The authors of a September 4 FSG book that argues the Israel lobby in the U.S. is so strong that it results in policy decisions not in the country's best interests and stifles discussion of the lobby itself are finding it difficult to obtain venues to discuss their book, today's New York Times reported.

The book is The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Events featuring the authors have been cancelled or turned down at a variety of spots, including the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where both authors have spoken in the past. In each case, the main explanation was that the authors' argument was too "controversial" to be presented without contrasting opinions--and such options were unavailable.

One of our favorite booksellers, Roberta Rubin, owner of the Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka, Ill., offered to help find a site for the authors after the Council cancellation but had difficulty, too--and acknowledged that she was concerned about inviting authors who might offend customers.

Incidentally as the Times put it, "Opponents are prepared." The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control by Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman (Palgrave Macmillan) is being published on September 4, too.

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The Baltimore Urbanite focused on Constellation Books, a new store in Reisterstown:

"When an astronomer set her sights on life after the Hubble Space Telescope project, the result was Constellation Books. Opened in May, Constellation is one of the latest additions to Reisterstown's historic Main Street and the only bookseller on the cozy, pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare. Owner Lauretta Nagel's six thousand titles include westerns, mysteries, children's lit, history, poetry, home and garden, and, of course, science fiction. The store frequently hosts book signings for a diverse array of literary and nonfiction writers from Maryland and other parts of the country. Nagel facilitates onsite book club meetings and book launch parties and hopes to soon host wine tastings and CD-release events for local singer/songwriters. Although the store's small sign (a bigger one is in the works) makes Constellation an elusive target for first-time visitors, Nagel gives guests plenty of reasons to keep coming back. 303 Main Street; 410-833-5151; www.constellationbooks.com."

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Horrors! Traveling unannounced in Alice Springs, Australia, Stephen King quietly signed six copies of his books in a Dymocks store on Tuesday and was reported to the staff by a customer for "defacing" books, the AAP (via the Age) reported. Bookstore manager Bev Ellis speculated that the culprit might be King, but he had already left the building. She caught up with him in the fruits and vegetable section of Woolworths. She said that King was "polite and well spoken," adding, "He introduced me to his friends and we had a talk and then I said 'Well I'll leave you to the tomatoes.' "

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Maire Gorman has been appointed v-p, director of sales, for Houghton Mifflin. She has been with the company for 15 years in sales management and most recently was v-p, director of specialty markets, merchandise licensing and new business development, where she oversaw the Curious George franchise, among other properties. Houghton Mifflin's field sales team, national accounts and special markets will report to her.

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In a pilot program, HarperCollins is making samples from 14 current books available on the new iPhone. They will be accessible via HarperCollins's Browse Inside application online.

iPhone users will be able to view the first 10 pages of chapters one and two of the books. They can then click to buy or order the book from a list of retailers.

"Reaching consumers on mobile devices and the Internet is increasingly important for publishers," Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said in a statement. "Our digital warehouse [which has 10,000 titles in it] gives us the unique opportunity to quickly offer access to our titles on the newest technology, and we encourage people to provide feedback about their experiences."

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Sourcebooks Casablanca, Sourcebooks's romance imprint that has focused on nonfiction since its founding in 1997 and has published several Jane Austen sequels, is expanding to publish titles in "all the subgenres of romance: paranormal, time travel, contemporary, romantic suspense, historical, erotic romance and Regency." Fall titles include Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake, a "sexy time travel" book; No Regrets, a Regency; and Cotillion by Georgette Heyer. Spring titles include SEALed with a Kiss, "a contemporary with a Navy SEAL hero."

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It's official: Ventura, Calif., has named itself an "International Book Town" (Shelf Awareness, July 6). The mayor recently presented bookseller Clarey Rudd, a leading proponent of the designation, with a city proclamation to that effect.

Rudd, who owns Bank of Books, Abednego Book Shoppe and the Cookbook Store, told the Ventura County Star that "the city is home to more independent bookstores than any other city in Ventura County; two publishing houses; and Perry Mason, the famous fictional lawyer created in the 1930s by writer Erle Stanley Gardner, who lived and worked here. Ventura's bookstores collectively manage an inventory of more than 2 million books: rare books, erotic books, comic books, children's books, all types of Bibles and cookbooks, among others."

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By the way, we understand that an October title from Panache Partners, which is now being distributed by IPG, as noted here Tuesday, is Spectacular Wineries of Napa Valley, not Spectacular Wines of Napa Valley. Either way . . . we'd be happy.

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Marc Gluckman has been named v-p of sales and marketing for Coutts Information Services, North America, a subsidiary of Ingram Book Group, where he will oversee the U.S. and Canadian sales departments and manage the e-content and new business divisions. He was formerly director of educational sales for Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, and earlier worked at Mosby Publishing and Times Mirror International Publishers.

 

What a huckleberry Shelf Awareness was! In yesterday's brief tribute to Phil Rizzuto, former New York Yankees star and announcer, who died on Monday at 89, we weren't on the ball, as it were. Quite a few readers wrote in to tell us about several books that relate to the "Scooter."

Most important is O Holy Cow: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely (Ecco, $11, 9780880015332/0880015330), a 1993 title that reproduces words spoken by Rizzuto on the air in verse form, not unlike 2003's Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld (but without the arrogance or nastiness!). The book is available; Ecco plans to reissue it at the beginning of next season.

Ruth Liebmann of Random House noted that when she worked at Shakespeare & Co. in New York City, the store sold hundreds of copies of O Holy Cow, and "for a nice while, Rizzuto was our bestselling poet."

Ruth also alerted us to former poet laureate Robert Pinsky's review of the book on publication in the New York Times in which he commended "a freshness and pointedness in his work that many poets of a more conventional kind fail to achieve."

Tall Havis Dawson of Liza Dawson Associates called O Holy Cow's poetry "wonderful--lyrical, quixotic, the aching beauty of everyday life as felt by a short-statured optimist."

Kevin Morrissey of Virginia Quarterly Review passed along some of his favorite entries in O Holy Cow. Two of them are from 1991 games:

Haiku

Ice, I can't stand it.
I cannot stand anything
Cold on my body.

The Prince

I.

Last night I was watching TV.
I was watching Arsenio Hall.
And he had Prince on.
I wanna--
What a character he is!
Holy cow!

II.

Entertainer.
Singer.
And he can dance.
He's a little bitty guy.
He had a weird beard.
I tell ya it was--
I couldn't explain it.

III.

It was a real beard.
I mean,
You know how they do it now.
Some of them.
It doesn't come all the way
Up to the sideburns.
It starts,
Then it goes.
You gotta see it to believe it.

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And Bruce Jacobs of Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan., noted that there is a "rather indirect homage to Scooter in Mick Foley's novel by the same name," which appeared last September and is set in the Bronx in the late 1960s. For the play-by-play about Scooter (Vintage, $14.95, 9781400096800/1400096804), click here.

This morning on Good Morning America: Roy Wenzl, author of Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Next Door (Morrow, $25.95, 9780061246500/ 0061246506).

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This morning on the Today Show: Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Picador, $16, 9780312425074/0312425074).

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Today on Oprah: Tamar Geller, author of The Loved Dog: The Playful, Nonaggressive Way to Teach Your Dog Good Behavior (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $24.95, 9781416938149/1416938141).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Helena Maria Viramontes, author of Their Dogs Came with Them (Atria, $23, 9780743287661/0743287665). As the show put it: "Helena Maria Viramontes has written about L.A.-based Latino culture before--but who could have expected this epic work about a neighborhood that is divided by a freeway, cut off and lost in Los Angeles. Viramontes explores the explosive insights that gave her the ability to grow as a novelist."

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Today on NPR's World Café: Alex Halberstadt, author of Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus (Da Capo, $26, 9780306813009/0306813009).

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Today on WHYY's Radio Times: Steven Solomon, author of Ellery's Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer (University of Michigan Press, $29.95, 9780472108374/0472108379), accompanied by Ellery Schempp himself.

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Tonight on Larry King Live: Senator John McCain, author of Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them (Twelve, $25.99, 9780446580403/0446580406).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Currency/Doubleday, $22.95, 9780385520805/0385520808).

This charming picture book captures the childhood feeling of awe during that maiden voyage to the zoo and the realization that there are creatures larger than we are. "It was love at first sight," Holmes's text begins, as the author imagines what the real Douwe Van der Meer (who narrates) might have been thinking when he first laid eyes on Clara the rhinoceros in India in the late 1730s. Imagine a time when "few people in Europe had ever seen a real rhinoceros, or even a picture of one." Such was the case for Mr. Van der Meer. Luckily for the Dutch sea captain, Clara had essentially eaten her original owner out of house and home, so Van der Meer bought her and took Clara aboard his "good ship Knabenhoe" to sail her to Holland. Cannell's mixed-media illustrations in earth tones of ochre and rust unfold against backdrops of sky blue. Pen-and-inks and watercolor wash trace the ship's journey from Calcutta to Rotterdam in 1741, the timber raft that took Clara on a tour down the Rhine ("We must let the world see Clara, and let Clara see the world!" says Van der Meer), and even the pulley system used to weigh the nearly 5,000-lb. specimen.

Holmes and Cannell include plenty of humorous details, such as Clara's fondness for oranges and tobacco ("If I had been smoking my pipe--or eating an orange--she licked my face. She had a soft tongue, like a puppy's"). Sure to be the favorite fact among young readers: When Clara loses her horn, another grows back in its place. Acting as testimonials to 18th-century artists' fascination with Clara, the book's illustrations incorporate photos of actual artifacts created in the rhino's likeness: a porcelain figurine by Johann Joachim Kändler, a Clara Commemorative Medal ("possibly by or after Jean-Daniel Kamm") and a life-size (roughly 10' x 14') oil canvas, Rhinoceros, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, which is currently on exhibition at the Getty Museum--all of which are also reproduced on a final spread with informative captions. This brief journey back in time brings a present-day immediacy to the feeling of wonder that animals inspire in us all.--Jennifer M. Brown

If you sell books for a living, you've learned how to segue--to move your customer from conversation mode to buying mode so seamlessly that they believe the acquisition was as much their idea as yours. And since you already know all that, I won't try to disguise my segue in this piece. You'd probably just see through it anyway.

In response to last week's column about small press staff picks, Mary Alice Gorman, co-owner of Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pa., wrote that she recommends Cancer Vixen (Knopf, $22, 9780307263575/0307263576) on her website and is "already getting congrats on what one caller said was a most unusual pick for a mystery bookstore. However, it did remind her to schedule that mammogram!"

Then Russ Marshalek, marketing and public relations director at Wordsmiths Books, Decatur, Ga., checked in to ask and answer his own question: "What is there to say about Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee (Melville House, $14.95, 9781933633251/1933633255) that could sufficiently convey exactly what the book is?"

Wrestling with the eternal bookseller's dilemma of how to "summarize the book in two sentences to fit on a shelf-talker that would encourage those totally unfamiliar with Lin's work at his achingly self-aware blog, reader of depressing books, to pick the book up and fall into the weird sort of love that only it could encourage," he opted for the following:

"Tao Lin's first novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, if listed by plot points, would include: Elijah Wood, dolphins, pizza delivery, sadness, more pizza delivery. At times painfully mundane, at times razor-sharp with emotional truth, Linn's novel is the sound of ennui on an iPod being listened to on the morning train to somewhere. Is this the result of the 20-something overeducated hipster putting pen to paper? Yes. Does his voice sound like anyone else's ever could, or would? No."

Marshalek added that independent publishers like Akashic and Soft Skull "have been well represented in our staff picks as well, with Jillan Weise's The Amputee's Guide to Sex (Soft Skull, $14.95, 9781933368528/1933368527) and pretty much everything Joe Meno has ever written making their way through our choices."

Pay attention, now, because here comes segue.

As often happens, something about Marshalek's enthusiasm inspired me to follow a virtual trail to the Wordsmiths Books website, where I found the same energy, wit and passion for reading on display at the bookstore's blog.

I stayed there for a while. I read. I thought about bookstore blogs. Then I contacted Marshalek and we had a conversation, which I will share with you this week and next.

Segue completed.

According to Marshalek, "The blog has always been a vital part of what Wordsmiths Books is." As entertaining evidence, I recommend that you spend some time reading the blog entries dating back to last winter, when the bookstore was still a dream in the making. As you follow the narrative in post after post through the June grand opening, you get caught up in the story.

So this is what birthing a bookstore looks like in real time.

"The Wordsmiths Books blog has actually been around since the very inception of the idea of the store--so since January of '07," said Marshalek. "It wasn't really so much of a debate to invest time and effort into a blog and it's proven to be an invaluable tool."

He had initially introduced Wordsmiths Books owner Zach Steele to the concept of blogging last year, "both as a form of self-expression and as a marketing tool. I come from a new media background and I keep a handful of personal blogs, so I've seen the way this form of communication can be effective, both for the writer and the audience."

Marshalek does not consider himself a writer, but said Steele is and "I didn't see how he could be a writer aspiring to be published and not keep a blog. Then, as Wordsmiths Books came into being, there wasn't even a question of integrating a blog into what our store plan was. When we opened, it was in an online sales and author events capacity, so an online presence was vital."

According to Marshalek, a blog "allows your store to handsell your new, quirky, favorite, beloved book of the moment to a much wider audience, all as though they were each getting one-on-one time."

Next week, he offers a closer look at Wordsmiths's blogging strategy, and why the essence of a great bookstore blog is the delicate art of mixing business with pleasure.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)