Books can’t stay apace of the war

Walk into any bookstore these days, and you’ll likely be greeted by a table of new glossy covers offering you a walk through life in post-Sept. 11 America. You’ll find books pitching themselves to your curiosity about the Iraqi culture, your paranoia about surviving chemical warfare, your narrative hunger for soldiers’ stories from the Persian Gulf, your intellectual thirst for debate about liberalism and terror and your general bafflement about how we arrived in this age, unthinkable to many of us in the roaring ‘90s, when these tables would have been stacked with self-help books for a self-centered age.

“We’ve entered a period of greater international awareness, when this growing sense of interconnectedness is ultimately resulting in more readers for books of this ilk, and I think it’s a really good thing,” says Jonathan Karp, vice president and editorial director of Random House. “Hey, it’s certainly better than reading about thinner thighs in 30 days.”

But making timely books is a quandary to publishers in a news cycle so speedy that the 6 o’clock evening news is outdated by 10. The books you see on display today are products of lucky advance timing, massively stepped-up production schedules or Herculean efforts to make a book in less time than it takes to publish most magazines. Still, editors are wary of chasing today’s headlines. It’s tough enough to imagine where our world will be at in a month let alone what will anchor public attention in a year or two. And they’re aware that the bestseller lists feature plenty of non-war-related titles. (Last week, the Atkins diet, money advice from Suze Orman and the story of a serial killer all held top spots on the Los Angeles Times’ nonfiction list.)

“I think that shock and awe is a good description of where book editors are right now -- they don’t know where to start,” says Vanessa Mobley, a nonfiction editor at Henry Holt and Co., who in her former position at Basic Books took a gamble on “The New Iraq,” a book by 28-year-old Joseph Braude, which hit stores as soldiers were storming Nasiriyah.

“Lots of us thought we’d be remiss not to wade into the public memorial of Sept. 11, so tons of books were produced and few were read. Surely the industry is taking some lesson from that and proceeding with caution when faced with a deluge of proposals about what’s going on with Iraq. We just don’t know the story yet.”

Karp says dozens of Iraq book proposals have crossed his desk, and he’s rejected every one of them. “I’m waiting for the project that rises above all the rest,” he says. Like many editors, he opted to go after the book he wanted, instead of waiting for it to come to him. The result is “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” by former CIA and Security Council Iraq analyst Kenneth M. Pollack, which came out in the fall. But while Pollack’s book has gained favorable reviews and is credited for leading war debate, Mobley says that, although “it’s certainly the book people are reading, at the end of this war, it’s a book that will be obsolete.”

That danger has much to do with why Little Brown and Co. Executive Editor Geoff Shandler says he hasn’t bought a single book on the current conflict, preferring instead to acquire idea-based books about America’s ongoing conflict with Islam. But the pressure of changing news cycles isn’t the only thing that keeps him from jumping into Iraq projects. He says the real issue is trying to fashion a narrative out of such a hazy historical moment. “What we’ve found the hard way about the Middle East and Iraq is these are stories that don’t have an ending. How do you tell a story without an ending?”

Shandler is looking instead to make macro-meaning out of micro-narratives, stories such as Doug Stanton’s upcoming book about a key battle in Afghanistan. “It goes back to more conventional storytelling: characters, difficult decisions, being scared and being brave.” Stanton’s book isn’t due until fall, but Shandler isn’t worried. Great stories last, he says. “It’s the same way ‘Black Hawk Down’ was about Somalia and came out years after. If the story is deep enough and the writer is good enough, it doesn’t matter if a 2003 story comes out in 2003 or 2006.”

At W.W. Norton & Co., President W. Drake McFeely isn’t thinking so much about narrative but how to stay ahead of the curve, which can be a bit of a gamble. While he says that North Korea or Iran books aren’t on the docket for this week’s editorial meeting, his editors, like many in the business, are certainly on the lookout for projects concerning potential future conflicts.

“We’re always trying to handicap events of the future,” he says. Currently, that means Fareed Zakaria’s book “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad,” which he sees as a likely leader in the debate over how the U.S. will influence governments in the Middle East, and potentially other regions in the future. It’s ideal timing for a book long in the making. “All the same,” says McFeely, “I’m wary of just following events of the front pages of the newspaper. You can get too trapped by current events. Your books better speak to something deeper.”

It would be tough to get much deeper than “Terror and Liberalism,” Paul Berman’s minimalist tome, which connects Islamic extremism and Mideastern politics to mid-century notions of totalitarianism -- a manuscript Norton speeded into print when it became clear that it could be a major player in the current debate.

When stepping up production schedules isn’t a quick enough way to respond to the front pages, there’s always the instant book. Next week will see the release of Norman Mailer’s “Why Are We at War?” -- echoing the title of his book of decades ago, “Why Are We in Vietnam?” -- which proved that this octogenarian still has the stamina to churn out hard-hitting criticism on a dime. The total time it took between Random House’s acceptance of Mailer’s proposal through writing and revision to galley form was a week.

Mailer’s thesis is one that has yet to receive much air time outside Michael Moore’s instantly infamous and interrupted Oscar speech: that, as Mailer writes, “the underlying motive” of this war “still remains George W. Bush’s underlying dream: ‘Empire’!”

David Ebershoff, who edited Mailer’s book as well as Bernard Lewis’ newly published discourse-generating “The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror,” points out a long tradition of making instant books in times of crisis. “This goes back to Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ and the need to distribute in-depth material quickly and inexpensively to a mass audience to change people’s opinions.”

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, no book embodied that tradition more profoundly than Noam Chomsky’s “9-11,” a runaway success that seemed to leave the traditional publishing world gasping in wonder. This slim volume, which still is occupying top spots on bestseller lists and has been translated into 25 languages, was the work of the Open Media series at tiny independent house Seven Stories Press.

Seven Stories has just published another Chomsky volume, which accompanies a wide range of related compact instant books, such as last month’s antiwar book by Michael Ratner and next month’s essay about propaganda in Afghanistan and Iraq by Nancy Snow.

These times, says Open Media editor Greg Ruggiero, are when the series is at its best. “This is when one feels ... one’s work can have the maximum impact on actually saving lives,” he says. “But there’s a certain sadness. It’s like being in the de-mining business, you know, removing landmines from fields. You’re glad the job exists to do good, but you’re also sad because you wish the need didn’t exist in the first place.”

Ruggiero isn’t alone in feeling that now is a crucial and fascinating time to make books. “These are really interesting times,” says Little Brown’s Shandler. “Are they more interesting than 1997? Probably. They’re scary times. But right now there are amazing books coming out every week and that sustains my excitement. There are just amazing books to be made.”

But to some in the industry, these are hideous times as well. “Now is when you hate it the most,” says Mobley of Henry Holt. “Editing is a luxury in a time when you feel that everything about the city you’re living in is changing and the circumstances you and your readers and colleagues and booksellers are in is changing. And what we’re not discussing is the potential for a protractible recession. Let’s face it: We’re going to detonate the middle class if we have this recession. And you want to talk about publishing? You can’t have a bestselling book if you don’t have a middle class to buy it. It doesn’t matter what it’s about.”

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Timely titles

As the war in Iraq unfolds, publishers are looking to these titles to shape public discussion and debate:

“The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad”

By Fareed Zakaria

Just published by W.W. Norton.

The editor of Newsweek International and former managing editor of Foreign Affairs looks at how democracy has played out around the world, and argues that democracy doesn’t necessarily portend freedom.

“Why Are We at War?”

By Norman Mailer

Due out next week from Random House.

The novelist’s instant book argues that underlying the current conflict is George W. Bush’s desire for “Empire.”

“The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East and the World”

By Joseph Braude

Just published by Basic Books.

Middle East expert Braude traces Iraq’s history and lays out the process and benefits of rebuilding the country’s institutions.

“The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq”

By Kenneth M. Pollack

Published last fall by Random House.

A key book in the days leading up to the war, Iraq expert Pollack concludes: “I reluctantly believe that in the case of the threat from Iraq, we have come to the last resort.”