Greetings Friends,
The Strothman Agency has a lot of exciting deals to share and a few new
titles to recommend for your late summer/early fall reading list.
We are pleased to announce five new sales:
* Non-Fiction: Science-Claire Wachtel at Harper won at auction World
rights to The Teenage Brain, by Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical
School and senior associate in neurology at Children's Hospital Boston
Frances Jensen, M.D., with Amy Ellis Nutt. The Teenage Brain is the latest
scientific research to unlock the secrets of adolescent behavior and explain
what is happening at the interface of a teenager's brain and the world.
* Non-Fiction: Science-Leslie Meredith at Free Press bought World
rights to Choke author University of Chicago professor Dr. Sian Beilock's
second book, which is about embodied cognition.
* Young Adult-Sarah Shumway at Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins)
won at auction World English rights to Jodi Meadows's THE NEWSOUL TRILOGY,
beginning with Erin Incarnate, which is about the only girl who is new in a
world where everyone is perpetually reincarnated, her quest to discover why
she was born, and what happened to the person she replaced.
* Non-Fiction: Science-Angela von der Lippe at Norton won at auction
World rights to Marlene Zuk's third book, Paleofantasy: How the Pace of
Evolution Affects Our Lives. Zuk, who teaches biology at the University of
California, Riverside, sorts myth from fact in this examination of the
recent claims, by slow-food advocates and self-help gurus (among others),
that people can improve their health by adopting a far simpler lifestyle,
more akin to the way our ancestors lived.
* Non-Fiction: History/Politics/Current Affairs- Jennifer Banks at
Yale University Press won at auction World rights to Brown University
professor Michael Satlow's How the Bible Became Holy.
We also have two books publishing in September that we hope you will read:
Out in September 21st is Sian Beilock's Choke: What the Secrets of the
Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To. In Choke, Dr. Beilock,
an expert on performance and brain science, tackles tough questions about
why we often crack under pressure. Sample questions include:
* Why do the smartest students often do poorly on standardized tests?
* Why did you tank that interview or miss that golf swing when you
should have had it in the bag?
* Why do you mess up when it matters the most-and how can you perform
your best instead?
In an energetic tour of the latest brain science, with surprising insights
on every page, Beilock explains the inescapable links between body and mind;
reveals the surprising similarities among the ways performers, students,
athletes, and business people choke; and shows how to succeed brilliantly
when it matters most.
In lively prose and accessibly rendered science, Beilock examines how
attention and working memory guide human performance, how experience and
practice and brain development interact to create our abilities, and how
stress affects all these factors. She sheds new light on counter-intuitive
realities, like why the highest performing people are most susceptible to
choking under pressure, why we may learn foreign languages best when we're
not paying attention, why early childhood athletic training can backfire,
and how our emotions can make us both smarter and dumber. All these
fascinating findings about academic, athletic, and creative intelligence
come together in Beilock's new ideas about performance under pressure-and
her secrets to never choking again. Whether you're at the Olympics, in the
boardroom, or taking the SAT, Beilock's clear, prescriptive guidance shows
how to remain cool under pressure-the key to performing well when
everything's on the line.
Buy Choke on IndieBound here. You can learn more about Choke on Sian's website.
Out on September 28, 2010 is Thanassis Cambanis's A Privilege to Die: Inside
Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel.
While Hamas and Al Qaeda are certainly dangerous to Israel and the West,
Hezbollah and its millions of foot soldiers are the premier force in the
Middle East.
Veteran Middle East correspondent Thanassis Cambanis offers the first
detailed look at the surprising cross section of people willing to die for
Hezbollah and its uncompromising agenda to remake the map of the region and
destroy Israel.
Part standing army, part political party, and part theological movement,
Hezbollah is made up not just of unemployed young men but also middle-class
engineers, merchants, even nurses. Hezbollah's widespread popularity rests
on its ability to offer its followers economic reform, affordable health
care, dependable electricity, efficient courts, and safe streets, as well as
victory over Israel. Also unique to the party is its powerful doctrine of
self-improvement, which challenges its members to fight ignorance, make
money, and engage in safe sex. Millions of demoralized Middle Easterners
have gravitated toward these principles, swelling the ranks of what is at
heart a radical, militant group. They span economic class, include both
fanatics and casual believers, and are sworn to the apocalyptic beliefs of
the "Party of God." With its promise of perpetual war, Hezbollah has ushered
in a militant renaissance and inspired fighters in Gaza, the West Bank,
Egypt, Iraq, and beyond. Whatever their differences, their hatred of Israel
and the United States binds them together.
To understand Hezbollah is to understand the fighters and engineers, the
women who raise the martyrs, the scouts who plant trees, and the
nine-year-old girls who take the veil over the objections of their less
militant fathers. Cambanis follows a few Hezbollah families through the ups
and downs of the 2006 war with Israel and the continuing preparations for
another conflict, letting us listen in to Hezbollah members' intimate
discussions at the kitchen table and on the battlefield. Cambanis's
reporting puts a human face on the Party of God, so we might understand the
ideological and religious roots of today's conflict. His riveting narrative
provides an urgent and important exploration of militancy in the Middle
East.
Buy the book on IndieBound. To learn more about A Privilege to Die, visit Thanassis's website.
Happy reading!
The Strothman Agency
The Strothman Agency | Six Beacon Street, Suite 810 | Boston, MA 02108 |
