three books

Ségolène Royal is Not Willing to Be a Footnote

Ever since Ms. Royal lost the 2007 election that would have made her France’s first female president, the glamorous career politician has not had it easy. The year after her defeat to center-right stalwart Nicolas Sarkozy, she tried unsuccessfully to become leader of her Socialist Party. When she made another run for the presidency in 2012, she lost badly in the primaries.

At least that time, the winner was a fellow Socialist: François Hollande, her longtime companion and the father of her four children. But by then, Ms. Royal had also lost him. And another woman, Valérie Trierweiler, a journalist for Paris Match, is now France’s première dame. (Yes, she had covered Mr. Hollande for the magazine.)

Then things became even worse for Ms. Royal. She failed to win a seat in the National Assembly last year, losing in the primaries to a party up-and-comer who famously received the endorsement of none other than Ms. Trierweiler — who tweeted her support. That indiscretion embarrassed President Hollande, rocked the Socialist Party and sent Ms. Royal into the political wilderness.

She kept her elected post as president of Poitou-Charentes, an Atlantic coast region hundreds of miles from Paris, added a nonpaying job as the No. 2 at a new public bank to promote investment, and was named one of the best-dressed women over the age of 50 by The Guardian newspaper. Nonetheless, Ms. Royal, 59, had become a footnote to history.

What to do? The same thing politicians everywhere do when they want (or need) attention: write a book. Consider the three books each that Mr. Hollande and Mr. Sarkozy published before their successful presidential bids.

Ms. Royal’s book, her 10th, is titled “Cette Belle Idée du Courage” (“This Beautiful Idea of Courage”), a collection of essays on individuals selected for their bravery, from Joan of Arc to Nelson Mandela, and including such French feminist heroes as Olympe de Gouges, famous for declaring in 1791 that the “Rights of Man” should also apply to women. Since a woman has the right to mount the scaffold, the French revolutionary said, she should equally have the right to mount the podium. Making her point, she was guillotined two years later.

In the sleek office that Poitou-Charentes maintains in Montparnasse area of Paris, Ms. Royal said she started the book a year ago, just after her legislative defeat, to respond to the question that people frequently asked: “How are you able to continue, in spite of everything?”

She sought an answer in the lives of the men and women the book profiles. She calls them passeurs of courage (those who pass it along), people who challenge convention, overcome fear, face adversity and “pull themselves back up.”

Even in talking about her defeats, Ms. Royal looked radiant. Her fuchsia lipstick matched her wrap dress, which she wore with an off-white jacket and lavender print scarf. She claims to favor no particular designer at this point. (Paule Ka dressed her in prior years, leading some wags to observe, “The devil wears Paule Ka.”) Now she dresses in whatever she feels like and shops everywhere, including at a nearby HM.

Ms. Royal said she learned a lot in writing the book. Though she continued to smile, her blue eyes narrowed as she recounted how she was “destabilized” by the hatred her political enemies showed her. She also learned “the destructive power of jealousy,” claiming that some male contemporaries in her party never forgave her for beating them to the presidential nomination. One Socialist leader called her a “second-rate politician,” while another speculated that if she became president, “Who would take care of the children at home?”

As for those children, two sons and two daughters now in their 20s, Ms. Royal dedicated the book to them, citing their “courage and inexhaustible cheerfulness.” Though they are interested in politics, especially her older son, Thomas, who was active in both his mother’s and his father’s presidential campaigns, Ms. Royal said that it’s “up to them to decide” their careers. “They are not disgusted by politics,” she said. “That’s important for me, because they have lived through a lot.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/fashion/segolene-royal-is-not-willing-to-be-a-footnote.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Peter Workman, Book Publisher With an Eye for Hits, Dies at 74

Peter Workman, the founder of Workman Publishing, whose knack for landing best-selling trade books like “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and “The Silver Palate Cookbook” made his company one of the few remaining independent book publishers in the country, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 74.

The cause was cancer, a company spokesman said.

Mr. Workman was known in the publishing world as a genially offbeat entrepreneur of nonfiction, with an on-base percentage — in publishing terms — worthy of Cooperstown: one of every three books issued by Workman sold 100,000 copies or more. His successes included blockbusters like “The Official Preppy Handbook” in 1980 and Patricia Schultz’s “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” in 2003, as well as lesser-known but perennial sellers like Richard Hittleman’s “Yoga: 28-Day Exercise Plan,” the company’s first published book, which is still in print.

Mr. Workman also created “Brain Quest,” a popular learning card game for children, and the “Page-a-Day” desk calendar, said to have been the first of its kind, with its 365 tear-off pages and a different image on each page. Workman Publishing first marketed it in 1979.

Publishing about 40 books a year, Mr. Workman was known for working closely with authors and editors (more so than they might like; he often changed cover designs and details at the last minute) and for promoting his book list relentlessly.

When the cartoonist B. Kliban’s first “Cat” book was published in 1975, for example, sales were anemic until Mr. Workman sent his staff to the Madison Square Garden cat show to peddle copies and had poster-size versions of Mr. Kliban’s richly detailed cats printed for bookstore displays. Sales picked up, and Mr. Workman, an early believer in merchandising, soon followed with Kliban-cat-printed pillows, mugs and calendars.

In 1984, Workman published “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” a practical guidebook to pregnancy, written by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, Sharon Mazel and Sandee Hathaway. It too sold poorly at first, until Mr. Workman sent the authors to speak at physicians’ and nurses’ conferences, and offered discounts to bookstores for multiple sales. It has sold more than 15 million copies and inspired a veritable library of books about pregnancy, including “Eating When You’re Expecting,” “What to Expect the First Year” and “What to Expect Before You’re Expecting.”

In 1999, a Good Housekeeping magazine survey reported that among pregnant or nursing women who had read any book about pregnancy before giving birth, 93 percent had read “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

Peter Israel Workman was born Oct. 19, 1938, in Great Neck, N.Y., to Jeanette and Bernard Workman. His father was a milliner. After graduating from Deerfield Academy and receiving his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1960, he worked as a newspaper copy boy and bookstore clerk for several years before joining the sales department of Dell Books.

He started Workman Publishing in 1967. The company originally packaged books for other publishers and began publishing its own nonfiction list in 1972. Workman has published a number of books in conjunction with The New York Times, including “The New York Times 1,000 Gardening Questions and Answers” (2003) and two collections of obituaries: “The Obits” in 2011 and “The Socialite Who Killed a Nazi With Her Bare Hands” in 2012.

“He never looked at demographics; he trusted his instincts,” said Mr. Workman’s wife, Carolan. There had been pregnancy books and cookbooks aplenty before the titles he published, she added, but “the difference was in his approach; once he decided to publish a book, he got involved in every detail.”

Besides his wife, Mr. Workman is survived by two daughters, Katie and Elizabeth, and four grandchildren.

Mr. Workman was reticent in public. In one of his few press interviews, he told The Washington Post in 2000 that he believed in the profit potential of every book he published. “Failure is nonproductive,” he said, adding, a bit cryptically, “We stick to our knitting.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/media/peter-workman-book-publisher-with-an-eye-for-hits-dies-at-74.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Ségolène Royal is Not Willing to Be a Footnote

Peter Workman, Book Publisher With an Eye for Hits, Dies at 74

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