Nationality British Name Christopher Potter | Role Author | |
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Occupation Writer, former publisher, editor Books You are here, How to Make a Human Being: A Body of Evidence | ||
Christopher Potter (born 1 April 1959 in Warrington) is the former publisher and managing director of Fourth Estate. He has a BSc in mathematics from King's College London and an MSc in the history and philosophy of science. He has written for The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Evening Standard. You Are Here, a portable history of the universe is his first book. His second book, "How to Make a Human Being, a body of evidence," will be published in March 2014.
Contents
Biography
Potter spent almost a quarter of a century in publishing, more than 17 of those years at the independent publishing house Fourth Estate. The company was celebrated for discovering so-called "sleepers" and transforming them into bestsellers. Potter became publisher and managing director. As an editor he worked closely with many writers, including Carol Shields, Annie Proulx, Michael Cunningham and Michael Chabon (all of whom won the Pulitzer Prize for novels published by Fourth Estate), Dava Sobel (whose non-fiction book, Longitude, was a number 1 best-seller for over a year and sold over a million copies), Hilary Mantel, Matt Ridley, Simon Singh and Marcus du Sautoy."
Writing
Potter made his debut as a writer in March 2009 when his popular science book You Are Here was published by Hutchinson (Random House). You Are Here is published in America by HarperCollins.
"One of the best popular science books I have ever read," wrote Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian. The Sunday Times described it as "One of the most entertaining and thoughtful pop-science books to be published for years."