Brookings Press Blog

Media Hits

Washington Post, NPR & Publishers Weekly...Oh My!

- Jay Mathews, Washington Post education columnist, dedicated his column last Tuesday to research presented in The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education, Clive Belfield and Henry M. Levin, eds. You can read the column here.

- Electronic voting and tech user frustrations were the focus of this past Tuesday’s Kojo Nnamdi Show on NPR. During the second segment Ben Bederson discussed Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, by Paul S. Herrnson, Richard G. Niemi, Michael J. Hanmer, Benjamin B. Bederson, and Frederick C. Conrad. You can listen to the show here.

- The January 21 issue of Publishers Weekly is the Spring Books issue. The following titles from our new Spring 2008 catalog [pdf] are included in the listings:

• Hardcover/Contemporary Affairs: Freedom’s Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy, by Tamara Cofman Wittes
• Hardcover/Politics: Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution, by James P. Pfiffner
• Paperback/Contemporary Affairs: Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America, Audrey Singer, Susan W. Hardwick and Caroline B. Brettell, eds.
• Paperback/Politics: Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World, Marina S. Ottaway and Julia Choucair-Vizoso, eds. (a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace book)

Banned Books Week, September 29-October 6

The 25th anniversary of Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Twenty-five years after Banned Books Week was first celebrated, individuals and groups still seek to deny access to reading materials. Thanks to efforts such as Banned Books Week, these attempts to curb intellectual freedom continue to provoke controversy.

At the heart of the conflict is the appropriateness of content for specific audiences versus the freedom for individuals to choose the books they want to read. Why do groups attempt to limit selected titles? Which books have recently been targeted? Check out the 2006 banned books list on the American Library Associations’s web site.

Celebrate the freedom to read not just this week but all year long!

- Learn more about Banned Books Week from the American Library Association.

- See the top 10 books challenged in 2006.

- Demonstrate your support for maintaining the freedom to read, by posting this web button on your website or blog.      

'Tis the Season

Regional Fall Trade Shows Modify Programs

For years now Brookings Press has participated, through our independent sales representatives, in a majority of the regional book association fall trade shows, including: Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA), Midwest Booksellers Association (MBA), Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA), New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA), Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), and Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA).

This year, we’re excited to be attending NAIBA in Baltimore alongside our sales rep—we’ll be in booth #521, so stop by and say hi! While we couldn’t miss out on an opportunity so close to home, we are also looking forward to the new program NAIBA is introducing, which in essence transforms the trade show format to a booksellers’ sales conference. It seems that the regional booksellers associations were collectively revamping and Publishers Weekly recently noted some of the program metamorphoses occurring this fall:

Among the changes happening this year are Mountains and Plains' inclusion of editors as speakers; Great Lakes having a movable feast with reps instead of authors; North Atlantic creating a sales conference model; and the Southern region's shift in trade show hours that might allow for one fewer hotel night for attendees.

The regional shows provide a local focus in addition to a more intimate setting for networking than BookExpo America, and this year’s evolution is an exciting milestone in independent bookselling.

- Learn more about PNBA in Portland, OR, September 19-21.

- Learn more about GLBA in Schaumburg, IL, September 28-30.

- Learn more about MPIBA in Denver, CO, September 27-30.

- Learn more about MBA in Minneapolis, MN, October 5-7.

- Learn more about NCIBA in Oakland, CA, October 5-7.

- Learn more about NAIBA in Baltimore, MD, October 14-15 – and visit us in booth #521!

(Illustration by Calef Brown/Salon)

Political Scientists Run Amok in the Windy City

Brookings Press displays new books at American Political Science Association convention

Over Labor Day weekend, the Brookings Press joined 7,000 other participants at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association. We proudly displayed our newest materials in American and comparative politics, public policy and administration, and international relations while enjoying the pleasures of late summer in beautiful Chicago.

In addition to exhibiting, we met with a number of scholars to discuss possible manuscripts or, in several cases, projects that are already well underway and will soon be Brookings books. We even found time to party a little—our annual reception was a big hit.

Among our most popular titles at APSA were Blindside, edited by Francis Fukuyama and A Matter of Faith: Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election, edited by David Campbell of Notre Dame.

Next year’s APSA convention will be held August 28 through the 31st, in Boston.

- Learn more about APSA.

- Check out another report on APSA 2007 from an acquisitions editor at Penn Press.

Harry Potter to the Rescue?

New study questions Harry Potter’s influence on adolescent reading

At midnight on July 21, bookstores across the globe witnessed a publisher’s dream: thousands, if not millions, of people queued up to buy a book. Such scenes have become familiar in recent years with the orchestrated releases of the new installments of J. K. Rowling’s epic Harry Potter series. The hoopla was even more remarkable for the release of the seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book’s first printing in the United States alone was a record 12 million copies, and Amazon.com announced it had received 2.2 million advance orders for the book, surpassing the previous record of 1.5 million pre-orders of the sixth book in the series.

Such figures appear to support the conventional wisdom that J. K. Rowling has created, as a recent Boston Globe article put it, a "publishing revolution" and "a whole generation of new readers." The Harry Potter series is credited with making reading popular again among adolescents, generating a burgeoning market for children’s fantasy novels, and prompting the establishment of a New York Times bestseller list for children’s literature.

The Boston Globe reports, however, that a forthcoming study shows that adolescent reading is still in decline. While reading rates are increasing for the 7-11 age range, they drop dramatically among teenagers. The study also finds that some children read only Harry Potter and that other genres of children’s books have fallen by the wayside. Still, the excitement around the release of Harry’s final adventure leaves publishers wondering if, and when, the next blockbuster series will come along.

- Read about the release of Book 7 on cnn.com.

- Read the Boston Globe’s article, "In the end, Potter magic extends only so far."