"WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — With just a few months to go before the 2004 presidential election, Vermont publisher Margo Baldwin was offered a short political book by a California professor whose ideas were drawing interest from liberals in Washington and elsewhere.
It was an unusual offer for the small company she and her husband founded, Chelsea Green. Its over 200 titles focus mostly on sustainability and low-impact living, from homesteading, framing a home or building a yurt to raising herbs and environmental consciousness.
The author, George Lakoff, wanted to write a very different book, one on how to “frame” political debate and build a liberal majority.
Lakoff had already put out a longer, more academic book on the political side of linguistics, his specialty. But now he was looking for a publisher for “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” sort of a field guide telling readers how to use strategic words and phrases to influence the nation’s political debate, Baldwin said.
Baldwin agreed to take on the project, and it has yielded startling sales. The small publishing company she and her husband had started in their Chelsea home two decades ago is looking at its first national bestseller, not to mention a book that is shaking up Democratic politics.
The book was the subject of a lengthy article recently in The New York Times Magazine, talking about Lakoff’s ideas about how words and phrases like “tax relief” cue subconscious associations, which may be more powerful than the details of the programs for which they are used to advocate."-from the story today in the Times Argus (VT).
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