In Small Packages

The commercial response to the series has been good, according to Viking; customer demand has already sent a number of the early titles, particularly Crazy Horse and Saint Augustine, back for multiple reprintings. The original order for 18 volumes has been increased to 34, to be published at a clip of roughly six a year. Among the projects that Atlas and his staff of three have commissioned: Bobbie Ann Mason on Elvis; Roy Blount Jr. on Robert E. Lee; James Gleick on Isaac Newton; and Hilton Als, the first African-American author to join the project, on James Baldwin.

Atlas and Lipper are teaming up with W.W. Norton to produce a series of short science biographies and are negotiating with another publisher over a proposed string of business titles. "It's now sort of become my life," Atlas says, which is a nice irony, since he stumbled into this work while writing about Bellow's. Will that be a long biography? Yes, he concedes, and gives a page estimate that equals about three Penguin Lives.