In the Short Range

Ask most readers what upsets them, and they’ll tell you they don’t have enough time to read. Now, Peter Gethers, editor at large at Random House Inc., may have hit upon a solution: Publish shorter books. This month, his Library of Contemporary Thought debuts from Ballantine, with Vincent Bugliosi’s “No Island of Sanity,” a 146-page essay condemning the Supreme Court’s decision in the Paula Jones case. Originally scheduled as the second book in the series, “No Island of Sanity” was moved up after the Monica Lewinsky scandal made President Clinton’s sexual ethics a national parlor game. But this just highlights Gethers’ intention for the Library, which is to reflect the character (or lack thereof) of its times.

The series is hardly the first instance of a publisher showcasing shorter writings; last year, Viking announced a line of similarly bite-sized biographies, and the Open Pamphlet Series, now published by Seven Stories Press, has provided a forum for political and cultural criticism by writers such as Noam Chomsky since 1991.

“It’s a traditional venue,” Gethers says. “There’s still a lot of pamphlet publishing in Europe, and the whole history of American publishing, from Tom Paine, has a lot to do with pamphlets, as well.”

Still, he believes, what sets his imprint apart is its eclecticism.

Coming books range from a meditation on fishing by art critic Robert Hughes to Jimmy Carter’s “The Virtues of Aging.” Also in the works are “How Reading Changed My Life” by former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen and Carl Hiassen’s “Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World.” The idea, Gethers explains, is to have “smart and accessible writers writing on smart and accessible topics about which they feel passionate. They can love them or hate them, but their passion is the key.” The Bugliosi book has a healthy press run of 125,000.

In that sense, the titles resemble long magazine articles--timely, engaged, keyed to a notion of the writer as both observer and participant in the larger world. It’s an idea Gethers cherishes, especially because, for the most part, he says, ‘Magazines don’t publish this kind of stuff anymore.” Gethers, in fact, recently experienced what he believes is an industry first: an auction for a Seymour Hersh essay in which he beat out not another publisher, but the New Yorker instead. Of course, with the Library planning to publish on a monthly schedule, such genre-bending competition may become less the exception than the rule.