This is an exciting time – I’m working with St. Martin’s Press on final plans to publish The Book of Isaias on October 4, and so many distinguished authors have provided endorsements that we’re almost running out of space on the book jacket.
I wanted to take a moment to thank all these authors and tell you more about them, listing the most recent endorsers first.
You probably remember the dramatic story of the Chilean miners who were trapped underground in 2010. They managed to survive until rescuers broke through to them and pulled them out one by one in a dramatic process that was followed around the world.
The 33 miners decided to share their story with just one writer: Héctor Tobar, a bilingual journalist from Los Angeles. Based on exclusive interviews with the miners, he wrote the bestselling book Deep Down Dark. You can learn more about him on his web site, hectortobar.com. I’m excited that he’s endorsed The Book of Isaias and I want to thank Fernanda Santos of the New York Times for putting me in touch with him.
Hampton Sides is a narrative nonfiction master and author of several books of history: Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, and most recently In the Kingdom of Ice. I met him at the Power of Narrative conference in Boston and he graciously agreed to help. Read more about him at hamptonsides.com.
Miriam Pawel is an alumna of the Los Angeles Times and a Pulitzer Prize-winner. We met at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference a couple of years ago and she’s offered valuable help and advice ever since. She’s author of the The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, the definitive biography of the late labor leader.
Amanda Eyre Ward is the author of several novels, most recently The Same Sky, a moving story about unaccompanied children traveling from central America to the U.S. Impressively, she based her novel on interviews with young people who had made the journey in real life.
Sam Quinones was one of the first people to advise me on the book-writing process after I met him at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference several years ago. A former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he has made a huge impact with Dreamland, his National Book Award-winning nonfiction account of opiate addiction in America.
I met Ian Johnson in 2004 when I was applying for a job with The Wall Street Journal. I didn’t get the job, but we have stayed in touch for years, and he played an important role in helping me develop The Book of Isaias. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and an expert on China, he’s written several books and book chapters, most recently contributing to The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China.
If you’re curious to see what they wrote, we collected all of their quotes on at the bottom of this page.
I’d also like to point out that you can preorder the book now by going here.
I take none of this support for granted and I thank all of these writers for going out of their way to help spread the word about The Book of Isaias!