For me the fun of editing and writing work lies in learning from authors’ varied sensibilities and expertise, and in helping to make good books better. Here are some of my recent freelance projects, followed by a selected list of books I acquired and edited at W. W. Norton.

As freelance collaborator or editor/book doctor:

FL!P: How to Turn Everything You Know on Its Head – and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings, by Peter Sheahan (William Morrow, HarperCollins UK, Random House Australia)

Not yet thirty years old, Peter Sheahan is a top motivational speaker and a sought-after consultant on organizational transformation and branding to Google, L’Oreal, News Corporation, Ernst & Young, BMW, Sony, and Coca Cola, among other leading companies.

Let the Dog Decide: The Revolutionary 15-Minute-a-Day Program to Train Your Dog – Gently and Reliably, by Dale Stavroff (Avalon, HarperCollins Canada)

Dale Stavroff’s revolutionary approach to dog training shows you how to work with your dog’s natural attributes – its independent will, insatiable curiosity, and strong instinctual drives – not against them. This unique, easy-to-follow system of informal handling and three fun five-minute training sessions a day makes the dog an active, eager participant in training.

“Dale Stavroff truly understands the way the mind of a dog works. He has helped to instill happiness and confidence in both of my dogs and has shown me how to do the same."

           -- Anthony Kiedis, Red Hot Chili Peppers

“Dale Stavroff is a great guy and a fabulous trainer.”

          -- Dr. Laura Schlesinger

“This gentle method can be used to teach basic obedience and to deal with problem behaviors. Highly recommended.”

          -- Library Journal

“Mr. Stavroff … possesses tremendous insight and intuition about the human-canine relationship.” 

          -- Linda Frum, National Post (Toronto, Canada)

The Marketing Mavens, by Noel Capon, R. C. Kopf Professor of International Marketing, Columbia Business School (Crown Business)

“Capon builds a case that marketing should be the concern of the entire business, not just the marketing department. … a guide to help any company become a top marketer.”

          -- Christopher Lawton, Wall Street Journal

“A fascinating book with a much-needed, different point of view: one I have personally held for a very long time. This is big-picture marketing about companies whose entire orientation is ‘to the market.’ It’s about people at vibrant and successful companies who orient themselves to the outside world of consumers, customers, and users. Everything Marketing Mavens think of and everything they do is in the context of the people who are actually buying the product and experiencing the brand. The Marketing Mavens is excellent. It’s the right book at the right time.”

          -- Shelly Lazarus, chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

I Had the Right to Remain Silent … But I Didn’t Have the Ability, by Ron White (Dutton)

A headliner on the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour,” Ron White is also one of the country’s most successful comedians as a solo act. His DVD, They Call Me Tater Salad, has sold over 1.5 million copies. This book presents the best of his onstage act with “backstage” chapters that give his ribald, hilarious storytelling even greater scope.

A New York Times and Publishers Weekly hardcover bestseller.

Back Rx: A 15-Minute-a-Day Yoga- & Pilates-Based Program to End Low Back Pain, by Vijay Vad, M.D., and Hilary Hinzmann (Gotham)

“Dr. Vad’s innovative research on the professional tennis and golf tours and the practicality of Back Rx make it suitable for professional athletes and weekend warriors, as well as couch potatoes.”

          -- Bill Norris, sports medicine trainer, Association of Tennis Professionals Circuit

The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter, by Philip M. Tierno, Jr., Ph.D. (Pocket)

“At last, here is an authoritative yet readable account by a distinguished medical scientist.

          -- Norman F. Cantor, author of the New York Times bestseller In the Wake of the Plague

“A masterful journey through the world of germs."

          -- Edward F. Bottone, Ph.D., Mount Sinai School of Medicine

As freelance editor:

 Death Song, by Michael McGarrity (Dutton)

The eleventh novel in the bestselling series featuring the New Mexico police detective Kevin Kerney.

“Michael McGarrity gets better and better. How good it is to follow a detective created by a man who has been there and done that.”

          -- Tony Hillerman

“Each new Michael McGarrity novel … is better than the last.”

          -- Los Angeles Times

The Great Plague: The Story of London’s Most Deadly Year, by A. Lloyd Moote and Dorothy G. Moote (Johns Hopkins University Press)

“I read this book with enormous pleasure. It succeeds perfectly on all levels, from new scholarship for academics to a great read for everyone else.”

          -- Roy Porter

Ron Brown: An Uncommon Life, by Steven A. Holmes (Wiley)

A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year”

“From Harlem’s black bourgeoisie to the apex of political power … unflinchingly, astutely reported.”

          -- Time

The Versatile Leader: Make the Most of Your Strengths – Without Overdoing It, by Bob Kaplan with Rob Kaiser (Pfeiffer/Wiley)

“… a valuable mapping of the terrain of outstanding leadership, and a useful roadmap for how to get there.”

          -- Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery, by Sander L. Gilman (Princeton University Press)

“An extraordinarily learned, endlessly fascinating book that deals with a hot contemporary subject.”

          -- Elaine Showalter

Mood Genes: Hunting for Origins of Mania and Depression, by Samuel H. Barondes (W. H. Freeman)

“A lucid and riveting account of scientific discovery, adaptations and pathologies of mood, and complex ethical issues.”

        -- Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind

Selected books acquired and edited at W. W. Norton & Company:

The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, by Terrence W. Deacon.

A provocative new thesis on the origins of human language and the nature of human consciousness by a leading researcher in the field.

 

"This . . . accessible yet erudite volume, witty and uncompromising, . . . is the best book yet written on the evolution of language. . . .  essential reading for anyone interested in what makes us human."

          -- Merlin Donald, author of Origins of the Modern Mind

"If you have only one book to read on the evolution and function of the human brain, this is the one I would recommend."

          -- Jerome Kagan, Starch Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

Science on Trial: The Clash Of Medical Evidence And The Law In The Breast Implant Case, by Marcia Angell, M.D..

How individual and class-action lawsuits proceeded without regard for the real nature of the medical evidence on silicone gel-filled breast implants; a Death of Common Sense on science, technology, and tort litigation. 

 

"An accessible, passionate indictment of the ignorance, opportunism, and social indifference that enriched lawyers and a few plaintiffs, though the available scientific evidence was against them."

          -- New York Times Book Review

A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year”

Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, text by Wynton Marsalis, photographs by Frank Stewart.

An evocation of the life of the jazz musician by today's foremost jazz musician and composer and an award-winning photographer; German rights sold.

 

"Part meditation, part manifesto . . . [and] an entertaining impression of life on the road with the Marsalis septet."

          -- The Economist

"Marsalis's book flows like music itself."

          -- Gannett News Service

"My favorite book of the bunch [under review] . . .  Laden with insight and anecdote."

          -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The year's best book by a musician."

          -- Memphis Commercial-Appeal

Marsalis on Music, by Wynton Marsalis.

Illustrated companion book-with-CD to the acclaimed fall 1995 PBS series of the same title.  Book-of-the-Month Club Selection.

 

"A splendid and sorely needed project . . . happily given a synergistic push . . . on home video . . . [and in] a companion book."

          -- John J. O'Connor, New York Times

Winfield: A Player's Life, by Dave Winfield with Tom Parker.

The autobiography of baseball's "$23 million man"; a New York Times hardcover bestseller.

 

"Everything was going so well, and then along he comes with this book."

          -- George Steinbrenner

Joe Morgan: A Life in Baseball, by Joe Morgan and David Falkner

The Norton History of Chemistry, by William H. Brock, volume in The Norton History of Science series.

"A discipline that has formed society far more than any war or revolution is here made clear and accessible."

           -- New York Times Book Review   

A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year”

Virgil Thomson, Composer On The Aisle, by Anthony Tommasini. 

The first full-scale account of Thomson's enduring influence on 20th century American arts and letters as both a composer and critic, and of his experiences as a gay man.

 

“By a wide margin the finest biography yet written of an American composer.”

          -- Terry Teachout, Commentary

“Skillfully evokes both Thomson as the energetic Midwesterner  ever affected by the church music and band concerts of his childhood, and Thomson as the raging misanthrope.”

          -- New York Times Book Review

“A fine biography . . .  a clearheaded and fair-minded account of the life of a great American critic and a valuable composer.” 

          -- Richard Howard, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Ralph Bunche: An American Life, by Brian Urquhart.

A biography of the black American diplomat and UN official who won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the Middle East.

 

"Revolutionizes our understanding of the man. . . .  Bunche emerges here as one of the major American diplomatic figures of this century and one of the towering leaders in African American history."

          -- Arnold Rampersad, Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

Encounters With Qi: Exploring Chinese Medicine, by David Eisenberg, M.D. with Thomas Lee Wright.

The first U.S. medical exchange student to the People’s Republic of China provides firsthand observations of Qi, “vital energy,” the unifying principle of Chinese medicine; author and book were featured on “The Mystery of the Chi” episode of the 1993 PBS television series Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers.

 

“Highly readable . . . . Case histories, human interest, dialogue, and local color abound.”

          -- New York Times Book Review

Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, by Elijah Anderson.

“Elijah Anderson[‘s] … classic works Code of the Street, Streetwise, and A Place on the Corner document black inner-city life with noted clarity and sympathy.”

          -- Mark Bowden, The Atlantic

“A deeply disturbing, but also moving, story of decency under pressure.”

          -- George F. Will

“Brilliantly captures the social and cultural dynamics of inner-city violence.”

          -- William Julius Wilson

“Vitally important and enlightening.”

          -- Marian Wright Edelman

“A strikingly powerful work that rings with urgency.”

          -- Alex Kotlowitz

City Of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex 1790 - 1920, by Timothy J. Gilfoyle.     

"Social history at its best, beautifully written, with a mosaic of rich detail that does not overwhelm the narrative line.  Mr. Gilfoyle introduces us to dozens of incredible characters. . . ."

          -- New York Times Book Review

Winner of the Allan Nevins Prize, Society of American Historians

Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture, by David J. Skal.

A social and cultural history of the mad scientist. 

 

“A pioneering book that uncovers the deep roots of many common fears of our age.”

          -- Washington Post

Give Me One Wish, by Jacquie Gordon. 

A memoir of the author's relationship with her daughter, who died of cystic fibrosis at the age of 21; Literary Guild selection; paperback rights to Berkeley.

 

ALA Notable Book of 1988; New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, by Laurence Tribe.

One of America's leading constitutional lawyers, professor of law at Harvard Law School, examines the nation's deadlock on abortion.

Keeper of the Moon: A Southern Boyhood, by Tim McLaurin.

"A poignant memoir of growing up in the rural South in the 1960s, by a man who seems to have forgotten nothing of his hardscrabble life."

          -- New York Times Book Review

A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year”

Pirate Jenny, by April Bernard, a novel. 

"Delightful."

          -- Entertainment Weekly

"[Jenny] is just the sort of impressionable teenager Tipper Gore and the Parents Resource Music Center warned us about."

          -- Newsday

The Perez Family, by Christine Bell.

A novel about Marielitos in Miami; paperback published by HarperCollins; filmed by Miramax.

 

"A triumph!  I love this loud, gaudy, sentimental heartbreaker of a book. . . .  Christine Bell has the magic touch."

          -- Robert Plunkett, New York Times Book Review 

A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year,” 1990; ALA “Notable Book of the Year”; New York Public Library “Book to Remember”; Philadelphia Inquirer “Book of the Year.”

Baotown, by Wang Anyi.

A novel of Chinese village life during the Cultural Revolution.

"A treasure."

          -- Ursula K. LeGuin

Finalist for the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction

Carmichael's Dog, by R. M. Koster, a novel.

"One of the year's [1992] funniest and most accomplished fictions."

          -- USA Today

"A dazzling melodrama."

          -- Chicago Tribune

"For people with a sense of humor and a willingness to be amused by bogus erudition, by a sheer copiousness of nonsense and by a Swiftian rhetoric of the outrageous."

          -- New York Times Book Review

Phone: 212-942-0771

Email: hhinzmann@consulting-editors.com