Oneworld's Swainson snaps up Jacinda Ardern biography

Oneworld editor-at-large Bill Swainson has acquired a "major" Jacinda Ardern biography as well as a former Supreme Court judge’s "controversial" book on the decline of US leadership. 

Swainson acquired world English language rights (excluding ANZ) for Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy by Supriya Vani and Carl A Harte from Kathrin Scheel at the Hamburg-based agency This Book Travels. 

Leading with Empathy is the first full biography of the Prime Minister, from her Mormon childhood and her break with the church over LGBT rights, through her handling of the Christchurch mosque shootings and her approach to Covid-19. Based on interviews with Ardern and those close to her, the biography will be published by Oneworld in summer 2021. 

Swainson said: "I am delighted to be publishing this timely biography which carefully explores the influences – personal, familial, religious, social, political and emotional – that have shaped Jacinda Ardern and made her a hugely respected leader with a 'different way of doing things'."

Swainson also acquired world English language rights (excluding ANZ) in Michael Pembroke’s America in Retreat: The Decline of US Leadership from WW2 to Covid-19 from Claire Friedman at InkWell Management in New York. 

Pembroke — a former New South Wales Supreme Court judge — will argue that after 1945, the authority of the United States was unrivalled and that its leading role in founding the United Nations and creating the rules-based international order demonstrated true leadership. But, he says, it almost immediately began breaking those rules, and has been in retreat from international co-operation ever since. The world has now entered a post-American era, defined by a flourishing Asia and the ascendancy of China, as much as by the decline of the US. America in Retreat will be published in February 2021.

Both titles will be published in Australia and New Zealand by Hardie Grant.