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Hodder buys cancer book

08.02.08 John Ryan

Hodder deputy m.d. Lisa Highton has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in US media phenomenon The Last Lecture, about a US computer science professor coming to terms with terminal pancreatic cancer.

Due for UK publication in July, The Last Lecture enlarges on a talk by Randy Pausch last September at Carnegie Mellon University about achieving your childhood dreams. Pausch produced slides showing CT scans charting the course of his illness, and the philosophical approach that he has adopted to it: “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand,” he told an audience of more than 400.

The lecture has been put online, where over six million people have viewed it. Pausch has subsequently appeared on the “Oprah Winfrey Show”, “Good Morning America”, and CBS News, with more than 25 million people estimated to have seen him across a variety of media.

The book is being written in collaboration with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow and will expand on the lecture’s themes, including Pausch’s reasons for giving it.

Highton said: “The Last Lecture is an incredibly positive and moving book. Randy Pausch’s attitude to whatever happens is inspirational, has universal appeal and carries a message for us all.”

Rights to the book were acquired from its US publisher, Hyperion, for an undisclosed sum. The initial US print run is 750,000 copies.

Rights deal Hodder

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