Books coming about BP and the spill

Julie Bosman of the New York Times writes about the number of books that have been sold to publishers recently about BP and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Bosman writes, “Wary of covering the same territory, the publishers and authors who have announced deals so far have tried to approach the story from different angles.

Carl Safina, an oceanographer and MacArthur fellow, will write a book for Crown, part of Random House, about the environmental consequences of the spill. Loren Steffy, a business columnist for The Houston Chronicle, sold a book to McGraw-Hill in early July that will focus on BP, tracing ‘how the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is only part of a larger pattern of corporate cost-cutting and image-making that has compromised safety across BP’s operations for years,’ according to a statement from the publisher.

“Last week David Hirshey, the executive editor of HarperCollins, signed a book that he called ‘the definitive account’ of the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, tentatively titled ‘Fire on the Horizon.’

“‘It will be a page-turning adventure narrative that pits engineers against the earth, blue-collar roughnecks against an invisible corporate presence, but ultimately it is a story that finds them all struggling to survive the same unimaginable accident,’ Mr. Hirshey said in an e-mail message, adding that John Konrad, an oil rig captain who is one of the authors, has gained close access to some of the families of the men killed aboard the rig.”

Read more here.