U of T prof shocked to see his old book at top of charts
Volume of World War II history shares title with Trump tell-all
A University of Toronto professor’s 10-year-old book is back in the spotlight thanks to a coincidence and the U.S. president.
Randall Hansen was at a conference in Washington last week when Michael Wolff’s tell-all exposé of Donald Trump and the internal workings of the White House took over the airwaves — and pretty much everything else. He initially didn’t think much of it, but later realized it was one hot commodity.
“Everyone was saying Fire and Fury left, right and centre,” said Hansen, the interim director of U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs. And they weren’t talking about his book.
His Fire and Fury, subtitled The Allied Bombing of Germany,1942-1945, was published in 2008 and “has been languishing in sales,” Hansen said Monday. “Then I checked on Amazon, and all of a sudden my book was on three bestselling lists, including military history. That’s when I knew something nice was going on.”
Wolff’s Fire and Fury, subtitled Inside the Trump White House, was published Friday.
It describes a chaotic environment in the Oval Office and has attracted an unprecedented level of interest globally and from local readers for a non-fiction book, said Toronto Public Library manager Michele Melady.
“People have been following news and social media reports about the book very closely,” she said. “Every time there is another television interview about it, we immediately see more holds being placed.”
Hansen said he was a bit surprised last summer when Trump used the words “fire and fury” while threatening North Korea. Nonetheless, he’s quite happy the coincidence has propelled his own work back into the spotlight.
“Some people might be just buying it by mistake,” he said. “But many others have reached out to tell me they have interest in military history but didn’t know the book was out there. So this was lucky press.”
Hansen’s book, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in non-fiction in 2009, examines the morality of aerial bombing, told from the perspective of German civilians who were bombed during the Second World War.
Most of the people he spoke to were children at the time.
“If there were innocent Germans, those were the children. I wanted to use the case to reflect on morality and war,” he said.
He said the findings of his research are relevant today and present a “healthy reflection” on the horrors of war involving a civilian population.
“What would be gratifying to me is that if at this moment, where we have an unstable, deranged demagogue operating the greatest army the world has ever seen, that more people read a book about the horrors of war and the terrible effect on the civilian populations,” Hansen said.
“Also, I don’t want to sound overly altruistic, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
Henry Holt & Co., the U.S. publisher of Wolff’s Fire and Fury, sent a defiant letter to Trump’s lawyer on Monday, saying the company has no plans to withdraw it or apologize as the controversy surrounding it has continued to fuel sales.
“My clients do not intend to cease publication, no (retraction) will occur and no apology is warranted,” wrote Elizabeth McNamara, Holt’s attorney. With files from Star wire services