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December 2007 Newsletter It has been a fantastic year for Ted Weinstein Literary Management and our clients. Newly published books included: a groundbreaking health guide to the emerging field of probiotics; the companion book to the hit TV series NUMB3RS; and a fascinating narrative about the love and science behind the attempt to rescue the American chestnut tree. Deal highlights include the companion book to a forthcoming Halle Berry movie; an HBO deal for clients who were Pulitzer Prize finalists for their investigative reporting on the meth epidemic; several important current affairs books on global warming and the black world of government secrecy; the first-ever writing guides from Dave Eggers and the renowned 826 Valencia writing centers; and other great books on science, history, business, true crime, health and more. Here are some details: The 826 Valencia centers have a mission: teaching writing to young people. Founded in San Francisco in 2002, today 826 Valencia has branches in New York, Los Angeles, Michigan, Seattle, Chicago and Boston. Now they're creating a series of fun writing guides that will bring their techniques to aspiring writers of all ages. This spring Sarah Knight at Henry Holt bought the first two books in a heated six-figure auction. The first guide will be The Autobiographer's Handbook, edited by Jennifer Traig, with an introduction by Dave Eggers and contributions from Jonathan Ames, Paul Collins, Stephen Elliott, Frank McCourt, Richard Rodriguez, Anthony Swofford, Amy Tan, Sarah Vowell, Sean Wilsey, Tobias Wolff and many more. It's like having coffee with fifty of your best-selling memoirist friends - and a drill instructor. The second book in the series will be a guide to writing a novel. Probiotics are the powerful health-promoting microbes in each of us, whose remarkable benefits have made them the focus of intense scientific interest. In The Probiotics Revolution: The Definitive Guide to Safe, Natural Health Solutions Using Probiotic and Prebiotic Foods and Supplements, acquired and published by Toni Burbank at Bantam/Random House, one of the most prominent researchers in the field, Gary Huffnagle, Ph.D., and best-selling co-author Sarah Wernick present an up-to-the-minute, highly accessible guide to this emerging field. Publishers Weekly praised the book as "a convincing health plan that's easy to understand and to follow." Trevor Paglen is a geographer, journalist, artist and adventurer who he has been investigating the world of state secrets, hidden budgets, covert military bases and disappeared people, a landscape Pentagon insiders call the "black world." He has climbed desolate mountains in Nevada to take eerily beautiful photos of secret Air Force facilities and snapped clandestine pictures of U.S. detention centers in Afghanistan, many of which have appeared in museums and galleries around the world. Stephen Morrow at Dutton/Penguin pre-empted Trevor's fascinating investigative narrative Blank Spots on a Map, which traces the black world's growth from the Manhattan Project through the War on Terror. He shows us a world where government secrecy has taken on a life of its own, threatening the principles of the democracy it purports to defend. The nation was riveted by the story of Michael Devlin, who kidnapped Missouri schoolboy Shawn Hornbeck four years ago and kept him captive. In January, two police officers discovered Hornbeck, along with another missing boy, Ben Ownby, who had disappeared four days earlier. Former Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Kristina Sauerwein, who was part of a team that won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize, tells the full story of this dramatic true crime case. Ronnie Gramazio at Lyons Press/Globe Pequot bought the book, entitled Invisible Chains: Shawn Hornbeck and the Kidnapping Case that Shook the Nation. Take one cheap scanner. A nice pen. A big stack of index cards. And one doodle-happy advertising copywriter with a droll, witty view of the world. What you get is a collection of hilarious and insightful charts, graphs and Venn diagrams with a world-wide following, Jessica Hagy's Indexed. Jeff Galas at Viking Studio/ Penguin stopped laughing long enough to call and quickly pre-empt her first book. Chef and Kaiser Permanente Culinary Health Educator Laura Stec and San Jose State University meteorology professor Eugene Cordero Ph.D. are collaborating on The Global Warming Diet: Cool Recipes for a Hot Planet, mixing scientific fact and culinary art to help home cooks make smart food choices in key areas that effect climate change. Gibbs Smith at Gibbs Smith Publishers pre-empted the book, which highlights the key areas where our food choices effect climate change and how climate change will affect our food choices. Public health implications comprise another vital aspect of climate change. Paul Epstein M.D., a physician, public health researcher and associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, has been traveling the globe to study these issues for decades. Now he and Science magazine correspondent Dan Ferber are writing Changing Planet, Changing Health, which Philip Turner at Union Square Press/Sterling pre-empted. Bringing readers to the front lines of climate change, they show global warming's damaging health effects first hand and propose a comprehensive array of innovative measures to ease them. On the lighter side of science, NUMB3RS is one of television's hottest prime-time crime series. The show's official math advisor, CalTech mathematician Gary Lorden Ph.D., teamed up with Stanford mathematician and NPR's "Numbers Guy," Keith Devlin Ph.D., to write the companion volume, The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS: Solving Crime with Mathematics. The book, acquired and published by David Cashion at Plume/Penguin, explains the actual mathematical techniques used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, presenting fascinating cases that illustrate how advanced mathematics can be used in state-of-the-art criminal investigations. Keith Devlin's next book is The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Birth of Probability Theory. It tells the story of the 1654 personal letter from French mathematician Blaise Pascal to Pierre De Fermat, which solved an ancient problem and founded an entire field of mathematics to make tomorrow predictable - a story of how mathematics is created. Bill Frucht at Basic Books/Perseus pre-empted it for the "Basic Ideas" series. What happens when a species vanishes? Once gone, can it be brought back? In American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, acquired and published by Blake Edgar at the University of California Press, journalist Susan Freinkel explores these timely questions through the story of one of this country's most important native trees, which has succumbed to an imported plague known as chestnut blight. A handful of optimists are working to resurrect the tree, some relying on age-old breeding methods and others on modern gene-splicing techniques. Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone and The Wild Trees, says "This is a beautifully-written account of the passing of one of the botanical wonders of the North American landscape." Publishers Weekly says "time after time, this impassioned book strikes resonant emotional chords that transform dry facts into dynamic prose." Mary Roach, bestselling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers says, "In prose as strong and quietly beautiful as the American chestnut itself, Freinkel profiles the silent catastrophe of a near-extinction and the impassioned struggle to bring a species back from the brink. A perfect book." Reinhard Engels is a librarian by training and a computer programmer by accident. Frustrated with the shape he was in, he invented a diet for himself. No funny science or calorie accounting were involved, just a few simple and mnemonic tricks for giving his willpower the upper hand. There were just three rules and one exception:    * No Snacks    * No Sweets    * No Seconds    Except (sometimes) on days that start with "S" That's it. The "No-S Diet." He posted the plan on the Web, and soon hundreds of people from around the globe were writing to thank him and tell him about their own triumphs with the diet. Marian Lizzi at Perigee/Penguin learned of Reinhard's success and quickly preempted the full length book, which Reinhard is writing with co-author Ben Kallen. Ms. Cahill for Congress: How a Sixth Grade Teacher Taught Us All a Lesson is a memoir by Tierney Cahill, written with best-selling co-author Linden Gross. Cahill, a Reno schoolteacher and single mom, ran for Congress on a dare from her students - but only on the condition that they manage her political campaign. The experience changed Tierney's life and the lives of her students, and this inspiring story is now being made into the movie "Class Act" starring Halle Berry. Julia Cheiffetz at Random House Ballantine won the book in a heated three-day, six-figure auction. Nationally renowned branding expert Peter Montoya's self-published book The Brand Called You has sold more than 65,000 copies worldwide and was the #3 best selling business book in Japan in 2005. Now he and co-author Tim Vendehey are revising the book with even more up-to-date material on Internet branding, the power and peril of 24/7 news and entertainment media, and a unique, four-step Personal Branding program that makes this the most effective, intuitive and up-to-date success guide for self-employed professionals and entrepreneurs. Lauren Lynch at McGraw-Hill won the book at auction. Steve Suo and Erin Hoover Barnett of the Portland Oregonian were finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for their investigative work on the country's devastating methamphetamine epidemic. The Washington Monthly called Steve and Erin's series "one of the best pieces of reporting anywhere." Now HBO and Michael DeLuca Productions have bought the film and TV rights to the project, tentatively titled Drug of Choice, which will intertwine the stories of a DEA bureaucrat's solitary attempt to halt the spread of meth, the pharma lobbyists and politicians who undermined his effort, the traffickers who continue to feed this problem, and the impact on one family that has lived out the consequences. So there you have it, a quick look back at a busy and wonderful year. Thanks for reading this update and best wishes for a happy, healthy and successful new year. .

©2010 Ted Weinstein Literary Management New York • San Francisco