On Visiting BEA

The immediate goal of the author is to spread the word of A Shattered Peace – not as daunting a task as might appear from the thousands who jammed New York’s Javits Convention Center for Book Expo America, the premier gathering of America’s publishing industry.

From Berkeley, California to Kent Connecticut, from Confluence Book Store in Bellevue, Nebraska to Border’s in the borough of Queens in New York City, there is a fascination with the Middle East and the origins of America’s troubles there – as well as the Balkans, East and Southeast Asia, and the one-time communist regions of Eastern and Central Europe – all integral parts of A Shattered Peace.

A stop at the stand of AbeBooks.com for a word of appreciation to Richard Davies. Without the global reach of this British Columbia-based on-line seller of rare, used and out-of-print titles, the research into the memoirs and diaries of even the most obscure participants in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 would have been difficult, if not impossible. Nearly 300 such titles were consulted in research for A Shattered Peace.

At BBC Audiobooks America, president and publisher Jim Brannigan observes “this is just the kind of book we’re looking for.”

Larissa Faw, editor of Youth Markets Alert, and niece of my former CBS News colleague, Bob Faw, now an NBC News correspondent, asks for an autographed bookmark and says, “My dad will love this book. He is totally compelled by the History Channel.”

Indeed, at the Wiley stand, the handsome bookmarks (some 7,000 have been printed – requests to david@ashatteredpeace.com gladly fulfilled!) are being snapped up by visitors and buyers alike.

Marketing A Shattered Peace is clearly integral to its success. But there is more to it than simply an exercise in profits and loss. If we do not study and learn from history, we will certainly never find our way out.

Complaints about the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, civil or political disturbances involving many regions that are explored in this volume, will be merely strident political posturing without an understanding of how we got here – which may in turn offer some very clear solutions and a sense of where we should be going.