Paul Krugman's book covers

[Gordon B]

If a moderator reads this, please change "published" to "publisher" in the thread title.

[Tanager]

Am I the US publisher or the UK publisher?

[Clay Fink]

Is this a joke?

[walto]

Is it really "unraveling" or "unravelling"?!?

[Tom Storer]

First I'd want estimations from Marketing on which was more likely to sell books.

[Monte Smith]

Yes, I saw this in Sunday's WEEK IN REVIEW section in the NY Times. Pretty funny; the US edition and the UK edition. In fairness to the never fair Krugman, he may have had no input on the jacket. I've done co-editions before (where you sell foreign editions of a book), and the author is not always in on how the book will be presented--because really, who knows what will sell better in Thailand or Hungary? The US author and publisher or the local publisher? The local publisher.

Still, it's a good lesson: US readers, don't judge the skewed scribblings of P.K. by his placid domestic covers. He's got all the sobriety and seriousness of those other stupid white Dems, Moore and Franken.

[walto]

FWIW, I read the first 50 pages of Franken's "Fair and Balanced" and didn't think it was stupid at all. He's not exactly fair, but he kicks the shit out of people who also have not been fair, which was his intention. He's fighting fire with fire. What should he do, be moderate with Ann Coulter?

[Monte Smith]

Originally posted by walto
FWIW, I read the first 50 pages of Franken's "Fair and Balanced" and didn't think it was stupid at all. He's not exactly fair, but he kicks the shit out of people who also have not been fair, which was his intention. He's fighting fire with fire. What should he do, be moderate with Ann Coulter?

Franken's book is called Liars. The most impressive argument he musters, IMHO, is the one that demonstrates that Bill O'Reilly has a splotchy face. No, that isn't stupid. But then again, Franken had a team of taxpayer-supported research assistants from Harvard to help write that book. And it does include some nice cartoons.

[Gordon B]

Originally posted by walto
Is it really "unraveling" or "unravelling"?!?

That's what the poll's all about, do you support the American or the British spelling of the word

Clay, no joke.

[walto]

"Franken's book is called Liars. The most impressive argument he musters, IMHO, is the one that demonstrates that Bill O'Reilly has a splotchy face. "

If you'd actually read any of it, rather than just depending on right-wing critiques, there's no way you'd have written that. Pretty much every argument he makes is correct and unanswerable. The thing is, this is not much of an accomplishment, since Coulter and O'Reilly are easy targets. Much of what they've written and said, is utter bullshit, as he has correctly pointed out. Rather than engage in the same sort of blarney you think he engages in, why not take up a particular argument and weigh the evidence in a manner you DO think is acceptable?

[Monte Smith]

Here are some other UK editions. These actually appear less confrontational than the American jackets.


Available only in paperback


Available only in paperback

[MRS]

Originally posted by walto
Is it really "unraveling" or "unravelling"?!?

[mke]

Originally posted by Gordon B
If a moderator reads this, please change "published" to "publisher" in the thread title.

You can change it yourself in the thread options menu at the bottom of the screen.

[walto]

[Gordon B]

Originally posted by mke
You can change it yourself in the thread options menu at the bottom of the screen.

You do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

I can edit the thread title but not the instructions after it.

MS, George R uses one 'r' but that's because he is American.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

The covers make sense when you take Bush's popularity overseas.

I read Franken's book. The weakest part was te fictional account of the Chickenhawks "exploits" in Viet Nam. It just wasn't funny. It's not going to change any minds. It'll please readers who don't like Bush and those who do like Bush won't bother to buy it.

But I guess the same could be said about all the books of this ilk, left and right.

What's interesting is that after the domination of the best seller lists by conservatives that books written by liberals have done so well.

[Tom Storer]

Gordon, who are the publishers?

[Monte Smith]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
Gordon, who are the publishers?

Gordon's at the OTB laying odds on which edition sells better (it'll be the American edition, we have a much larger market than the UK). So in his absence, I'll tell you that W.W. Norton published this in the US (a bestseller, congratulations you swine) and that Allen Lane brought it out in Britain.

[Gordon B]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
Gordon's at the OTB laying odds on which edition sells better (it'll be the American edition, we have a much larger market than the UK). So in his absence, I'll tell you that W.W. Norton published this in the US (a bestseller, congratulations you swine) and that Allen Lane brought it out in Britain.

LOL!

I had an incredibly busy day today, on a PTO day from work, no less. I won't list the dozen errands I had to run but the major one was backing up my old Gateway and replacing it with a new computer.

Emachines, baby!

[BFrank]

BTW, is it "kroog-man" or "kruhg-man"?

[Gordon B]

Originally posted by BFrank
BTW, is it "kroog-man" or "kruhg-man"?

I got into the habit of calling him "kruhg-man" before I found out that the proper pronunciation is "kroog-man."

Question from me-- Did any anti-Bush people vote for cover #1?


One Book, Two Very Different Covers
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

AUL KRUGMAN, the liberal economist and columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed Page, has recently urged his fellow liberals to be less civil toward their conservative foes. The British publisher of his latest book, "The Great Unraveling," however, may have taken Mr. Krugman's advice further than he intended.

Unlike the relatively staid cover of the American edition published by W. W. Norton, the British book jacket bears caricatures of President Bush as Frankenstein-like and Vice President Dick Cheney with a Hitler mustache. A dark scrawl on the vice president's forehead reads, "Got Oil?"

Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said the cover showed that Mr. Krugman's attacks on the administration had descended into "hate speech."

"It is obvious that his feelings have clouded his objectivity and his ability to discuss the issues in a rational way," she said. "The fact that they are using a much different cover here in the United States is proof that his tactics are offensive to mainstream Americans."

Stuart Proffitt, who published the British edition for the Allen Lane imprint of Penguin Press, said he chose the cover because it seemed appropriate to the book's potential readers in Britain, where Mr. Krugman's name is less known and Mr. Bush is less popular than in the United States.

Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for The New York Times, said, "The newspaper has no relationship to the British publisher — we were never even shown the cover."

Mr. Krugman, for his part, said he did not remember seeing the cover until prepublication copies were sent to reviewers. "I think it was intended to be ironic," he said.

The cover images of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were borrowed from puppets carried by protesters outside the World Economic Forum in New York in 2002. Mr. Krugman said that he took part in the forum and does not share the protesters' views. He noted that his columns have defended free trade and argued that the administration's war in Iraq was not about oil.

"It is a marketing thing, not a statement," he said. "I should have taken a look at that and said, `What are you doing marketing me as if I am Michael Moore? This is silly.' "

Incivility is one thing, he said, but the book cover "may be undignified, which would be a reason to object."

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Gordon B
Question from me-- Did any anti-Bush people vote for cover #1?

Yep - I did.

[Monte Smith]

I voted for #2, so I negate Tan's vote.

I prefer it when Dem spew is clearly labeled as such, not as what could pass for a serious, even intelligent, tome.

[Derek Taylor]

Monte, I’m curious why you skipped over addressing Walt’s points in post #10?

[Monte Smith]

Derek:

Fair question. I appreciate Walt's opinion and respect it, though I disagree with him about the value and honesty of Franken's work. In any event I have no interest in picking out an argument and quarreling with Al Franken in absentia. Waste of time. Nor would I expect anyone to offer a written point-by-point rebuttal to the work of Ann Coulter before they label her a transvestite. I read Franken's work in Borders over a cup of coffee and found it very bitter, half-honest, and small-minded.

[Derek Taylor]

Monte, thanks for addressing the question. I’ve not read Franken’s book, but then again, I haven’t found him to be one who hides his biases either. Couldn’t your characterization “very bitter, half-honest, and small-minded” just as easily be applied to Coulter's work?

[Monte Smith]

It could be so characterized, Derek. It definitely has been so characterized by many. Personally, I read and I enjoyed Coulter's recent book as a "bitter, half-honest account" of the liberal reaction to international isms from Truman to the present. Well, certainly it was more than half-honest. The liberal reaction to communism and terrorism has not been confidence-inspiring. That's a generalization with many noble exceptions of which I am very aware but of whom Coulter is not particularly aware or at least she doesn't feel driven to spotlight.

Yet I know that Coulter plays to my personal political prejudices and not against them. I would not be proud to recommend her book, which again I enjoyed, as a must-read on American politics. It's too partisan and frankly too jokey for that.

Two things that her book does not do, despite common dishonest assertions to the contrary, is call ALL liberals traitors or call ANY liberal, individually, a traitor. Rather, she says that liberal reaction to communism and terrorism in general throughout our history is/was so soft and wrongheaded that it amounted to behavior that would be traitorous if the motives weren't so pure, noble, and stupid. I can't argue with that.

[Gordon B]

Monte, you are more likely to enjoy the following book than Al Franken's.


I think Chris A should buy it for you as a Christmas present. Disclaimer- I know nothing about the authors and haven't read the book.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Left-wing historians' sympathy for American communism is an example of ideological bias and self-deception comparable to Holocaust denial, according to this uncompromising manifesto. Haynes and Klehr, historians and authors of The Secret World of American Communism, rehash major Cold War controversies-including Moscow's financial subsidies to the American Communist Party, the espionage cases against the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss, and American communists' support for the Hitler-Stalin pact-in light of material from recently opened Soviet archives. But their focus is on the response of what they see as a left-wing "revisionist" academic establishment to new revelations about Stalin's crimes and American communists' subservience to Moscow. Taking on leading history journals and prominent scholars like Ellen Schrecker, Eric Foner and Victor Navasky, the authors accuse revisionists of ignoring, downplaying and distorting the mounting evidence of communist espionage and subversion in the United States. Instead of facing facts, they argue, revisionists have propagated a mythology of American communism as a benign, idealistic, home-grown progressive movement destroyed by McCarthyite persecution, a caricature that "resembles more the chaotic New Left of the late 1960s than the rigid Leninist party it was." The authors champion a liberal, anticommunist "traditionalist" historiography, asserting that America's post-war campaign against communist subversion (McCarthy's excesses aside) was "a rational and understandable response to a real danger to American democracy." While their confrontational tone and penchant for academic score-settling will inflame rather than settle these rancorous debates, their incisive analysis and meticulous attention to evidence make this a formidable rejoinder to left-wing orthodoxies.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.