The Osama Book Club?
by CHARLOTTE ABBOTT
January 23, 2006 – Publisher’s WeeklyCommon Courage Press has been scrambling to keep up with demand for “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” by William Blum, currently hovering around #10 on the Amazon.com bestseller list, after an endorsement by Osama Bin Laden in the audiotape he released last Thursday.
According to distributor Consortium, the Monroe, Maine-based indie house was out of print on the third edition released in November. Common Courage, which originally published “Rogue” in 2000, is still in the process of setting the quantities for reprints on that book and another title by Blum, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire,” which contains the particular excerpt that Bin Laden erroneously attributed to “Rogue State.”
Blum, a 72 year-old underground journalist known for his sharp political critiques, gave multiple interviews last Friday and over the weekend on CNN, MSNBC and to Reuters and journalists from England, India, and South Africa among other countries. “This is almost as good as being an Oprah book,” he told the Washington Post.
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Oh this is too good! If you get a “meeting” with bin Laden, I would love to tag along! I have questions about that whole veil wearing hoo ha and the being pushed behind a screen while worshiping thing they do there. Do you think he would take offense if I spoke “out of turn” so to speak? I would love a pic with the big guy. I think I should blow it up to an 8″ x 10″ for my living room wall.
If my people manage to arrange lunch with “Sammy,” you will be among the first to know (along with the CIA and Homeland Security, of course), and I will insist upon you being given a seat at the table with full and unfettered speaking privileges.