2008 has been quite a year at Penguin!

• - Penguin Group (USA) had the most adult #1 New York Times bestsellers in the industry this year (hardcover and paperback combined), with 23 titles hitting #1.
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• - Penguin Group (USA) also led the industry for the most simultaneous #1 bestsellers (all formats) in a single week. For the week of March 2nd, PGI had five titles hit #1.
  
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• - PGI had four simultaneous #1 bestsellers in one week nine times in 2008, more than any other house.
  
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• - With 230 New York Times bestsellers, Penguin Group (USA) had 40% more bestsellers than in 2007.
  
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• - Penguin Group (USA) achieved at least one #1 New York Times bestseller for 49 of the 52 weeks in 2008.

(Also, we hate to brag, but our CEO David Shanks was named "Top U.S. Book Publishing CEO" in Publishers Weekly.)

Go Penguin!

Holiday Hours:

We are taking a hiatus from our hard work to relax and celebrate the season with family and friends. Penguin will be closed for the holidays starting at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 24th and reopening at 9 a.m. on January 5th, 2009. We are looking forward to coming back very well-rested to begin what we know will be a fantastic 2009.

-- The Penguin Online Staff

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Continued from this morning...

Two of the most popular types of teas are green tea and black tea. Both come from the same leaf. The difference is that the green tea is kept green by steaming it immediately after plucking. To make black tea, a leaf is rolled enough to make it limp, so that the polyphenols within mix with an enzyme PPO (PolyPhenolOxidase), also released inside the leaf, and the green tea turns into black tea.

Why plants have these reactive substances within them, and why they keep them safely apart (until we rupture them) is still under study. One elegantly simple theory, property of Dr. Peter J. Davies, of Cornell University, suggests that when these two reactive substances coagulate, making tea in the bug belly! - the bug finds the tiny tea mix repellant, and it stops eating the leaf. Experts have unilaterally, in any case ruled out the old theory that polyphenols and its enzyme's natural role in the tea leaf was to give the Brits a brisk cuppa.

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Read a short story by Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries:

Another Man's Moccasins	Kindness Goes Unpunished	Death without Company	The Cold Dish

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The great author, Michael Pollan, wrote a book called the "The Botany of Desire" that discusses man's relationship with several plants. He asked that we look at the world from the plants' view.

When analyzing and considering tea, we should remember that tea was not originally designed for our pleasure. Like all plants, tea evolved according to its own propagation peccadillos and survival needs. When we talk about tea and components of the leaf, we tend to focus on what they do for humans. Caffeine keeps us awake. Certain polyphenols help keep us healthy. The warm beverage cheers our souls and nourishes. But from the plant's point of view, from nature's standpoint, why are these components present inside the green leaf of a perennial plant? How did this humble plant become the most popular beverage on the planet? Tea, like most plants, just wants to grow. Its growth is fueled by glucose, which it magically creates out of sunlight and carbon in the air. Also tea can not run from its predators, it remains firmly planted in the ground. So to survive thousands of years, tea plants have developed many different defenses against those pests that would eat the leaves until the plant dies and threaten the entire species.

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So who is on my list? Well, I am very thankful for all the tea growers and producers who have made my book possible.

 So much has changed in the twenty years that I have been in the tea business. Back then, the big boy producers had dumbed-down the business. There was only terrible tea in teabags, and a few brave (or crazy) people that sold tiny amounts of loose tea. My father, John, was one of those fools. When I joined him, he had about 6 teas: Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Darjeeling, Orange Pekoe, Lapsang Souchong and a token green: Gunpowder. At that time the Lapsang and the Gunpowder were not even from Mainland China, but rather were imitations from Taiwan. Teas were just starting to come from Mainland China.

Now there is so much choice. In my book, "Harney & Sons Guide to Tea", I list 56 teas to offer a great variety of flavors. It could have been three times that number. However 56 is a good start to celebrate the great artisanal teas available today. Enough to show the wide variety tea flavors from the best gardens of Asia, but not enough to numb the senses.  Your choices include: white teas from Sri Lanka and China, green teas from China and Japan, oolongs from China and Taiwan, and black teas from the Chinese Tradition and the British Legacy countries ( India& Sri Lanka).

This week, I look forward helping you explore and enjoy these teas. Please contact me with any questions: michael@harneyteas.com.

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Obama: The Historic Journey, A new groundbreaking book covering Barack Obama's life from childhood through his inauguration as the 44^th President of the United States, to be published by Callaway Arts & Entertainment and The New York Times in collaboration with Riverhead Books on Presidents' Day 2009

NEW  YORK, December 22, 2008 - OBAMA: The Historic Journey, a new groundbreaking, beautifully written and illustrated book covering Barack Obama's life, from his childhood through his inauguration as the 44^th president of the United States, will be  published in hardcover on Presidents' Day, Feb. 16, 2009, by Callaway Arts & Entertainment and The New York Times and distributed by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), it was announced today by Riverhead Books Vice President and Publisher Geoffrey Kloske and Nicholas Callaway, founder and publisher of Callaway Arts & Entertainment. North American rights were acquired from Scott Moyers of The Wylie Agency.

he election of Barack Obama marked an unprecedented step forward in American history, shattering racial barriers and forever altering the political landscape. The New York Times, winner of 96 Pulitzer Prizes, has chronicled the exceptional moments of Mr. Obama's life, from when he was first elected president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990, to his memorable speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, his campaign for the presidency and his jubilant victory.

When UK-based novelist Stephen Foster first published his funny and decidedly unsentimental memoir  Walking Ollie (published in the US by Perigee in July 2008), he never imagined that just a year later he would be saying goodbye to Ollie, the quirky, neurotic shelter dog who had become his best friend. But last month, after the UK publication of the book's sequel, Along Came Dylan (to be published by Perigee next June, under the title Fetching Dylan), that's just what he had to do. It was hard to believe: The skittish pup who feared shopping bags, house flies, and the apron hanging from the back of the kitchen door -- and whose story had introduced Stephen to the British bestseller lists -- was suddenly gone.

The London Times recently ran an essay by Stephen describing the difficult goodbye. Dog lovers along with anyone who has had to cope with the loss of a dear friend will appreciate this sweet, sad story well told. Ollie may be gone, but to readers on both sides of the Atlantic who knew him, he won't be forgotten.

In honor of Ollie, Perigee will include a new afterword to Fetching Dylan, noting the passing of the dysfunctional yet irresistible creature who domesticated a first-time dog owner and changed his life forever. Check the Penguin USA web site in April 2009 for more information about Fetching Dylan and Stephen Foster.

Posted by: Marian Lizzi, Editor-in-Chief, Perigee Books

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Michael Harney is our guest blogger during the week of December 22nd. If you have any questions for Michael Harney, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea:

The country's leading connoisseur presents a comprehensive guide for developing your tea palate.

The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea transforms tea drinkers into tea experts. Written by one of the country's leading tea professionals, The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea is an illuminating resource for tea drinkers interested in developing and refining their palate as well as their understanding of the complex agricultural, historical, and cultural significance of tea.

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In my recent post here on Penguin's magnificent blog, we talked about sexy Greek Santas and the demon huntresses who love them.  Sounds a bit like a bad E True Hollywood Story, doesn't it?  Actually this week we've been playing Santa ourselves, dreaming up appropriate holiday gifts for the characters in my brand new paranormal romance series, Gods of Midnight, which launched with RED FIRE, and continues in the spring with RED KISS. 

As I finished this book I couldn't help smiling because if there was one character (besides Shay and Ajax!) who fans kept mentioning in their notes and messages, it was Spartan servant River Kassandros.  And I totally understand their interest, begging, concern, pleading to know more.  You see, I left River in a bit of an, uh, desperate situation.  River's a shapeshifter, capable of becoming any weapon that his master Ajax might summon or require in battle.  Only problem with that nifty trick of River's (spoiler alert if you've not read RED FIRE) is that at the end of book one, he was tossed away into a literal river while still in dagger form.  He's been lost to the Spartans ever since. 

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People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, on-sale 12/30/08

As an editor, I live with written material a loooong time before it finds its way to other readers as a book. And it has become routine for me to feel a tinge of something I’ve recently identified as envy when I know publication is imminent and someone (hopefully lots of someones) is about to crack one of these fantastic suckers open. To sit down with a book whose voice and story you will take in as a finished work for the first time is a hugely appealing position to be in. Most readers are none the wiser about first drafts and the ideas that went nowhere, the battles I lost, the problems I missed the first time, and so had to creep back, hat in hand, begging for just one last spin around the revision block. The first-timer’s reading experience is pure and I envy that. I really do. But who am I kidding. I prize my front row seat more than anything. Whatever redundancies I endure and failings I’m responsible for, likewise I have the ridiculous privilege of witnessing the ideas that blossomed into something more captivating and original than I could have imagined, the story threads that become deeply embedded and essential, rather than exposed seams, the basting stitches easily pulled out, the plot twists that pay off, the characters who become more fully alive from one draft to the next. These satisfactions are real and lasting.