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Great reviews for Sean McMeekin

28 Jan 2013

Sean McMeekin’s latest book July 1914: Countdown to War is getting terrific reviews, including the following:

“[A] superbly researched political history of the weeks between the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I…. McMeekin’s work is a fine diplomatic history of the period, a must-read for serious students of WWI, and a fascinating story for anyone interested in modern history.” Publishers Weekly

“[A] thoroughly rewarding account that spares no nation regarding the causes of World War I…. McMeekin delivers a gripping, almost day-by-day chronicle of the increasingly frantic maneuvers of European civilian leaders who mostly didn’t want war and military leaders who had less objection.” KIrkus Reviews

“Sean McMeekin is establishing himself as a—or even the—leading young historian of modern Europe. Here he turns his gifts to the outbreak of war in July 1914 and has written another masterpiece.” Norman Stone, author of World War Two: A Short History

“This is a meticulously researched and vividly written reconstruction of the decisions that led to war in July 1914. McMeekin captures the human drama of this fateful month and offers a provocative assessment of the different players’ moral responsibility.” James Sheehan, author of Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe

“Winners write the histories, so wars are misunderstood. Sean McMeekin takes a wider stance to get a fresh angle of vision on The Great War, and casts all war-making in a new light.” Charles Hill, Diplomat in Residence at Yale University, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and author of Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism

“Sean McMeekin has given us a riveting and fast-paced account of some of the most important diplomatic and military decisions of the 20th century. He depicts with chilling clarity the confusion, the incompetence, and the recklessness with which Europe’s leaders went to war in that fateful summer. Any understanding of the world we inhabit today must begin with an examination of the events of July 1914. McMeekin provides his readers with a balanced and detailed analysis of the events that gave birth to the modern age.” Michael Neiberg, author of The Blood of Free Men

Writers' Forum

28 Jan 2013

The agency’s new fiction agent David Haviland is featured on the cover of next month’s Writers’ Forum magazine.

Writers’ Forum

Survivor Sam Pivnik is interviewed in Sunday Express

28 Jan 2013

Holocaust survivor Sam Pivnik has given a moving interview to the Sunday Express.

Sam Pivnik interview

Sam’s memoir ‘Survivor’ was recently published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Lots of film interest in Fanny & Stella

26 Jan 2013

Neil McKenna’s Fanny & Stella, just published by Faber, has got off to a cracking start with a fierce bidding war for drama rights and a succession of excellent reviews including :

You would need to be a very dull - or prim - dog indeed not to find this a terrifically entertaining story. Neil McKenna has thrown himself into it with unfettered glee. If the opportunity arises to describe an anal fistula - and it does, frequently - he does not shirk it. [McKenna is] a sufficiently crisp, colourful and funny writer.’ Evening Standard

http://www.standard.co.uk/arts/book/great-drag-queens-of-their-day-8464731.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pzqzy from about 53 minutes in.

Neil was also on the BBC World Service ‘World Update’ at 11am today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0137xh9

‘Rich and absorbing … McKenna has done a tremendous job of recreating Victorian London’s gay subculture, weaving newspaper reports, police documents and contemporary diaries into a jolly rollicking narrative. It would be an understatement to call it a colourful book … Fanny and Stella is a cracking read.’ The Sunday Times

‘McKenna provides what is certainly the definitive account of the Boulton/Park story … McKenna lays bare a fascinating tapestry of interrelated personal histories.’History Today

Paperback publicity for Katharine Quarmby's Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People

25 Jan 2013

Three recent pieces of good publicity for the paperback edition of Katharine Quarmby’s Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People

Review in the Sunday Times Culture by Dominic Lawson. (20/01/13) ‘For several years Quarmby has been investigating crimes of violence against Britain’s disabled, and Scapegoat is the outcome of her grim research. What she has uncovered is that disabled people are the victims of murderous attacks just because of their condition, but also that the judicial system frequently treat crimes with a lack of rigour that would be inconceivable if the victims had been singled out because of the colour of their skin.’

Katharine was interviewed about Scapegoat on Newstalk Radio http://media.newstalk.ie/archive

Review in Big Issue in the North. • ‘A shocking and powerful polemic.’

Damaged remains at #26 in the New York Times Bestseller List this week

24 Jan 2013

Congratulations to Cathy Glass whose memoir Damaged remains at #26 in the New York Times e book Bestseller List this week.

Rave pre-pub quotes for Maths on Trial

23 Jan 2013

Maths on Trial by mother-daughter writing team Coralie Colmez and Leila Schneps and published by Basic on 28th March is already attracting rave reviews including:

“[A]n entertaining tour of courtroom calculations gone wrong…. The cases they describe are independently interesting, and the mathematical overlay makes them doubly so…. [A]s the problems are unraveled and the correct analyses explained, readers will enjoy a satisfying sense of discovery. Schneps and Colmez write with lucidity and an infectious enthusiasm, making this an engaging and unique blend of true crime and mathematics.” Publishers Weekly

“Schneps and Colmez are a mother-daughter pair sophisticated in the ways of probability…. The authors…fill out the volume with wonderful accounts of frauds and forgeries…. [T]he authors’ analysis of the recent Amanda Knox case [is] particularly chilling. Required reading for aspiring lawyers, but also intrinsically fascinating in its depiction of the frailty of human judgments.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The originator of sociology, Auguste Comte, said that applying probability to moral questions was the scandal of mathematics. Math On Trial charts the ambivalent—occasionally disastrous—role that math has played in several classic and some recent legal cases. It vividly shows how the desire for ‘scientific’ certainty can lead even well-meaning courts to commit grave injustice. There ought to be a copy in every jury room.” —Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, authors of Chances Are…: Adventures in Probability and Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err Is Human

“Taut and gripping, Math on Trial just might establish a new genre, in which true crime story meets the best of popular science. Utterly absorbing from start to finish.” —Steven Strogatz, Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of x

Another Forgotten Child is at #18 in the bestsellers chart.

23 Jan 2013

Cathy Glass’s fostering memoir Another Forgotten Child remains in the paperback non-fiction chart for a nineteenth week.

'Thinking in Numbers' enters top ten in France

23 Jan 2013

Daniel Tammet continues to enjoy success in France, where L’éternité Dans Une Heure (‘Thinking in Numbers’) has just entered the Livres Hebdo non-fiction bestseller list at number 9, after just 3 days of sales. As a result, the publishers have already ordered a reprint.

Kirk Norcross memoir sold to Pan Macmillan

22 Jan 2013

Pan Macmillan have bought the autobiography of ‘The Only Way is Essex’ star Kirk Norcross, Essex Boy: My Story , to be published in April 2013.

One of the original TOWIE cast members, Kirk is portrayed as the good-looking rich kid, splashing out thousands on bottles of champagne and dating glamorous women like Amy Childs and Lauren Pope. But there’s a lot more to Kirk and the reality is that the first 18 years of his life tell a very different story – one he is only now ready to reveal. A childhood marred by poverty as Kirk moved between a hostel and a council house on one of Essex’s toughest estates, left him suffering from panic attacks and crippling self-doubt. Reconciling with his dad, by now a millionaire, thrust him into a very different world – one with its own set of challenges. Writing with complete honesty about the two sides of his Essex life, Kirk talks about his rise to fame on Lime Pictures & ITV2’s hit show TOWIE, his time in the Celebrity Big Brother house, his much-followed romances and who his real friends are.