Retired Gen. David H. Petraeus is probably the most photographed soldier of his generation. The pistol in his left hand and the whiskey in his right would definitely be a new look. Michael Hastings, who vaulted to fame in 2010 when he penned a controversial profile of another top Army general , is out with a new book this week and, while the publisher is promising new “shocking behind-the-scenes” details about America’s military commanders, the book’s cover might prove shock enough. Read full article > >

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Was Petraeus the model for book’s drunk general?

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the Times Company and the publisher of The New York Times, will serve as interim chief executive while the company looks for a new C.E.O.

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Media Decoder Blog: Janet Robinson, Chief Executive of Times Co., to Step Down

And now, from the Well, What Did You Expect file: Chuck Palahniuk imagines a great hell. His matter-of-fact underworld is the charming setting of “Damned,” a slight but very funny coming-of-age (after-you’re-dead) novel, which the publisher describes with rare book-jacket precision as “the Inferno by way of The Breakfast Club .” Read full article > >

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Book review: ‘Damned,’ by Chuck Palahniuk

If this book were read by an intelligent person who spent the last 10 years on, say, Mars, she would have no idea that Dick Cheney was the vice president in one of the most hapless American administrations of modern times. There are hints, to be sure, that things did not always go swimmingly under George W. Bush and Cheney, but these are surrounded by triumphalist accounts of events that many readers — and future historians — are unlikely to consider triumphs. This is not surprising. The genre of statesman’s memoir rarely produces self-criticism, or even much candor. Apparently, the point is to redeem your large advance from the publisher with a brisk, self-complimenting account of your life and times, with emphasis on your moment in the limelight. There should, of course, be a dash of “news” and a few frank passages about your true feelings — about others, not yourself. Read full article > >

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‘In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir’ by Dick Cheney

By Julian Fisher Illnesses that public figures have are much in the news of late — Ronald Reagan and his Alzheimer’s disease the most noteworthy — and I recently came across a brief description in a neurology journal of a medical problem that Franklin D. Roosevelt began to experience as he looked toward his fourth term — brief episodes of confusion that presumably represented epilepsy.  These symptoms were thoughtfully explained in the article, written by a neurologist, Steven Lomazow, who has co-written a book on the subject. But for any of you to read that article would cost you dearly. Why? The dirty little secret of scholarly publishing. Let me explain how this obscure corner of publishing works (or doesn’t) and let you be the judge.  [Cautionary note to business school grads: The market has long been monopolized by mega-corporations making mega-bucks. But new business models abound. In the spirit of full disclosure, I started a not-for-profit to offer an alternative to the traditional models.] You might argue that academic publishing affects only academics, but it does not.  Anyone with an interest in or question about health or art history or building a house or running a business — the list is endless — might want to learn the newest knowledge — something they might find in an academic article.  Unless you already had a subscription (might run into the tens of thousands of dollars) to that specialty journal or had special access through a college or university, you might well have to pay anywhere from $20 to $50 for limited access to that one article.  If you needed to look over several articles and were not sure which one would be of interest, the meter would tick up quite a toll and very quickly. So why, you ask, is this so costly?  The answer is relatively simple.  In the pre-Internet age, when a professor needed to publish new research (publish-or-perish has long been a byword for success and promotion), the scholar needed to submit the findings in the form of an article to a journal where editors (scholars in the same area of study) assigned the article to reviewers (more scholars in the same area) to determine whether the piece contributed to advancing knowledge in that area and should be published. Fairly simple argument so far? Now let’s pull the curtain aside and look at costs.  The scholar who submitted the article customarily had a grant or salary that funded the research, and there was never an expectation that the journal would pay the scholar for the article (as opposed to a commissioned article in a magazine like The Atlantic or similar).  The journal editor generally works without additional remuneration – the honor of being editor of an important journal in that field – and the reviewers (also unpaid) similarly view their activities as part of their academic duties, to advance the field. So why do you have to pay $50 to see the article?  In the old days, publishers had to print it — something academics did not know how to do or want to … and the publishers printed the articles (in journals).  You the reader had a choice: subscribe to the journal or pay by the article.  Either way, it was a good business — for the publisher, with percentage profits well in excess of any major computer company.  What are the costs in this new Internet age? As you might suspect, they have plummeted (an article I wrote several years ago here is helpful), to roughly 1/100 of what they were if you produce the article as an electronic document only rather than in print.  Print is no longer necessary or even desired.  Why, then, the $30-$50 financial firewall that you need to pay to see the article I want to show you?  In part, tradition.  In part, publishers keep doing what they do and the scholars do not complain much, since their subscriptions come through their grants or university libraries.  But the libraries complain, individuals like all of you reading this should complain, and everyone in the developing world complains. There are some initiatives to change this situation.  The National Institutes of Health now insist that research they fund, when published, must be made available somewhere at no cost.  Some journals are made available online selectively to lesser developed nations.  But there is no mad dash to change the system, even with the open-source software that supports the online publishing process and even multi-site synchronized archiving.  The traditional publishers continue to make their traditional profits, and I still cannot show you the article.  But you can buy the book about FDR for 1/10 of the cost of the article.  Now isn’t that a great idea? Julian Fisher, MD is a Boston-based neurologist and medical information entrepreneur.

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Read This Academic Journal Article, but Prepare to Pay

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho says his publisher has learned that his books have been banned in Iran, though Iranian officials will not confirm the ban. Coelho’s publisher in Iran is Arash Hejazi, the doctor seen in 2009 video trying to save a woman…

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Author Paulo Coelho Banned in Iran

Sens. Joe Lieberman (Left) and Diane Feinstein (Right) with the publisher/founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange (Center).

The US military oversees the destruction of 9,500 copies of a book it claims revealed military secrets, after reimbursing the publisher’s printing costs.

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Pentagon ‘pulps’ 9,500 spy books

A primer on the pioneering lifestyle store that introduced good design to the people Before Crate & Barrel and Design Within Reach, there was Design Research, the retail concept widely credited with reinventing furniture shopping by pioneering a lifestyle approach that changed the look of bedrooms and stores from coast to coast. The brainchild of architect Ben Thompson, he founded a new way of decorating and living when he opened his first Design Research store in 1953 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a story chronicled in the new book ” Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes .” Through photos, press clippings and other ephemera, the Pentagram-designed primer outlines his philosophy and the impact of breaking away from mass-produced furniture sold through dominant mega-department stores. His widow Jane Thompson, founder of I.D. magazine, architect and urban planner, weighs in too, documenting how her husband not only introduced “lifestyle” under one retail shopping roof, but popularized the idea that good design should be accessible to everyone in postwar America. Design Research became an influential modernist mini-chain that mixed design objects from Charles and Ray Eames, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen with French rustic pottery, no-name Bolivian sweaters and $1 Mexican drinking glasses. For fashion in the late 50s, just when women sought equality in society, Design Research became the first representative for Marimekko’s loose, colorful and graphic shifts. Fashion had gone from tight waists, pointy bosoms and round hips to the tent-like chemise. American women embraced the untraditional, “high casual” style that gave them permission to move freely in comfort. For Ben, modernism didn’t mean minimalism, oversimplification or monochrome. He believed that people should be encouraged to imagine for themselves what their homes could be inside. All they needed was a forum of the best available national and international goods to pick from. He built a retail store that was a department store without the departments, hence creating “lifestyle.” Design Research went on to have stores in New York and San Francisco, among other cities, through the late ’60s, inspiring budding retailer entrepreneurs like Gordon Segal, co-founder of Crate & Barrel, and Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach. Segal was directly influenced by DR in 1965 when he realized a store’s environment, visual display and music were integral to how it made a customer feel. As a teenager in 1968, Forbes fell under the spell of modern design, when he saw a friend’s home outfitted with DR goods. Pick up “Design Research” directly from the publisher, Chronicle Books or get it from Amazon .

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Design Research