Welcome to Union Books Welcome to Union Books, a new, unapologetically upmarket and intellectually ambitious imprint which has been created in response to our belief that there is a growing appetite for good books – books that not only have something to say, but that care about the way in which it is said. Books that are necessary. Bringing our collective experience of literary journalism and publishing together to find, to publish, and to promote a select number of beautifully designed books each year, our titles will exemplify the editorial and creative values we prize most and will cater for an equally adventurous readership who will come to know – and to trust – our list. We hope you enjoy our first offerings. Alex Clark and Rosalind Porter
33
FEBRUARY
‘Dazzling… Hohn seems to have it all: deep intelligence, a strikingly original voice, humility and a hunger to suss out everything a yellow duck may literally or metaphorically touch.’ The New York Times Book Review
Moby-Duck
An Accidental Odyssey
Donovan Hohn When Donovan Hohn first heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to some beachcombers and read up on Arctic science and geography. ‘But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away.’ Before long, Hohn’s accidental odyssey pulls him into the secretive world of shipping conglomerates, the daring work of Arctic researchers, the lunatic risks of maverick sailors and the shadowy terrain of Chinese toy factories. Moby-Duck is a journey into the heart of the sea and an adventure through science, myth, the global economy and some of the worst weather imaginable. With each new discovery, Hohn learns of another loose thread, and with each successive chase he comes closer to understanding where his castaway quarry comes from and where it goes. In the grand tradition of Tony Horwitz and David Quammen, Moby-Duck is a compulsively readable narrative of wonder and curiosity.
l Already a bestseller in the USA (over 40,000 copies sold in hardback to date) l UK
author media bookshop tour
l Serial
interest from national newspapers
l Widespread
UK 416pp 234 x 153mm Jacketed royal hardback £20 978 1 908526 00 7 Travel/Memior US: Viking ANZ: Scribe Translation: Viking Agent/serial: Viking/Union 34
l Launch
broadsheet press coverage
title published by new imprint, Union Books
Donovan Hohn is a journalist whose work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Outside and Best Creative Nonfiction. The recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, he is currently the features editor at GQ. He lives in New York with his wife and children.
‘The book is by turns light-hearted and serious but always a pleasure to read.’ The Boston Globe
© Bet Chimera
‘Hohn cleverly uses the deceptively whimsical premise of chasing a little plastic duck to provoke a massively complicated and thought-provoking conversation. Who knew spilled bath toys could be so important?’ Chicago Sun-Times
EXTRACT At the outset, I felt no need to acquaint myself with the six degrees of freedom. I’d never heard of the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch. I liked my job and loved my wife and was inclined to agree with Emerson that travel is a fool’s paradise. I just wanted to learn what had really happened, where the toys had drifted and why. I loved the part about containers falling off a ship, the part about the oceanographers tracking the castaways with the help of farflung beachcombers. I especially loved the part about the rubber duckies crossing the Arctic, going cheerfully where explorers had gone boldly and disastrously before. The next thing you know years have passed, and you’re still adrift, still waiting to see where the questions take you. At least that’s what happens if you’re a nearsighted, school-teaching, would-be archaeologist of the ordinary, with an indulgent, long-suffering wife and a juvenile imagination, and you receive in the mail a manila envelope, and inside this envelope you find a dozen back issues of a cheaply produced newsletter, and in one of those newsletters you discover a wonderful map – if, in other words, you’re me.
35
FEBRUARY
‘A far-ranging, delightfully narrated masterwork of adventure, science, exploration, and much more.’ Nathaniel Philbrick
MARCH
By the bestselling author of The Gift, this brilliant new book explores the complex intersection between creativity and commerce, examining the history of intellectual property and the legacy it has left.
Common As Air
Revolution, Art and Ownership
Lewis Hyde In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Thirty years later his son registered the words ‘I Have a Dream’ as a trademark and now charges dearly for the right to reproduce them. Unlike many famous speeches, such as ‘The Gettysburg Address’ by Abraham Lincoln and ‘The Retreat from Flanders’ by Winston Churchill, ‘I Have a Dream’ is also private property, even though part of it comes from words written by Thomas Jefferson, a man who very much believed that the corporate land-grab of knowledge was at odds with the development of civil society. Moving deftly between literary analysis, history and biography, Common As Air examines ancient feudal laws, the drafting of the American Constitution, agribusiness, Bob Dylan’s admission that his early method of songwriting was largely comprised of ‘rearranging verses to old blues ballads, adding an original line here or there’ and the digital revolution in its reflections on our own attitudes to copyright, trademarking and patenting. ‘An eloquent and erudite plea for protecting our cultural patrimony from appropriation by commercial interests… Hyde builds his argument by telling stories, and he tells them well.’ The New York Times Book Review ‘Brilliant and absorbing... dense with lucid ideas, erudition and wry humor.’ Star-Tribune l Widespread l High
BC excluding Canada 304pp 234 x 153mm Jacketed royal hardback £20 978 1 908526 04 5 Cultural Criticism/History US: /Translation: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Agent/serial: Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Union 36
profile pre-publication endorsements
l Festival lA
broadsheet review coverage
appearances
New York Times ‘notable’ book
l As a paperback reissue, The Gift has sold over 28,000 copies since 2007
Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator and cultural critic. A MacArthur Fellow, Hyde is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
‘A love letter to the pleasures of reading.’ USA Today APRIL
Reading Like a Writer A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
FRanCine PRose
© Stephanie Berger
In this entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and skills of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë’s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.
l national
newspaper coverage and serial
l innovative sales campaign tailored to creative writing courses l High-profile la
UK 304pp 234 x 153mm Paperback with flaps £12.99 978 1 908526 07 6 Literary Criticism/ Memoir US/Translation: HarperCollins Publishers Agent/serial: HarperCollins Publishers/Union
endorsements from UK writers
New York Times bestseller
l Critically acclaimed author with an extensive UK following
FRanCine PRoSe is the author of fourteen works of fiction, including Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. A distinguished critic and essayist, she has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She lives in New York City. 37
JULY
How far can you go with a ten-dollar bill? Join acclaimed journalist Steve Boggan on a strange and wondrous journey across America as he ‘passes the buck’
Follow the Money
A Journey to the Heart of America
sTeve BoGGan Armed with a ten-dollar bill and an insatiable curiosity to be led where it took him, journalist Steve Boggan booked a flight to America with the intention of spending the money and following it for as long as he could while it changed hands. Pretty soon what began as a pipe dream morphed into an epic journey for thirty days and thirty nights; through six states across 3,000 miles. Bolstered by a sense of humour (and a small, and increasingly grubby, set of clothes), this beautifully written debut book charts Boggan’s experience – and adventures – following the money. As he cuts crops with farmers in Kansas, pursues a repo-woman from Colorado, gets wasted with a blues band in Arkansas and hangs out at a quarterback’s mansion in St Louis, Boggan enters the lives of ordinary people as they receive – and pass on – the bill. Add to that the missionaries from Missouri, the Amish in Michigan, the banker from Chicago and the deer hunters from Detroit, and what emerges is a chaotic, affectionate and funny portrait of a modern-day America that tourists rarely see. l an intelligent and affectionate portrait of america in the style of Louis Theroux’s The Call of the Weird and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil la
natural choice for summer reading and promotions
l Shooting l Huge
for film of the journey begins in november
serial and radio potential
l a debut writer with a strong track record in investigative reportage
BC excluding Canada 304pp 234 x 153mm Trade Paperback £12.99 978 1 908526 09 0 Travel Translation: MBA Agent/serial: MBA/Union 38
la
surprising portrait of an unfamiliar america
STeve BoGGan was Chief Reporter of the Independent and co-founder of the newspaper’s investigations unit before moving into feature writing, which he now does for the Guardian, The Times and the Evening Standard. He lives in London and this is his first book.