Paul Bresnick Literary Agency, LLC

 

 

WASTING TIME ON THE INTERNET:

“Entertaining, vividly written investigation of the ways people interact with the web. . . . Goldsmith maintains a sharp focus as he weaves together wildly diverse ideas, explaining new information clearly for a general audience.” ―Publishers Weekly

“A persuasive argument about how what conventional wisdom dismisses as “wasting time” is actually time well spent” ―Kirkus Reviews

 

 

FAMOUS NATHAN: 

“A nostalgic, truly American journey from impoverished immigrant to the eponymous owner of one of the country’s most iconic restaurants, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs. Handwerker relates every knowable detail about Nathan’s Famous: employee tensions, how the potatoes were sourced, even who painted the signed. He also nestles his grandfather’s story in the greater context of family struggles, Coney Island, the history of hot dogs, and the evolving American landscape…Even though Nathan is gone and his business has been corporatized, his commitment and character still live on in the heart of the American dream.” ―Publishers Weekly

“A flavorful paean to his grandfather topped with heartwarming anecdotes about Nathan’s Famous and Coney Island in its heyday as the proletarian Riviera.” ―The Wall Street Journal

 

STEALING FIRE: 

“A mind-blowing tour along the path from sex and drugs to R&D.”—Financial Times

“Stealing Fire is a beautifully written, must-read for anyone interested in living up to their full potential. Kotler and Wheal have produced a user-manual for your hacking your brain to drive high performance.”—Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize, co-chairman of Singularity University, bestselling author

“Stealing Fire cracks the secret code of peak performance so that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.” —Cdr. Mark Divine (USN Ret.), New York Times best selling author, founder SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind

 

HEADS:

“From the chemists who made it to the musicians who ate it, this history of American heads is a trip.”—Mojo

“Heads is flat-out brilliant…A giddy, amazing story, terrifically well told.”—Uncut

“A lucid, illuminating, profound, and often hilarious history of how psychedelics have shaped this great nation—not just music (though the Dead loom large), but across the entire cultural-spiritual landscape. As all goes to hell in a bucket, there are lessons here about what gives our lives meaning, and the roads forward.” ―Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever

“A history of the interplay between hallucinogens and rock music in the innocent minds of young America…Jarnow has a bloodhound’s sense of the marrow of an argument and the meat of historic fact: no one else has so clearly pointed out the path that led from Garcia’s old lady to the ‘delicious seedless pot’ that turned smoking a joint into a gasket-blowing trip…[Jarnow’s] book is a lot of fun to read…Latter-day heads—as well as ’relentless dabblers’ and the historically minded—will enjoy this well-researched, mind-altering excursion.” ―Kirkus Reviews

 

HERBERT HOOVER IN THE WHITE HOUSE:

“A fair-handed, surprisingly sympathetic new appraisal of the much-vilified president who was faced with the nation’s plunge into the Great Depression. Reading Rappleye’s engaging account of Herbert Hoover’s (1874-1964) one-term presidency, readers may find themselves thinking that maybe the Depression wasn’t really Hoover’s fault after all. . . . Rappleye valiantly portrays all facets of this conflicted character . . . Concluding with the rise of Franklin Roosevelt, this study is finely focused and fills an important niche in presidential scholarship.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Why did Herbert Hoover succeed at everything he did—except the presidency? Charles Rappleye provides a convincing answer in this solidly researched, persuasively argued account of Hoover’s tortured four years in the White House. Dispelling the myths of a heartless or do-nothing president, Rappleye confirms his own subject’s admonition, ‘You can’t make a Teddy Roosevelt out of me.’ The book could not be more timely—the cautionary tale of a hugely accomplished anti-politician, it coincides with a presidential campaign in which inexperience is held up as a qualification for the most political of jobs. Highly recommended!” —Richard Norton Smith, author of An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover

 

HEMINGWAY IN LOVE:

“In this piercingly intimate new volume, A. E. Hotchner plumbs the depths of Hemingway’s most poignant realizations and regrets – not just whom he loved and ultimately lost, but the very nature of his heart. A tender and devastating portrait…and one I will personally treasure.”―Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

“The first complete understanding of the writer as a man…an important book.”―Library Journal (starred review)

“A portrait of triumphant highs, melancholic lows, and the pervading tone of the subject’s generation―a human being’s love lost.”―Publishers Weekly

 

AMERICA DANCING:

“As signifying dancers, men and women fly out of this deep, long-nurtured book. In clear and sensual prose, Megan Pugh has fashioned a history of modern America in gestures and movement. The pages never hold still.”
—GREIL MARCUS, author of The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs and Real Life Rock

“Although Pugh’s scholarship is considerable, she is writing not for a scholarly but for a general audience. . . . The author has a dancer’s grace in the flow of her prose. . . . Pugh gracefully dances the fine line between critic and fan.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Valuable, original, refreshing, wide-ranging. . . . Ms. Pugh’s writing is excellent, and the book is mind opening. To an invaluable extent, it’s about the influences of African-Americans on American dance. . . . The breadth and wealth of information often dazzle. . . . This book alters and enriches American dance history. It doesn’t change the record of what happened when; instead, it revises our sense of how things came to pass.”—Alastair Macaulay, New York Times

 

THE JOY OF KILLING:

“[A] dreamlike novel…MacLean’s writing is lyrical, ebbing and flowing like a deep riptide that conceals the danger beneath…A dizzying and delirious meditation on desire, violence, guilt, and philosophical justification…Yet it’s almost impossible to resist the pull of the tide….A dizzying and delirious meditation on desire, violence, guilt, and philosophical justification.”—Kirkus

“Not since American Psycho has there been a novel as unnerving and relentless as Harry N. Maclean’s compulsively readable The Joy of Killing. Inventive. Supremely twisted. And did I say unnerving?” —Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author

“Harry MacLean has long been without peer at performing the alchemy required to turn the often banal facts of true crime into narratives as alluring as any fiction. In The Joy of Killing, he focuses his profound talents on a lyrical, relentless story that is at once literary and hardboiled. The Joy of Killing is an unblinking vision into a world where the currencies are elastic versions of eroticism, memory, tragedy, and violence, where a measure of vertigo is the norm, and where morality is a variable, never a constant. A complex, stunning novel.” —Stephen White, New York Times best-selling author

 

  TOMORROWLAND:

“An insightful overview of the many ways technology has caught, if not surpassed, our wildest dreams—and it shows no signs of stopping.” —Kirkus Reviews

“It’s difficult to think of a writer more invigorating and tuned-in than Kotler. Tommorrowland is like taking a shot of caffeine. It allows you to see into the future and to realize that you’re already there.” —David Eagleman, New York Times bestselling author of Incognito

“Steven Kotler finds the bubbling edge where techno-exuberance hauls the impossible into the realm of the real. A thrilling and important read!” —Howard Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain

 

BEALE STREET DYNASTY:

“Preston Lauterbach has conjured a fascinating demimonde that’s dead and gone. After reading this, I dreamed all night about street hustlers, hoodoos, and snake oil salesmen on Beale Street, the Main Street of black America. Here Lauterbach gives us Beale in its heyday―the chitlin joints, the rough-and-tumble politics, the fecund music―and deftly paints a portrait of the one improbable millionaire who towered over this vibrant world. Read Beale Street Dynasty and you begin to feel you’re communing with ghosts.” — Hampton Sides, author of Hell

“In his last book, The Chitlin’ Circuit, Lauterbach shone light into obscure, all but unknown rooms of the rock-’n’-roll story. This time he turns to a chapter we thought we knew well―Beale Street, one of the grounds zero of American culture, with Tin Pan Alley and Congo Square and Concord―and the result is every bit as illuminating. Lauterbach has become one of my favorite people to read on 20th-century popular music.” — John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

“Excellent study of an iconic Southern place and the fraught, violent history behind it… Lauterbach adds to the rich library devoted to “old, weird America” established by writers such as Michael Ventura, Peter Guralnick and Greil Marcus. Beale Street is mostly a tourist trap now, but it was a place of ‘whorehouses, saloons, and bullet holes’ not so long ago. By Lauterbach’s illuminating account, the past was more fun―or at least more interesting.” — Kirkus Reviews

 

FORTUNE’S FOOL:

“As Alford’s excellent book makes clear, Booth was a celebrity in his own right, and his high profile heightened the drama of the deed: imagine if Elvis Presley had assassinated President John F. Kennedy.” —Foreign Affairs
“Fortune’s Fool is so deeply researched and persuasively argued that it should stand as the standard portrait for years… Readers will know how this story ended, but Mr. Alford’s recounting of Booth’s flight and the Army’s manhunt is a tour de force of sustained drama, never losing its breakneck pace and offering startling revelations.” — Harold Holzer, The Wall Street Journal
“A vivid, gripping portrait of the charming, impetuous, and troubled Booth, whose ill-fated and ultimately murderous path often seems to strangely echo the doomed Shakespearean characters he played on stage. ” — Library Journal

 

 

THE UNDERGROUND IS MASSIVE:

What started as an underground party business—run and dominated by youths and hustlers—grew into the music business’s greatest and biggest success. The Underground Is Massive is the first-ever big-picture history of the American electronic dance music underground, viewed through the lens of nineteen parties over thirty years—from the black, gay underground clubs of Chicago and Detroit’s elite teen-party scene through nineties “electronica” to today’s EDM-festival juggernaut, the book takes in the rise of the Internet and Burning Man, 9/11, and the collapse of the record business—and vividly charts why and how it took nearly three decades after electronic dance music became a global youth soundtrack for it to hit big in the land that birthed it.

Through unparalleled insider access to anecdotes, interviews, and history, Michaelangelo Matos demystifies how what once belonged to a devoted audience of casual partiers and diehard dancers has become America’s soundtrack of choice and changed the music industry completely. Matos expertly tackles the vast diversity of EDM’s musical landscape, its technologically prophetic yet illicit origins, and the path by which underground raves grew into fiercely successful music festivals. Taking in legendary artists from Frankie Knuckles to Moby as well as the biggest names in EDM—Diplo, Skrillex, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Tiësto, and Daft Punk—Matos’s deep mix of sources and wide-lens overview of the culture make every chapter a page-turning revelation.

 

ABUNDANCE:

“At a moment when our world faces multiple crises and is awash in pessimism, Abundance redirects the  conversation, spotlighting scientific innovators working to improve people’s lives around the world. The result is more than a portrait of brilliant minds – it’s a reminder of the infinite possibilities for doing good when we tap into our own empathy and wisdom.”

—Arianna Huffington, CEO, Huffington Post

“This brilliant must-read book provides the key to the coming era of abundance replacing eons of scarcity, a powerful antidote to today’s malaise and pessimism.”

—Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author and futurist, author of The Singularity is Near

Read more about this book.

 

NICA’S DREAM:

Learn about it in  “All Things Considered,”

Read more in The Wall Street Journal

Like Nica’s Dream on Facebook.

 

 

THE CHITLIN’ CIRCUIT:

“Mr. Lauterbach uncovers a story as sensational as any day-glo circuit-show poster…The era’s hepcat lingo (‘ork’ for orchestra, ‘ofay’ for ‘white’) and hard-boiled, noir ambience give Mr. Lauterbach a tune he can carry….the book is at heart a well-researched valentine to a lost world of seedy con men, promoters and club owners, the power brokers and hustlers who made the ‘circuitry spark.’ ” —Eddie Dean, The Wall Street Journal

Read more on this book

THE LAST SULTAN:

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE – Review: “…mesmerizing, entertaining, informative….There are a great many delicious stories in this page-turning work….[The Last Sultan] is not only a vivid portrait of Ertegun but also a colorful panorama of the indie record-business during and after its rough-and-tumble years, when bootleggers sold as many singles as the real labels, gangsters were always angling to squeeze in on the action, and payola was just part of the cost of doing business.”  link

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – Review: “This story is well worth telling….[The Last Sultan], the first posthumous biography of Ertegun, is also the first to bring Ertegun’s story up to date, and put it in perspective.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/the-last-sultan-the-life-and-times-of-ahmet-ertegun-by-robert-greenfield

WABC-AM – “Imus in the Morning” LIVE at 7:35am clip

MSNBC-TV – “Morning Joe” LIVE in the 8:00am hour clip

THE ONE:

Smithsonian Magazine:  www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/A-James-Brown-Biography-and-Other-Must-Read-Books.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+smithsonianmag%2Farts-culture+(Arts+%26+Culture)

Atlanta Journal:  http://blogs.ajc.com/arts-culture/2011/12/30/best-new-books-around-the-south-for-2012/

Praise for THE ONE

“This book’s sparkle speaks for itself, as does Mr. Smith’s ability to take on his screaming, moaning, kinetically blessed, unbeatably shrewd subject.” The New York Times

“A nearly perfect biography…” The Atlantic

 4 out of 5 stars “A biography as illuminating as it is definitive…The rhythm revolutionary who changed pop forever finally gets he bio he deserves.” Rolling Stone

“The imperatives of biography are to record, to correct and to carve out historical significance, and Smith’s lively account succeeds on all three fronts.” Smithsonian

“James Brown’s is a life and a music that could only have happened in America. The One is part biography, part music lesson, and part cultural history. With a prose style every bit as raw and captivating as the man and the music it chronicles, Smith’s book brilliantly captures the roiling contradictions of a man and a country in transition.” Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising

“The late James Brown famously said, ‘The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.’ Not your bag? Read The One (Gotham), RJ Smith’s supreme, sublime biography of the Godfather of Soul—son of the segregated South, social activist,  go-for-broke businessman, self-professed thug—and you’ll get up offa that thing.” ELLE Magazine

A Buzz Worthy Book, New York Daily News

 “[The One] could possibly reinstate James Brown and his place in pop culture and also put RJ Smith on the map as THE music commentator.” David Kipen, KPCC

“Brilliant, unflinching…as richly deep as a ‘70s JB funk jam and as riotously fun as ‘Cold Sweat’.” Craig Marks, coauthor of I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution

“Smith’s book dives into the many facets of Brown – the performer, entrepreneur, civil rights activist and at times, walking contradiction who parleyed with Black Panthers and endorsed both Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon for president.” Augusta Chronicle

“A top spring music choice”; “A compelling and detailed portrait of one of our greatest musicians.” Publisher’s Weekly

“This bio should be a cornerstone of soul-music-literature collections.”  Booklist

“With powerful narrative drive, critical insight, and stylistic verve, RJ Smith has written a biography befitting the importance of its subject. The One is a powerful American story, and this book is impossible to put down.” Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

“Mr. Smith glides thrillingly through James’s [life].”; “”Smith proves to be as careful and insightful in hard journalist mode as he is entertaining and fun while riding shotgun to the Apollo. He takes us so far into Brown’s worldview that Brown’s support of Nixon even makes sense.” The Wall Street Journal

“RJ Smith’s authoritative, keenly intelligent bio of one of the most protean of American musical giants…In The One, that world and Brown’s music come vividly to life.”
 The Philadelphia Inquirer

“RJ Smith, a Los Angeles-based music journalist and author of the new book The One: The Life and Music of James Brown, may have come closer than anyone to understanding how James Brown became James Brown.” The Christian Science Monitor

“In this beautifully written and exhaustively researched monument to the genius that was James Brown, RJ Smith connects Brown to centuries’ old traditions of protest and resistance, and gives us the portrait of a man who had little choice but to break boundaries and inspire the Rhythm Nation.” Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man

“Unh! Good God! RJ Smith has written a sex machine of a book and it’s called The One: The Life and Music of James Brown. Get up – get on up!” Stephen Davis

“Brown’s raw shamanic power, his brute and wayward will, leap off every page to grab the reader. Smith never loses the beat.” Los Angeles magazine

“A deep, focused study of this impossibly real character. To a life of extremes, Smith gives nuance and balance.” The Tampa Bay Times

“Pick of the Week” Atlanta Journal-Constitution

THE HUNT FOR KSM:

“On one level, McDermott and Meyer have given us a fact-filled inside account, in the voices of those on the job, of the failed decade-long American effort to find KSM before he could strike again. But there is a most important underlying message in this book — that the American intelligence community remains caught up in bureaucratic warfare and remains today incapable of working together…of sharing insights and information…even when all involved share the same goal. This, ultimately, is an account of an American tragedy.” (Seymour M. Hersh of The New Yorker )

“This chilling inside account of America’s cat-and-mouse pursuit of perhaps the world’s most heinous terrorist reads like a real-life episode of the show ’24.’ Political ineptitude has delayed KSM’s trial, keeping him hidden from the world. But now two intrepid reporters tell the story, unmasking not just a terrorist of historic dimensions, but also a country failing to adequately grapple with the challenge.” (Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side )

“I couldn’t put this book down, a tick tock thriller about catching 9/11’s mastermind. In exquisite detail it tells a story of incompetence and failure, and ultimately brilliance and redemption. It shows how we failed, and how we finally succeeded after relearning the nuts and bolts of classic espionage.” (Robert Baer, bestselling author of See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil )

“Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer have written a completely authoritative account of the man who organized the 9/11 attacks and the often-bungled hunt to find him. The Hunt for KSM is a
deeply reported page-turner about the race to find the man who was the Chief
Operating Officer of Al-Qaeda.” (Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War )

“The Hunt for KSM is an important book, detailing one of most secretive and fractured investigations of our time. Fabulous reporting and great storytelling make it one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read. That it is all true and such a gripping story just makes the accomplishment of McDermott and Meyer even more astounding. I couldn’t put this one down and neither will you.” (Michael Connelly )

“McDermott and Meyer have released the ultimate primer for those following the Sept. 11 trial. THE HUNT FOR KSM was years in the making, and the book not only seeks to decode KSM just as he is about to return to center stage, but also introduces readers to three people in U.S. law enforcement who seemed to recognize the threat KSM presented before anyone else.”—Dina Temple-Raston, Washington Post

“THE HUNT FOR KSM is a flat-out thriller…It lays out aspects of our factual contemporary world that are far more ambiguous, internecine and dangerous than anything Hollywood dare contemplate.”—Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

“Eye-opening investigative reporting, [and] a concrete indictment of the continued bureaucratic boondoggle that is the War on Terror.”— Eric Liebetrau, Boston Globe

“Drawing on unprecedented access to hundreds of sources, and investigative reporting across different continents, The Hunt for KSM provides a unique insight into the worlds of counter terrorism and espionage.”—The Huffington Post

“[This] masterful collaboration is a combined biography of KSM and a law enforcement procedural… a remarkable book.”—Steve Weinberg, The Seattle Times

“The authors of this powerful book, both journalists, have given readers an inside look at the ultimate success that occurred after many failures in tracking down and capturing KSM….Readers who enjoy espionage fiction will find that a true story can be a page-turner. It is also a fascinating look of the deep dysfunction within our intelligence agencies.”—Charles Steven, Lincoln Journal Star

“The best single-volume resource on KSM.”—Graeme Wood, The Daily

“THE HUNT FOR KSM…is not just a page-turning spy thriller that masterfully reveals how the FBI and CIA failed to capture Mohammed at least a half-dozen times in the eight years leading up to 9/11, but it’s also a story about the investigative reporters’ own decade-long ‘hunt’ for intelligence about ‘one of the worst mass murderers in American history.’…A timely and groundbreaking new book….[The] details are what makes THE HUNT FOR KSM required reading.”—Jason Leopold, Truthout

“Two dogged reporters show a bumbling American intelligence community unable to work together in the at times incompetent hunt for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.”—Jimmy So, The Daily Beast “Hot Reads”

“A dramatic account of how the decade-long persistence and hard work of FBI and CIA investigators eventually succeeded in tracking and bringing KSM and his associates to justice…an important book”—Joshua Sinai, Washington Times

“Superlative storytelling and crackling reportage define a pulse-pounding narrative tracing the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed….A surprising, sobering look at one of the deadliest terror networks in history, and the American spy agencies charged with bringing it down.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“On one level, McDermott and Meyer have given us a fact-filled inside account, in the voices of those on the job, of the failed decade-long American effort to find KSM before he could strike again. But there is a most important underlying message in this book — that the American intelligence community remains caught up in bureaucratic warfare and remains today incapable of working together…of sharing insights and information…even when all involved share the same goal. This, ultimately, is an account of an American tragedy.”—Seymour M. Hersh, writer for The New Yorker

“The Hunt for KSM is an important book, detailing one of most secretive and fractured investigations of our time. Fabulous reporting and great storytelling make it one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read. That it is all true and such a gripping story just makes the accomplishment of McDermott and Meyer even more astounding. I couldn’t put this one down and neither will you.”—Michael Connelly

“This chilling inside account of America’s cat-and-mouse pursuit of perhaps the world’s most heinous terrorist reads like a real-life episode of the show ‘24.’ Political ineptitude has delayed KSM’s trial, keeping him hidden from the world. But now two intrepid reporters tell the story, unmasking not just a terrorist of historic dimensions, but also a country failing to adequately grapple with the challenge.”—Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

“Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer have written a completely authoritative account of the man who organized the 9/11 attacks and the often-bungled hunt to find him. ‘The Hunt for KSM’ is a
deeply reported page-turner about the race to find the man who was the Chief Operating Officer of Al-Qaeda.”–Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda

“I couldn’t put this book down, a tick tock thriller about catching 9/11’s mastermind. In exquisite detail it tells a story of incompetence and failure, and ultimately brilliance and redemption. It shows how we failed, and how we finally succeeded after relearning the nuts and bolts of classic espionage.”–Robert Baer, bestselling author of See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil