Hi Everyone-

Well, BookExpo America wrapped up on Sunday, and it was quite a show. I had some lovely dinners and met some terrific authors, including Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants, which I mentioned in this space last week, Neil Gabler, author of the forthcoming biography of Walt Disney (more on him in a moment), and even John Updike. My staff and I also attended a ton of fun parties, welcomed publishers and other booksellers to our stores, and of course, hiked the floor of the convention center in search of treasure. A few things I'm excited about for fall: extensive biographies of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, from Penguin Press and Random House, respectively, a hilarious-looking book from Amy Sedaris from Little Brown/Hachette, a terrific novel called The Meaning of Night by first time author Michael Cox (I've already read it and loved it), a collection of the beloved New Yorker artist Sempe from Phaidon, and perhaps the biggest item for our customers for the upcoming holiday season: a new translation of The Aeneid by none other than Robert Fagles, whose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey took the bookselling world by storm when they were published in the nineties. It's already looking like a bounteous fall!

The author with whom I got to have the most extensive interaction was Neal Gabler, author of a forthcoming biography from Knopf of Walt Disney. Disney is not a subject to whom I'm naturally drawn, but Gabler convinced me, after talking to him, that his subject is utterly fascinating, and I'm waiting with great anticipation to dig into this new biography. I also would like to mention Gabler's previous biography, which I loved, of Walter Winchell. Winchell is a brilliant documentation of the nature of celebrity in America, as well as a very gripping narrative of one of the twentieth century's predominant brokers of fame. I had no idea the level of fame and power Winchell possessed in his time, and the biography traces his rise from vaudeville, his rivalry with Ed Sullivan, his tremendously popular column and radio show, his spectacular feuds with such notables as Lucille Ball, his political switch from Roosevelt supporter to stooge for Joseph McCarthy, and the ultimate destruction of what mattered the most to him - his fame and influence (only his daughter attended his funeral). It's a highly readable yet very important twentieth-century American life. While we wait on his no-doubt equally compelling Disney book, stop by the stores and pick up Winchell.

Talk to you again soon,

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer