About Books: Five Talks From the Jerusalem Book Fair

It's nice to know that there are still publishing professionals who care about literature. In About Books, edited by Zev Birger, Robert L. Bernstein likens publishers to human-rights activists, Arthur Rosenthal expounds on being a more moral publisher, and Peter Mayer laments the "convergence to conformity" that comes with publishing mergers. Erwin A. Glikes talks about the editor's role in making a book a success: You need to be "a determined and knowledgeable pain in the ass," he says. "A promising book is like a movement, and you want people to join this movement." And Michael Krüger discusses "Literature in a Non-Literary World." Literary judgment, Krüger says, "can be obtained only by reading every night a masterpiece of literary history. It is better to read Madame Bovary or The Magic Mountain or Oliver Twist ten times than to read ten mediocre books."