Best & Worst Books

Surrender the Pink
Carrie Fisher came up with it on her 1987 book tour from Postcards from the Edge. A male friend jokingly jumped in her hotel room, saying, ''Okay, baby, spread'em. Surrender the pink.'' Recalls Fisher: I heard it pornographically, but I mean it metaphorically — give up the feminine side.''

To the Norwegian publishing house Aschehoug, the first company brave enough to release Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in a paperback.

After Random House owner S.I. Newhouse forced the resignation of André Schiffrin — the head of Random's Pantheon Books division — six Pantheon editors resigned in protest. And so the house, which had published, among many others, Günther Grass, Studs Terkel, Simone de Beauvoir, and — most recently and most profitably — Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, fell into disarray.

Joseph Nocera's Wall Street Journal pan of Beyond the Boom, edited by Terry Teachout, a collection of essays by baby boomers who turned against the '60s. Nocera called the book ''one long '80s whine,'' and wrote: ''This is the verbal class? You read this stuff and you think: Shut up and get a real job.''

Judith Hawkes, author of Julian's House

Ronald Reagan in his second autobiography An American Life: ''Robert Lindsey, a talented writer, was with me every step of the way.'' Although Lindsey's name doesn't appear on the cover, he is widely credited with being the President's ghostwriter.