Boston Globe - May 25, 2004
Dershowitz protests, and a new, milder book review runs By David Mehegan, Globe Staff
It's many a disgruntled author's dream, but it almost never happens: A publication prints a second review of a book after the author complains about the first one.
This time it happened.
Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz was unhappy with the April 12 Publishers Weekly review of his new book, "America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles that Transformed Our Nation -- From the Salem Witches to the Guantanamo Detainees."
Skewering Dershowitz for "self-aggrandizement" and "his love for the cliche masked as insight," the reviewer wrote: "The whole enterprise has more than a little scent of student research about it, supplemented by observations that those familiar with the author's various hobbyhorses will recognize. . . ." Reviews are unsigned in Publishers Weekly, an influential magazine for librarians and booksellers.
"It seemed very personal," Dershowitz said yesterday. "It seemed a review not of the book but of me."
After reading the review, he fired off an e-mail to Nora Rawlinson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, complaining about the "self-aggrandizement" comment, and added: "Several recent reviews of my books in Publishers Weekly have smacked of personal antagonism by the reviewer. They seem more reviews of me as a controversial person than of my writings." He did not ask for a new review.
A few days later, Rawlinson replied by e-mail: "We have looked at the review . . . in light of your comments and agree that it does not meet our reviewing standards. We are sending out the book for a second review. Meanwhile, we have contacted Amazon.com and the other online booksellers who license our reviews to ask them to remove the current one." In last week's Publishers Weekly, dated May 17, the new, considerably milder review appeared.
Rawlinson said yesterday that the first review was ad hominem -- a personal attack -- and should not have slipped through the usually rigorous editing process. "That is something you should never do," she said, "coming closer to attacking the writer than the book." The "self-aggrandizement" crack, she says, was particularly unacceptable.
Reassigning a book after a negative review, as a result of a complaint from an author, is almost unheard of in the book review world, mainly because it may lead other offended authors to ask for a second chance. Yet most book editors would agree that while a book review can be extremely negative it should focus on the work and not sneer at the author.
Rawlinson said that she did not believe Publishers Weekly had ever before reassigned a book but that it was the right thing to do in this case.
"It was very big of them," says Dershowitz, who is scheduled to speak tonight at 7 at the Brookline Booksmith. "It took a lot of courage to admit that something had gone wrong with the process."
David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan at globe.com.