www.02138mag.com

Book Ends

by Justin W. Ravitz
March/April 2008

Pre-pub buzz is every author’s dream and every publishing house’s desire. But does it always translate into sales? Here’s how a quartet of much-discussed recent books fared at the cash registers.

The Book	The Hype	The Treatment	Flying off the Shelves or Gathering Dust?
The Israel Lobby AND U.S. Foreign Policy By John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt	An earlier London Review of Books essay sparked angry charges of anti-Semitism from Alan Dershowitz and others; the book reignited that criticism.	"Their methodological arrogance, their failure to meet any serious standard of empirical inquiry, their slavish reliance on second- and third-hand works, is astonishing." JEFFREY GOLDBERG, THE NEW REPUBLIC	Over 36,000 copies sold, with sales still brisk months after publication.
Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science By James Watson	Last October Watson was quoted saying that blacks are less intelligent than other races; he soon resigned as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.	"His plain-speaking style may be interpreted as either courageous or needlessly blunt (or both)." CHUCK LEDDY, THE BOSTON GLOBE	Over 6,000 sold, about what publisher Alfred A. Knopf expected; no significant sales dip or increase following his comments.
The Castle in the Forest By NORMAN MAILER	Imagines Adolf Hitler’s early life as narrated by a devil. Mailer’s first novel since 1997 would be his last: he died on November 10, 2007.	"Blackly hilarious, beautifully written." PHILIP WEISS, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER	Hit #5 on the New York Times list (his highest since his debut, The Naked and the Dead); over 46,000 copies sold; 69% sales spike the week after his death.
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America By SUSAN FALUDI	The second-wave feminist asserts that after 9/11 the media helped usher in a fear-based, anti-woman culture.	"Tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned … gives feminism a bad name." MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES	Almost 5,000 copies sold, but sales leveled off soon after publication