Middlemen

“Drawing on archival sources, input from more than 75 agents (including several of the most influential in the field), trade and industry publications, biographies, and memoirs, McGrath offers insights into the strategies, values, and relationships that shape an agent’s work… . A fresh, well-researched debut.” * Kirkus Reviews *“Middlemen is a thorough, diverting investigation of the role literary agents play in the creation of book markets and reader tastes… . An invaluable work of literary analysis.” * Foreword Reviews *“An enlightening study of how agents have shaped the American literary landscape… . McGrath’s research is extremely thorough and presented in entertaining prose. Anyone curious about how their favorite books came to be will appreciate this peek behind the curtain.” * Publishers Weekly *“Because their work is largely invisible to the public, [agents] would seem to typify the publishing industry at its most commercial, cliquish, and hidebound… . Nevertheless, many of them are decent people, [McGrath] contends—they protect writers from a variety of evils, including themselves—and their profession has become central to cultural production. Your favorite novelist, no matter how experimental or antiestablishment, all but certainly has some representative … negotiating her contracts, talking her up over cocktails, talking her down from the ledge.”—Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s

Laura B. McGrath is assistant professor of English at Temple University. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.