Book Blogs and Author Blogging Services at TypePad

Brendan Halpin, Dear Catastrophe Waitress
TypePad Featured Book for March 2007

With Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Brendan Halpin offers a modern romance between two rock-n-roll refugees. What would you do if your ex- wrote a hit song about breaking up with you? Retreat, lash out, or just get on with your life? Brendan Halpin tackles the odd, yet oddly familiar territory of pop-music anthems and the melancholy of loss. In his third novel, Halpin brings his expert ear for the music of love and loss and creates a cast of characters that are easy to fall in love with and hard to forget. Halpin is the author of four previous books, including It Takes a Worried Man and Donorboy.

Sign up for a TypePad subscription and use the referral code "GUITAR" to receive a free copy of Dear Catastrophe Waitress. While supplies last!

Listen to our podcast with Brendan Halpin to hear the author talk about his books, his blog, and what music keeps him going.

Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential
TypePad Featured Book for February 2007

Amy Stewart takes us inside the flower trade — from the hybridizers, who create new varieties in the laboratory, to the growers, who produce flowers by the millions (often in a factory-like setting), to the Dutch auctioneers, who set the bar (and the price), and ultimately to the neighborhood florists orchestrating the mind-boggling demands of Valentine's and Mother's Day. There's the breeder intent on developing the first blue rose; an eccentric horticultural legend who created the world's most popular lily; a grower of gerberas of every color imaginable; and the equivalent of a Tiffany diamond: the "Forever Young" rose.

Read our interview with Amy Stewart about her book, her TypePad blogs, and her life as a writer.

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, Citizen Marketers
TypePad Featured Book for January 2007

Listen to the Podcast | Visit the Site

The woman sitting next to you at Starbucks focused intently on her laptop may just be determining the next big thing. In coffee houses, offices, homes, dorm rooms, and airport lounges around the world, millions of people use laptops and cell phones to become today's new publishers and broadcasters. Armed with only a broadband connection, these regular citizens are exercising enormous influence on culture and what we buy. Who are they? What motivates them? In their provocative new book, Citizen Marketers, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba explore the ramifications of today's burgeoning social media. As everyday people increasingly create content on behalf of companies, brands, or products—to which they have no official connection—they are turning traditional notions of media upside down. Collaborating with others just like themselves, they are forming ever-growing communities of enthusiasts and evangelists using videos, photos, songs, and animations, as well as the "user-generated media" of blogs, online bulletin boards, and podcasts. From the rough to the sophisticated, their creations are influencing companies' customer relationships, product design, and marketing campaigns—whether the companies participate willingly or not. Whether freeing Fiona Apple, building buzz for Snakes on a Plane, or denouncing Dell Hell, citizen marketers are democratizing traditional notions of communication and marketing, even entire business models. Citizen Marketers examines some of the early winners and losers in this new culture of business, as well as some of its most noted constituents.

Sign up for a TypePad Pro annual subscription and use the referral code "PEOPLE" to receive a free copy of Citizen Marketers and a 10% subscription discount.

Kimberly Wrenn and Mary Watkins, Threadbared
The TypePad Featured Book for December 2006

Read the Interview | Listen to the Podcast

A hilarious look at the home-sewing and crafting crazes of the last several decades, Threadbared is a parade of pictures of the “fabulous” clothes and “darling” decorative items that sent people rushing to their sewing machines, knitting bags, and local notions shops. These vintage photographs from instruction booklets and patterns may bring a smile to your face, but the sassy, snarky commentary provided by Kimberly and Mary will have you in stitches.

Inside, you’ll find everything from speculation about why 1950s sewing patterns models had such incredibly small waists (Girdles? Malnutrition? Tapeworms?) to commentary on ladies’ fashion (“Is there anything sexier than a woman who sews her own underwear?”), to all-too-vivid reminders that the ’60s wasn’t just the Age of Aquarius—it was also the Age of Macramé! Laying bare the hideous history of homemade treasures, Threadbared leads crafters, wannabes, and don’t-wannabes alike to ponder the age-old question: Did anyone really think this stuff looked good?

Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map
The TypePad Featured Book for November 2006

A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.

From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner with a real-life historical hero that brilliantly illuminates the intertwined histories of the spread of viruses, rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry. These are topics that have long obsessed Steven Johnson, and The Ghost Map is a true triumph of the kind of multidisciplinary thinking for which he's become famous-a book that, like the work of Jared Diamond, presents both vivid history and a powerful and provocative explanation of what it means for the world we live in.

The Ghost Map takes place in the summer of 1854. A devastating cholera outbreak seizes London just as it is emerging as a modern city: more than 2 million people packed into a ten-mile circumference, a hub of travel and commerce, teeming with people from all over the world, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated. Dr. John Snow-whose ideas about contagion had been dismissed by the scientific community-is spurred to intense action when the people in his neighborhood begin dying. With enthralling suspense, Johnson chronicles Snow's day-by-day efforts, as he risks his own life to prove how the epidemic is being spread.

When he creates the map that traces the pattern of outbreak back to its source, Dr. Snow didn't just solve the most pressing medical riddle of his time. He ultimately established a precedent for the way modern city-dwellers, city planners, physicians, and public officials think about the spread of disease and the development of the modern urban environment.

The Ghost Map is an endlessly compelling and utterly gripping account of that London summer of 1854, from the microbial level to the macrourban-theory level-including, most important, the human level.

Listen to our Podcast with author Steven Johnson