Beacon Press: Weekly Report

Beacon Weekly Report

January 2nd, 2007

The Iron Cage, Rashid Khalidi, cloth, October 2006, $24.95, 978-0-8070-0308-4

Thirst, Mary Oliver, cloth, October 2006, $22.00, 978-0-8070-6896-0

#14 PNBA Hardcover Fiction Best Seller List for week ending 12/24 (12th Book Sense Bestseller list apperance!)

Big-Box Swindle, Stacy Mitchell, cloth, November 2006, $25.95, 978-0-8070-3500-9

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a #5 book of the year by book critic John Marshall: “In the muckraking tradition of Fast Food Nation and Nickel and Dimed, this is a searing indictment of the impact of behemoth retailers (Wal-Mart, Costco, Best Buy, et al.) on this country, its landscape and small towns, as well as the global marketplace. An independent business activist from Maine fills this urgent book with eye-openers on every page, including many trenchant examples from the Northwest.” (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/297557_book29.html)
Business Week’s, review in the winter issue: “Her book is a prodigiously researched, lucidly written diatribe against mega-retailers... Category-killers, beware.”
Sun Herald, Biloxi, MS, article in the December 31st issue: “Big-Box Swindle is an eye-opener, especially as South Mississippians decide how to rebuild the Gulf Coast.” (http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/living/16354934.htm)

Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man, Thomas A. Foster, cloth, September 2006, $28.95, 978-0-8070-5038-5

New York Times Book Review, forthcoming Chronicle review in the January 7th issue

Widening the Circle, Mara Sapon-Shevin, paperback original, March 2007, $14.00, 978-0-8070-3280-0

Soaring with Fidel, David Gessner, cloth, April 2007, $24.95, 978-0-8070-8578-3

Kirkus, review in the January 15th issue: “Gessner’s account is filled with nitty-gritty details about the days and nights of an itinerant birder and beautifully detailed descriptions of ospreys in action. When actual observations were not possible, he imagined what the ospreys were doing and writes intelligently…A grand adventure, not just for birders and nature lovers.”
Booklist, review in the April issue: “This is a thoughtful and loving examination.”

Acts of Faith, Eboo Patel, cloth, July 2007, $22.95, 978-0-8070-7726-9

“Eboo Patel is an exciting new voice of a new America. Diverse but not divisive, hopeful but not utopian. He is an American Indian whose roots are not in South Dakota but in South Asia, and he speaks for all of us from a rising generation of bright, brown and bold Americans who have much to offer a country embarking on a new millennium and in need of new blood.” —Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, executive director of the Zaytuna Institute

American Furies, Sasha Abramsky, cloth, May 2007, $25.95, 978-0-8070-4222-9

“This is by far the most intelligent and haunting indictment of the American prison system that I have ever read. Sasha Abramsky has shone an incandescent lamp on a shadowy underground universe that holds and in all too many cases brutalizes the lives of more than two million Americans. He should be commended for doing so, and his book made required reading for every legislator in the land, bar none.” —Simon Winchester, author of A Crack in the Edge of the World and The Professor and the Madman

My River Home, Marcus Eriksen, April 2007, cloth, $24.95, 978-0-8070-7275-2

Confessions of the Other Mother, Harlyn Aizley, paperback original, May 2006, $16.00, 0-8070-7963-4

Once in a Promised Land, Laila Halaby, cloth, January 2007, $23.95, 978-0-8070-8390-1

February 2007 Book Sense Notable Title
Selected by B & N for the Discover Great New Writers program, Spring 2007
About.com, review: “Once in a Promised Land is a gem of a novel. Halaby creates an engaging social commentary on immigrant life in a post-9/11 America, but does not come off as preachy or disapproving. Rather, Halaby's fluid prose reads like an ethereal, modern-day fairy tale as she weaves in Arab myths and stories throughout the novel. The result is a richly layered tale and unique introspective into the immigrant experience that many will enjoy and savor.” (http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/onceInA.htm)
Booklist, review in the November 2006 issue, recommended for book-club choice: “Halaby perceptively examines the everyday realities of the immigrant experience through convincingly drawn characters.”
Library Journal Review, review in November 15th issue: “Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries, this novel would make a thought-provoking book club choice.”
RAWI (Radius of Arab American Writers), book excerpted and author listed as “featured writer” for December 2006
Publishers Weekly, review in September 11th issue
Reviews forthcoming in Al-Jadid, Tucson Citizen, Alo Hayati
Author events in Arizona:
- Antigone Books, Tucson: Friday, February 2nd at 7 p.m.
- Barnes & Noble, Tucson: Tuesday, February 6th at 7:30 p.m.
- Barnes & Noble, Phoenix: Saturday, February 10th at 2 p.m.

The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi (2nd)

Big-Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell (2nd)

Thirst by Mary Oliver (3rd)

Your Aging Parents by Earl & Sharon Grollman (1997, 0-8070-27955), Japanese language rights sold to Shunju sha