The Commercials

SPEAK TO THE EARTH (310 pp.)--Max Miller--Applelon-Century-Crofts ($3.75).

In 1932, I Cover the Waterfront established Max Miller in the hearts of large numbers of his fellow citizens as a master of homespun whimsy and matey human-interest stories. Since then, none of his frequent Ernie Pyle-like reports on life's small, hushed heartthrobs has come near matching the simplicity and charm of his first bestseller. Speak to the Earth, his 24th book, is a breezy survey of the country's petroleum industry in his most relentlessly cheerful, small-talk style.

Steering clear of laboratory lingo and anything that looks like a significant statistic, he discovers with delight that scientists got the first crystals of what was to become Dacron by cranking away at an old-fashioned ice-cream freezer filled with an experimental substance. His history of prospecting skims over the hundreds of millions that great companies now spend opening up new oilfields to tell with fond detail how famed Wildcatter "Dad" Joiner brought in East Texas' first gusher in 1930.

Riskproof. This amiable and superficial book is chiefly interesting as an example of a growing phenomenon in U.S. publishing--the "commercial" book written by a well-known author. Miller wrote Speak to the Earth in the first place for Du Pont, whose petrochemical division felt that "a new and refreshing book about oil would be of public interest and consequently of benefit to the petroleum industry." The company guaranteed the publishers against loss by arranging to buy 2,100 specially bound copies for distribution to oil executives. Du Pont paid Miller about $25,000 for a job that took about six months, and also permitted him to sign the usual author's contract with the publishers covering bookstore royalties.

Almost every publishing house now goes in for commercials that are subsidized by a corporation's pledge to buy from 2,000 to 50,000 copies. Publishers generally are careful, however, not to include more than two or three such titles in their annual lists, lest they get a name for subsidized books. Editors explain that such riskproof deals enable them to take longer chances on other worthy books. Authors like company-commissioned books because the large and steady income helps set them up to write other books.

Foolproof. Bob Considine this year wrote a book about the fire-insurance business called Man Against Fire for Doubleday's American Industry series. Frank J. Taylor (Black Bonanza, Southern Pacific), Robert J. Casey (The Lackawanna Story, Pioneer Railroad), and Alec Waugh, whose lively life of Sir Thomas Lipton actually made a tidy profit on bookstore sales alone, are other leading practitioners in the industrial field. The acknowledged master is Pulitzer Prize-winning Biographer Marquis James (The Raven, Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President). His histories of the Bank of America, Metropolitan Life and The Insurance Co. of North America are skillfully told and based on the most exacting historical research.

James, like all the well-known writers who have turned their hand to writing up companies, insists on a completely free hand in his work. Some years ago he undertook to write the life of the founder of W. R. Grace and Co. Because of disagreement between company officials and the author over his interpretations, the book has never been published, but James collected some $100,000 due him for three years' work.

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