminates an unappreciated everyday wonder of the world. The weather forecast depends on the latest satellites and the fastest supercomputers, on international diplomacy and scientific innovation. It stands on the shoulders of every technology that defines modern life—from telecommunications to aerospace to ubiquitous cameras. But it stands silently. Like the Internet, it is both a marvel and a banality. And like the Internet, we know very little about how it all works. About who built it, and who makes it better. How do we know what we know about the weather—today, tomorrow, and over the next, turbulent decades? No doubt the atmosphere is tense: we are on the brink of a new epoch of weather forecasting and a new epoch of weather. As the global forces of climate change play out, this vast weather machine will come under increasing scrutiny. As the world heats up, who can best predict its volatility? How can that prediction improve? Who knows the weather? And who owns it? THE WEATHER MACHINE will be the definitive, unprecedented, behind-the-scenes exploration of a global machinery of terrifying importance. Andrew Blum is the author of TUBES: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, the first general reader-friendly look at the physical infrastructure of the global Internet. Blum’s writings about architecture, design, technology, urbanism, art, and travel have appeared in numerous publications, including Metropolis, where he is a contributing editor, Architectural Record, Wired, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Popular Science. TUBES has been published internationally and translated into nine languages. US Editor: Hilary Redmon Delivery: December 2015 Proposal available 2 Bryan Doerries THE THEATER OF WAR: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today US & Canada: Knopf; Brazil: Companhia das Letras; Korea; Gilbut Publishing Company; UK & Australia: Scribe THE THEATER OF WAR argues that ancient Greek tragedies are relevant— now more than ever—in helping us face the most morally complex issues of our time. What do Greek tragedies have to say to us now? And what timeless things are they uniquely positioned to show us about what it means to be human? These are some of the questions that, for the past five years, director and translator Bryan Doerries been exploring with new audiences—such as soldiers, prison guards, addicts, hospice nurses, and terminally ill patients—in surprising settings throughout the world, from the Pentagon to the detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to Fukushima, Japan. By performing tragedies for people who have experienced trauma and loss, Doerries helps individuals and communities see that they are not alone across time. As he tells his story of taking tragedies to people who need to hear them most, we encounter the real-life stories of ordinary people, whose harrowing and unforgettable stories of sacrifice, betrayal, recovery, and redemption could be pulled from the pages of Sophocles’ plays and whose brave testimonials illuminate something hidden and timeless about the mythological characters in these ancient Greek tragedies. This is a book about the power of stories to transcend time, to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable. At its core, this is a story about how stories—ancient and modern—can bring about healing and help people change, before it’s too late. “The Theater of War is a testament both to the enduring power of the classics and to the vital role art can play in our communal understanding of war and suffering.” —Phil Klay, author of Redeployment Bryan Doerries is a writer, director, and translator. He is the founder of Theater of War, a project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to service members, veterans, caregivers, and families to help them initiate conversations about the visible and invisible wounds of war. He is also the co-founder of Outside the Wire, a social impact company that uses theater and a variety of other media to address pressing public health and social issues, such as combat- related psychological injury, end-of-life care, prison reform, domestic violence, political violence, recovery from natural and man-made disasters, and the destigmatization of substance abuse and addiction. A self-described evangelist for classical literature and its relevance to our lives today, Doerries uses age-old approaches to help individuals and communities heal from suffering and loss. Vintage Books US will also publish four of Doerries’s lively translations of the plays themselves (AJAX, PHILOCTETES and WOMEN OF TRACHIS by Sophocles and PROMETHEUS BOUND by Aeschylus). US editor: Andrew Miller US publication: September 2015 Edited manuscript available: July 2015 3 Advance Praise for Bryan Doerries’s THE THEATER OF WAR: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today (Alfred A. Knopf, September 2015) “Bryan Doerries’s ongoing staging of Greek tragedies before U.S. military personnel and others processing trauma is an act of courageous humanism: a tribute to vanished lives and a succor to current soldiers and citizens. In connecting the valiance and pathos of modern military life to a 2500-year tradition, Doerries has returned dignity to countless troops nearly destroyed by war. His capacious yet intimate book offers a privileged look into not only the psychological costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and other proximate disasters, but also the larger meaning of inhabiting an unpredictable and militarized world.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far From The Tree "The Theater of War is an enthralling, gracefully written, and urgently important examination of the vital, ongoing relationship between past and present, between story and human experience, and between what the ancients had to report about warfare and human values and the desperate moral and psychological struggles that soldiers still undergo today. Bryan Doerries has given us a gift to be treasured." —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Bryan Doerries’s The Theater of War is a testament both to the enduring power of the classics and to the vital role art can play in our communal understanding of war and suffering.” —Phil Klay, author of Redeployment “One has the feeling we are being watched by our ancestors, that they continually call out to us, bestow us with gifts of their wisdom, warn us about habitual traps and foibles common to all humans. We rarely have the presence to listen to, to receive that wisdom. Bryan Doerries asks: what lessons will we finally take to heart from these ancients? In this riveting narrative, simply but elegantly told, Doerries movingly resurrects the inner life of a people who lived 2,500 years ago, but whose struggles evoke our own familiar and damaged present, now endowed by this wonderful book with more drama, more tragedy, more compassion, more possibility. Here is the proof at last: our future depends on the gifts of the past.” —Ken Burns, filmmaker “I have always thought of Greek tragedies as the earliest public service announcements. Those ancient stories of family politics, their warnings about civic duty, and their parables of grief and its management are as vital today as when first written. Through his translations and public readings, and now this powerful book, Doerries offers modern audiences access to these ancient PSAs. We hunger and thirst for the guidance these plays contain.” —Frances McDormand “This book illuminates how Greek tragedy penetrates to the deepest of levels in us all. It also shows how certain audiences, when given permission, can help illuminate the urgency and relevance of these ancient stories today. In his approach to tragedy, Doerries has found the way to remove out-of-date barriers and clean the outer crust of language with fresh words so that the essential can appear once more.” —Peter Brook 4 Baz Dreisinger INCARCERATION NATIONS: In Search of Justice in Prisons Around the World World: Other Press INCARCERATION NATIONS is a first-person odyssey through prisons around the globe. A jarring, poignant window into a world most are denied access to, the book radically rethinks one of America’s most devastating, impactful global exportations: the modern prison system. Grounded in facts, figures and historical realities, and narrated by a professor and journalist who runs an education program in US prisons, it is a spirited trek through human stories. Woven into the rich travelogue are discussions of touchstone prison issues: privatization, solitary confinement, restorative justice, the parole system, prison education, the arts behind bars and prisoner reentry. From serving as a restorative justice facilitator in a notorious South African prison and working with genocide survivors in Rwanda who launch a prison visiting program, to launching a creative writing class in a chillingly overcrowded Ugandan prison and coordinating a drama workshop for women prisoners in Thailand, the author delves into the world behind bars with equal parts empathy and intellect.