“I’ve just finished reading Reality Hunger and I’m lit up by it—astonished, intoxicated, ecstatic, overwhelmed.”
—Jonathan Lethem

An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.

Reality TV dominates broadband. YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality” precisely because we experience hardly any.

Chuck Klosterman on Twitter: “Reality Hunger, by David Shields, might be the most intense, thought-accelerating book of the last 10 years.”

Biography:
David Shields is the author of nine previous books, including The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, a New York Times best seller; Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of a PEN/Syndicated Fiction award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Utne Reader. A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, he is a senior editor of Conjunctions magazine. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

For more information please contact:
Kathryn Zuckerman/kzuckerman@randomhouse.com/212-572-2105
Lena Khidritskaya/lkhidritskaya@randomhouse.com/212-572-2103

Contact: Sloane Crosley, Associate Director of Publicity
Phone: 212.572.2016
E-mail: scrosley@randomhouse.com

VINTAGE BOOKS TO PUBLISH NIGHTLIGHT: A TWILIGHT PARODY
AS A VINTAGE ORIGINAL IN TIME FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE RELEASE OF TWILIGHT SEQUEL “NEW MOON”

New York, NY 10/05/09: Vintage Books announces the publication of the first Harvard Lampoon novel parody in exactly 40 years. In 1969, The Harvard Lampoon took affectionate aim at a massive pop culture phenomenon with Bored of the Rings. The paperback original Nightlight, a pitch-perfect spin on the Stephanie Meyers series, will be available on NOVEMBER 3. The Twilight movie sequel, “New Moon,” arrives in theaters on November 20.

“Funny” might get you a blog post these days, but it’s the Lampoon-level of satire that makes Nightlight worth every pseudo-bloodsucking, angst-ridden page. Nightlight stakes at the heart of what makes Twilight tick…or, really, cuts to the core of it. As demonstrated by the cover of the book. Or takes a bite out of it, as also demonstrated by the cover of the book. Brooding and hilarious, let Nightlight be your guide through the Twilight fandom that has eclipsed the mind of every teenager you have ever met.

About the Plot

Pale and klutzy, Belle Goose arrives in Switchblade, Oregon looking for adventure, or at least an undead classmate. She soon discovers Edwart Mullen, a super-hot computer nerd with zero interest in girls. After witnessing a number of strange events—Edwart leaves his Tater Tots™ untouched at lunch! Edwart saves her from a flying snowball!—Belle has a dramatic revelation: Edwart is a vampire. But how can she convince Edwart to bite her and transform her into his eternal bride, especially when he seems to find girls so repulsive? Complete with romance, danger, insufficient parental guardianship, creepy stalker-like behavior, and a vampire prom, Nightlight is the uproarious tale of a vampire-obsessed girl, looking for love in all the wrong places.

About The Harvard Lampoon

The first volume of the Lampoon appeared in February, 1876. Written by seven undergraduates and modeled on Punch, the British humor magazine, the debut issue took the Harvard campus by storm. “Our success was immediate,” wrote founder John Tyler Wheelwright. “Our first edition of twelve hundred was sold at once.” United States President Ulysses S. Grant was advised not to read the magazine, as he would be too much “in stitches” to run the government.

While no human was safe from jests within the magazine, the Lampoon soon branched out, supplementing its regular issues with parodies of other publications. The first target was Life, which the Lampoon parodied in 1896. But from the beginning, the Lampoon found its richest source of parodies and fake-issues in the Harvard Crimson, the daily newspaper that seems so bad as to be inimitable.

The Lampoon was led by such figures as humorist Robert Benchley ‘12, novelist John Marquand ‘15, poet David McCord ‘21, and communist agitator John Reed ‘10. Under Reed’s term as president, the Lampoon evolved from salacious puns and localized “Harvard humor” to highly literate, scathing social commentary. Influenced heavily by The New Yorker, Lampoon editors developed a knack for short fiction, punchy cartoons, cutting-edge layout, and jet-set cocktail-party success. When local authorities banned a bawdy parody of Esquire in 1935, Lampoon members pretended to burn issues in a bonfire outside the Castle while selling the parody out the side door. During this period, the Lampoon also invented the word “pizzazz” and began its annual “Movie Worsts” issue, a tradition that held until the mid-1990s, when people stopped going to movies.

In the Lampoon’s “Golden Period,” 1946-1961, the magazine took its parodies to the national level, consensually distributing fake issues of Mademoiselle alongside the actual issues. Three notable alumni—George Plimpton ‘48, actor Fred Gwynne ‘50, and John Updike ‘54—flashed comedy chops during this time, as all three men served as Lampoon presidents. Following the “Shit Period” (1962-1975), the Lampoon entered a second “Golden Period” from 1975 to the present day. The lengthy stories in older issues have been eliminated in the modern Lampoon, which boasts lightning-quick, joke-heavy “kind-of-stories” that are so hilarious as to be a medical risk for some.

Download a pdf file of this press release here.

Fast forward three years: the Neelys have become a phenomenon. Millions of viewers watch their daily Food Network show; tour buses line up in front of their Memphis restaurant; and fans around the world are clamoring for a cookbook. Happily, the long wait for the latter is over. DOWN HOME WITH THE NEELYS: A Southern Family Cookbook (to be published by Knopf on May 12, 2009), encompasses all the great menu items that have made NEELY’S BBQ a destination for bbq aficionados around the world, as well as signature recipes from their history making show (which had the highest rated premiere in TVFN’s weekend block!) Each week, over 4 million viewers tune in to watch the Neelys cook recipes that have made them so admired and loved, including: Get Yo’ Man Chicken, Barbecue Spaghetti, Sock-It-to-Me Cake, and their famous Cheesy Corkscrews with Crunchy Bacon Topping (which can feed a family of four for under ten dollars and was recently featured on NPR’s All Things Considered!)

Anyone who loves great-tasting barbecue will tell you: the secret’s in the sauce. But for Pat and Gina Neely, the secret to their success is in the familial approach to everything they do. They have raised a family in the kitchen and built a successful business as a husband and wife team and Americans have responded to their story and their food with gusto. So get your grill on and start having FUN with DOWN HOME WITH THE NEELYS.

The Neelys will be touring coast-to coast this May and June. Please call us with any questions or to set up an interview.

Oink!

Sheila O’Shea
soshea@randomhouse.com
Associate Director of Publicity
Alfred A. Knopf
212-572-2151

CONTACT:
Alison Rich
212/782-9787
arich@randomhouse.com

“Masterfully told…an unusually generous, wisely funny novel about good kids and a society’s muddled attempts to come of age…” —Booklist (Starred)

“Wonderful, evocative writing, as always from Whitehead…” —Library Journal (Starred)

“The author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist John Henry Days explores the in-between space of adolescence through one boy’s summer in a predominantly black Long Island neighborhood…Benji’s funny and touching story progresses leisurely toward Labor Day.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred)

“Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice…his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well…” —Kirkus Reviews

“Pure shimmering brilliance. Colson Whitehead’s affecting new novel joyously lights up a place, a time, a family and one unforgettable young man. It is also one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, a book loaded with the kind of humor that can only soar off a heartbreaking sadness.” —Gary Shteyngart

The year is 1985, and Benji Cooper and his younger brother, Reggie, are the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school—when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror magazine Fangoria—his social doom is sealed for the next four years. But every summer, Benji and Reggie can escape to their parents’ beach property in Sag Harbor, Long Island, where a small community of African-American professionals has created a world of their own. From one of our most acclaimed young writers at work today, SAG HARBOR (Doubleday; On Sale: 4/28/09; $24.95), is a warm, funny, and supremely original new novel about coming of age in the 1980’s written as only Colson Whitehead could imagine it.

Benji and his family have been “coming out” east for years. Because the parents in this African American enclave are all upwardly mobile professionals a ritual ensues after each weekend: The parents return to work in Manhattan and the kids are left to their own devices during the week. As confused as Benji is about navigating the white world during the school year, this summer he notices the once comfortable landscape in Sag Harbor changing as well. There are new handshakes to fumble through and profanity to master, his old bike gives way to some big brother’s car, and girls suddenly matter more than boyhood friendships. Rap music warps into hip-hop, New Coke debuts and Benji finally gets a real haircut—a tragedy of epic proportions as seen through his adolescent eyes. It seems that everywhere Benji looks, past and present, black and white are in conflict, and Benji is simply trying to find himself in the chaos.

Moving effortlessly from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Benji’s story is a fiercely funny story of the perpetual mortification of teenage existence and of coming of age at a time and in a place that remains vivid long after it has gone or grown old. In the closing pages Whitehead brilliantly describes the face of Benji’s first love: “the two windows facing the street, the front door for a nose and the three brick steps for a mouth…This was my old house where all the good things lived on though we had moved on. But you know me,” the protagonist continues, “Nostalgic for everything big and small. Nostalgic for what never happened and nostalgic for what will be, looking forward to looking back on a time when things got easier.” A deeply affecting and personal novel that probes the elusive nature of identity, personal and communal, racial and post-racial, SAG HARBOR is another supremely crafted work by one of our most talented American novelists.

COLSON WHITEHEAD is the author of the novels The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; John Henry Days, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Apex Hides the Hurt, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the PEN Oakland Award. He has also written The Colossus of New York, a book of essays about his hometown. A recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in Brooklyn and spent many childhood summers on Sag Harbor.

Join Colson Whitehead reading from SAG HARBOR at these events:

Wednesday, April 29—Barnes & Noble Tribeca, New York, NY

Friday, May 1—Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

Monday, May 4—Book Court, Brooklyn, NY

Tuesday, May 5—Philadelphia Free Library, Philadelphia, PA

Wednesday, May 6—Brown University Bookstore, Providence, RI

Thursday, May 7—Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA

Wednesday, May 13—Politics & Prose, Washington, DC

Thursday, May 14—St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, MO

Saturday, May 16—Ann Arbor Book Festival, Ann Arbor, MI

Monday, May 18—Bookshop Santa Cruz, San Francisco, CA

Tuesday, May 19—Berkeley Arts & Letters, San Francisco, CA

Wednesday, May 20—ALOUD! at the LA Public Library, Los Angeles, CA

Tuesday, May 26—McNally Jackson, New York, NY

Saturday, July 11—Canio’s, Sag Harbor, NY

The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park —Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club.

Chuck Palahniuk’s singular novels have always defied convention. With a Palahniuk novel you never know what quite to expect. Yet his nimble, iconic storytelling talent does not simply rely on his prodigious – and perverse – imagination. At the core of Palahniuk’s novels you’ll discover universal tenets of human emotion: love, vanity, jealousy, despair, loneliness. These truths, embodied by wholly unique characters (and yes, cringe- or vomit-inducing incendiary plot twists certainly help) have made him a world-renowned, bestselling author. With PYGMY (Doubleday; 5/5/09; $24.95) Palahniuk skewers the apple-pie notions of faith, family and the American way alongside a tale of redemption and love.

“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater ____ area. Flight ____. Date ____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.”

Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified.

Contact: Todd Doughty
212-782-9796
tdoughty@randomhouse.com

For more information please visit: www.chuckpalahniuk.net and doubleday.com

PYGMY * Chuck Palahniuk * Doubleday * On-sale date: May 5, 2009 * ISBN: 978-0-385-52634-0 * $24.95

2009 PYGMY tour:

BOSTON – Tuesday, May 5 –

NEW YORK – Wednesday, May 6

BALTIMORE – Thursday, May 7

PHILADELPHIA – Friday, May 8

WASHINGTON, DC – Saturday, May 9

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chuck Palahniuk’s nine previous novels are the bestselling Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg; Lullaby; Diary; Haunted; Rant; and Snuff. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, a nonfiction profile of Portland, Oregon, published as part of the Crown Journeys series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Mamdani has written an important and provocative work that goes against the grain of what is perceived as the current situation in Darfur. Illuminating the deeply rooted causes of the current conflict, Mamdani explains how it began as a civil war (1987-89) triggered by a severe drought. The war’s effects were shaped by how British colonial officials had tribalized Darfur, dividing its population between “native” and “settler” tribes, creating homelands for the former at the expense of the latter. The war intensified in the 1990s when the Sudanese government tried, unsuccessfully, to address this problem by creating homelands for tribes without any. The involvement of opposition parties gave rise in 2003 to two rebel movements, leading to a brutal insurgency and a horrific counterinsurgency—but not to genocide, as the West has declared.

Mamdani explains how the Cold War exacerbated the forty-year civil war in Chad, viciously affecting neighboring Darfur. By 2003, the conflict involved national, regional, and global forces, including the powerful Western lobby, which called for a military invasion dressed up as a “humanitarian intervention.”

SAVIORS AND SURVIVORS radically alters our understanding of the ongoing crisis in Darfur.

About Mahmood Mamdani
Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a member of the departments of anthropology; political science; and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His previous books include Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Citizen and Subject, and When Victims Become Killers. From Uganda, he now divides his time between New York and Kampala.

Publicity Contact
Michiko Clark
212-572-2568
miclark@randomhouse.com

Pantheon Books

Mahmood Mamdani Events

Thursday, March 19—Chicago
6:00 pm–Seminary Co-op Bookstore event cosponsored by World Beyond the Headlines. 5757 S. University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637

Friday, March 20—Washington, DC
7:00 pm–Politics and Prose Bookstore event. 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC 20008.

Monday, March 23—New York
7:30 pm–Barnes and Noble, Upper West Side event. 2289 Broadway (at 82nd)

Thursday, April 2—Boston
7:00 pm–Harvard Books event. 1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138

Friday, April 10—San Francisco
7:30 pm–Berkeley Arts & Letters at the Berkeley City Club event. 2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley 94704

Saturday, April 11—Seattle
7:00 pm–Elliot Bay Book Company event. 101 South Main Street, Seattle WA 98104

Praise

“The importance of the book is not only that it provides a context for the violence in Darfur—it is also the first work to critically conceptualize the shape of the post Cold War international order. The critique of humanitarian interventionism and the difference between ‘survivors’ justice’ and the justice of revenge is particularly important. This is a work of incredible political courage.”—Amitov Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace and Sea of Poppies

“Mamdani traces the path to the Darfur tragedy through its historical and colonial roots to the current situation, where drought and desertification have led to conflict over land among local tribes, rebellion, and finally to the brutal involvement of the forces of the state and to the efforts of the United Nations and others to help the victims and stop the violence. His radical reevaluation of the Darfur problem is a major contribution to understanding and, it is to be hoped, to ending a shocking human disaster.”
—Sir Brian Urquhart, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

“An incisive and challenging analysis. Framing both Darfur’s war and the ‘Save Darfur’ movement within the paradigm of the West’s historic colonial encounter with Africa, Mahmood Mamdani challenges the reader to reconsider whether Darfur’s crisis is ‘genocide’ warranting foreign military intervention.”
—Alex de Waal, Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and author of War in Darfur

“Mahmood Mamdani has turned his fearless independence of mind on Darfur, Sudan, and the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ producing a book that is as passionate and well-informed as it is intelligent and (for those used only to surface orthodoxies) challenging.”
—Conor Gearty, Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics

“A brilliantly argued and profoundly challenging critique of liberal support for humanitarian intervention in Darfur. Beyond this, Mamdani sets forth an alternative approach to such catastrophic situations. This book should be required reading for the Obama foreign policy team.”
—Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur and Professor Emeritus, Princeton University

“A bold, near brilliant re-examination of the conflict in Darfur . . . Essential reading for those interested in the topic.”—Publishers Weekly

“A necessary contribution to the literature surrounding both humanitarian aid and African geopolitics.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“By providing broader context, Mamdani brings fresh perspective to conflict in this troubled region.”—Booklist

Vanished Smile
The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa
by R.A. Scotti

—————

“Scotti’s inquiry peels away veils of hearsay and sensationalism to reveal a caper as original as its victim.

“Since her creation in 1503, Mona Lisa has served as muse, riddle and obsession for scholars, scientists, musicians, writers and art patrons. At the height of Europe’s Belle Époque, she disappeared, seemingly right from under the noses of Louvre guards, plunging the worlds of both high culture and regular society into grief and outrage. For more than two years, rumors, parody and scandalous accusations peppered global headlines, as investigators struggled to piece together the crime and, most crucially, identify the culprit. Citizens of every echelon were suspect, from museum employees to denizens of the art world, including painters, collectors and dealers. Various theories of collaborations and plots swirled around for decades.

“Scotti masterfully excavates historical truths and brazen speculations, deftly interlacing them into a gracefully crafted account that weds heady prose to shrewd investigative journalism. Her elegant yet bold reconsideration of the most famous art crime in history offers a rare meditation on the notion of motive. Analyzing a work of art that has been anthropomorphized into mythic status for five centuries, Scotti nails it: ‘When Mona Lisa slipped out of her frames, she seemed to change from a missing masterpiece to a missing person. She came alive in the popular imagination. The public felt her loss as emotionally as an abduction or kidnapping.’

“Mystery fans, history buffs and culture vultures alike will savor this immersion in the mindset of an age.” —Kirkus Reviews, a starred review

“An exciting true-life mystery. Scotti has reopened one of the most delectable unsolved cases in the annals of art crime.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

————

R.A. Scotti is the author of three previous works of nonfiction, including Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal—Building St. Peter’s and Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938, and four novels. She lives in New York City.

WITH 16 ILLUSTRATIONS and 1 map
$24.95
Also available from Random House Audio and in a Large Print Edition
Author tour: Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Toronto
ISBN 978-0-307-26580-7

Illustration: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 1503-06. Louve, Paris, France. Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library

CONTACT:
Nicholas Latimer
Vice President, Director of Publicity
(212) 572-2106

For author interview, contact:
Erinn Hartman (212) 572-2345
ehartman@randomhouse.com

1745 Broadway
New York City 10019
phone: (212) 572-2104
fax: (212) 940-7307
knopfpublicity@randomhouse.com

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