Pantheon Books

bookriot: 5 Books to Watch for in June So happy The World...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:12:44 -0400

5 Books to Watch for in June

So happy The World Without You made the list! Read an excerpt now.

“This year, we celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, and...

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:25:01 -0400

“This year, we celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, and we’re also commemorating an important anniversary. One hundred-fifty years ago, General Ulysses Grant issued an order – known as General Orders Number 11 – that would have expelled Jews, ‘as a class,’ from what was then known as the military Department of the Tennessee. It was wrong. Even if it was 1862, even if official acts of anti-Semitism were all too common around the world, it was wrong and indicative of an ugly strain of thought.

But what happened next could have only taken place in America. Groups of American Jews protested General Grant’s decision. A Jewish merchant from Kentucky traveled here, to the White House, and met with President Lincoln in person. After their meeting, President Lincoln revoked the order - one more reason why we like President Lincoln.

And to General Grant’s credit, he recognized that he had made a serious mistake. So later in his life, he apologized for this order, and as President, he went out of his way to appoint Jews to public office and to condemn the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe.

Like so many groups, Jews have had to fight for their piece of the American dream. But this country holds a special promise: that if we stand up for the traditions we believe in and the values we share, then our wrongs can be made right, our union can be made more perfect, and our world can be repaired.”

- President Barack Obama, commemorating Jewish American Heritage Month on 5/30/12. Watch the full speech here, and read more about General Orders Number 11 in When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan D. Sarna, out now from Schocken Books.

from Unterzakhn by Leela Corman

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:21:16 -0400

from Unterzakhn by Leela Corman

“The right understanding of any matter and a...

Tue, 29 May 2012 14:02:16 -0400

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

- Franz Kafka, The Trial

On my early visits to China in the mid-1980s, I assumed that as...

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:35:40 -0400

On my early visits to China in the mid-1980s, I assumed that as a Western journalist I would be noticed, followed, surveilled — and I was. Most of the time today, however, foreigners are noticed only to the extent that they provide an opportunity for, or create an obstacle to, a business deal some Chinese dreamer has in his or her sights.

These are the successes. Some of the limits and failures are well publicized: among others, the environmental despoliation that has made cancer the leading cause of death in China; the demographic shift caused by the one-child policy that threatens to make China the first society to grow old before it grows rich; and the problems of transparency and accountability in the Chinese governing system, illustrated most recently by the Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng cases.

Those, at least, are the problems that get the headlines. But there’s a bigger one, which the Chinese government and public are only now starting to recognize: whether the success of China’s current model is leading toward a “low-wage trap,” in which its outsourcing factories get bigger but don’t necessarily move the country toward the higher tiers of the world economic structure.

Put differently, will Chinese companies ever go from assembling iPads to fostering future Apples of their own — or, similarly, from selling knockoff copies of Western movies, music, search engines and online apps to establishing China’s own pop-culture industries with worldwide profits and soft-power appeal?

via The New York Times, “Can China Escape the Low-Wage Trap?” by James Fallows, author of China Airborne.

explore-blog: Faulkner was a postmaster, Kafka an insurance...

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:44:59 -0400

explore-blog:

Faulkner was a postmaster, Kafka an insurance agent, Brontë a governess. The day jobs of famous authors.

rachelfershleiser: In early June, the publishing industry takes...

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:59:34 -0400

rachelfershleiser:

In early June, the publishing industry takes Manhattan for Book Expo America. We’re taking the opportunity to celebrate the millions of amazing readers and writers who call the Tumblr community home.

Join us at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe for free drinks, fun swag, mixing, mingling, and readings by Edan Lepucki, Alexander Chee, and Baratunde Thurston.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the...

Fri, 25 May 2012 11:20:54 -0400

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

austinkleon: I wrote a little thing on my blog about how to...

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:08:31 -0400

Maira Kalman

John Lennon

Phil Collins

Jimi Hendrix

Steve Brodner

Lynda Barry

austinkleon:

I wrote a little thing on my blog about how to improve your handwriting. Here’s a little gallery of handwriting I’ve tried to rip off over the years…

If our handwriting could improve just a tetch, then maybe all the books we send out to contest winners and bloggers wouldn’t make it look like we have some kind of army of child interns doing mailings for us.

"May" by Christina Rossetti

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:33:59 -0400

I cannot tell you how it was,
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and sunny day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last egg had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
Like all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old, and cold, and gray.

by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

latimes: A totally Californian poet laureate: Juan Felipe...

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:55:06 -0400

latimes:

A totally Californian poet laureate: Juan Felipe Herrera, 63, is the son of migrant farmworkers and plugged in to modern culture. He’d like to make the entire state a democratic, virtual poetry workshop.

Photo: Professor Juan Felipe Herrera, recently appointed California’s poet laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown, leads a poetry workshop at UC Riverside. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

At Comics: Philosophy and Practice this weekend in Chicago,...

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:02:00 -0400

At Comics: Philosophy and Practice this weekend in Chicago, Chris Ware revealed more details about his highly-anticipated latest project, Building Stories, coming from Pantheon this October. As attendee Kathleen Dunley put it, Building Stories is “many little books in a beautiful box.”

Stay tuned, we can’t wait to share more of this exciting new graphic novel with you.

“Chris Ware’s BUILDING STORIES is the rarest kind of brilliance; it is simultaneously heartbreaking, hilarious, shockingly intimate and deeply insightful. There isn’t a graphic artist alive or dead who has used the form this wonderfully to convey the passage of time, loneliness, longing, frustration or bliss. It is the reader’s choice where and how to begin this monumental work — the only regret you will have in starting it is knowing that it will end.”

- J.J. Abrams

“But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which...

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:12:16 -0400

“But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself, into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously…”

― Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch

Okay, who wants to come over to Random House HQ and help us...

Fri, 18 May 2012 20:24:27 -0400

Okay, who wants to come over to Random House HQ and help us build a fort out of the many, many boxes of galleys we found parked in our hallway this morning? (Can you tell BEA is almost upon us?)

Random House: 13 Gifts for Graduates from Preschool to PhD

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:34:32 -0400

Random House: 13 Gifts for Graduates from Preschool to PhD:

randomhouse:

“You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So… get on your way!”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Oh, The Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss
The Best Advice I Ever Got, by Katie Couric
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012, by…

“The problem with unintended consequences isn’t with the...

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:41:00 -0400

“The problem with unintended consequences isn’t with the consequences, it’s with the unintended. Just because you didn’t intend for something to happen doesn’t mean you didn’t want it to happen.”

- Charles Yu, Sorry Please Thank You

We’re so, so excited for this book, which comes out 7/24!

thecomposites: Rachael Rosen, Do Androids Dream of Electric...

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:49:01 -0400

thecomposites:

Rachael Rosen, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

When he landed the police department hovercar on the roof of the Rosen Association Building in Seattle he found a young woman waiting for him. Black-haired and slender, wearing the new huge dust-filtering glasses…She had, on her sharply defined small face, an expression of sullen distaste. She eyed him from beneath long black lashes, probably artificial…Rachael’s proportions, he noticed once again, were odd; with her heavy mass of dark hair her head seemed large, and because of her diminutive breasts her body assumed a lank, almost childlike stance. But her great eyes, with their elaborate lashes, could only be those of a grown woman…Some female androids seemed to him pretty; he had found himself physically attracted by several.

Not a bad likeness!

China Airborne by James Fallows is out today! About the...

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:59:05 -0400

China Airborne by James Fallows is out today! About the book:

More than two-thirds of the new airports under construction today are being built in China. Chinese airlines expect to triple their fleet size over the next decade and will account for the fastest-growing market for Boeing and Airbus. But the Chinese are determined to be more than customers. In 2011, China announced its Twelfth Five-Year Plan, which included the commitment to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars to jump-start its aerospace industry. Its goal is to produce the Boeings and Airbuses of the future. Toward that end, it acquired two American companies: Cirrus Aviation, maker of the world’s most popular small propeller plane, and Teledyne Continental, which produces the engines for Cirrus and other small aircraft.

In China Airborne, James Fallows documents, for the first time, the extraordinary scale of this project and explains why it is a crucial test case for China’s hopes for modernization and innovation in other industries. He makes clear how it stands to catalyze the nation’s hyper-growth and hyper- urbanization, revolutionizing China in ways analogous to the building of America’s transcontinental railroad in the nineteenth century. Fallows chronicles life in the city of Xi’an, home to more than 250,000 aerospace engineers and assembly workers, and introduces us to some of the hucksters, visionaries, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who seek to benefit from China’s pursuit of aerospace supremacy. He concludes by examining what this latest demonstration of Chinese ambition means for the United States and the rest of the world—and the right ways to understand it.

Read an excerpt here.

(Photo of Xi’an Xianyang International Airport via Wiki Commons.)

Science geeks (or those who appreciate a good, funny tale of...

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:50:48 -0400

Science geeks (or those who appreciate a good, funny tale of genius), take five minutes out of your day to read this fantastic comic from The Oatmeal please.

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No...

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:03:52 -0400

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.”

— Horace Mann

Looks like whoever makes the fortune cookies for our local Chinese take-out place is a Mann fan. Or a book fan. Or a thinkexist.com fan. Either way, we’ll take this as a good omen for the week.