Overview
Hey. I'm Pete. I work with words to connect people and ideas.
In two decades of publishing work, I’ve acquired and edited award-winning books, managed rights, negotiated deals, and made coffee, at publishers large and small. Since 2014, I’ve also been freelance editing, helping writers of every description turn ideas into stories. In between editorial gigs, I’ve taught writing at the University of Alabama, Kent State University, and with the Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project.
I'm also the author of the novel Cuyahoga (Scribner, 2020), which was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and deemed “tragic and comic, hilarious and inventive—a 19th-century legend for 21st-century America” by the Boston Globe. My writing has also appeared in Vulture, GQ, Vice, and elsewhere.
Services
Non-Fiction
Biographies & Memoirs
Entertainment
History
Humanities & Social Sciences
Writing & Publishing
Fiction
Historical Fiction
Literary Fiction
Mystery & Crime
Languages
English (US)
Awards
- Acquired and edited 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award winner "Dreamland" by Sam Quinones
- Acquired and edited 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist "El Narco" by Ioan Grillo
Work experience
Verto Literary
Jun, 2013 —
Present
Pete Beatty is a writer, editor, and teacher in Birmingham, Alabama. He has worked in publishing since 2005 at the University of Chicago Press, Bloomsbury, the University of Alabama Press, and Open Road Media, where he acquired, edited, and developed award-winning nonfiction on subjects ranging from the opioid crisis to baseball infographics. He is also the author of the novel Cuyahoga (Scribner, 2020), which was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and deemed a “breezy fable of empire, class and ecocide” by the New York Times Book Review. His writing has also appeared in Vulture, GQ, Vice, and elsewhere.
Bloomsbury
Aug, 2008 —
Apr, 2013
(over 4 years)
Portfolio
A physician reveals how right-wing backlash policies have mortal consequences -- even for the white voters they promise to helpNamed one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Esquire and the Boston GlobeIn the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-cla... read more
The remarkable story of the heroic effort to save and preserve Afghanistan's wildlife-and a culture that derives immense pride and a sense of national identity from its natural landscape.Postwar Afghanistan is fragile, volatile, and perilous. It is also a plac... read more
Imagine a world where Beatlemania was against the law-recordings scratched onto medical X-rays, merchant sailors bringing home contraband LPs, spotty broadcasts taped from western AM radio late in the night. This was no fantasy world populated by Blue Meanies ... read more
The experiment was dreamed up by two fathers, one white, one black. What would happen, they wondered, if they mixed white players from an elite Seattle private school and black kids from the inner city on a basketball team? The team's season unfolded like a pe... read more
The first book to bring readers deep inside a top mixed martial arts gym, Beast shows exactly what it takes to reach the top of this exacting sport. Doug Merlino spent two years at Florida's American Top Team, living, eating, and training alongside some of the... read more
The past fifteen thousand years-the entire span of human civilization-have witnessed dramatic sea level changes, which began with rapid global warming at the end of the Ice Age, when coastlines were more than seven hundred feet below modern levels. Over the ne... read more
Robert Penn has saddled up nearly every day of his adult life. He rides to get to work, to bathe in air and sunshine, to travel, to go shopping, and to stay sane. He's no Sunday pedal pusher. So when the time came for a new bike, he decided to pull out all the... read more
August 28, 1814. Dressed in black, James Madison mourns the nation's loss. Smoke rises from the ruin of the Capitol before him; a mile away stands the blackened shell of the White House. The British have laid waste to Washington City, and as Mr. Madison gazes ... read more
Money Mania is a sweeping account of financial speculation and its consequences, from ancient Rome to the Meltdown of 2008. Acclaimed journalist and investor Bob Swarup tracks the history of speculative fevers caused by the appearance of new profitable investm... read more
In this spellbinding history, David Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Where other scholars have seen the conflict as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield paints it as America's... read more
A gripping history of a new kind of warfare, with sobering lessons for America's future. The end of the cold war promised a new era of international peace. But instead, violence has proliferated across the globe, not in the form of a superpower arms race or a ... read more
From the American Revolution to the end of World War II, the United States spent nineteen years at war against other nations. But since1950, the total is twenty-two years and counting. On four occasions, U.S. presidents elected as "peace candidates" have gone ... read more
A rich history of Springsteen's greatest album, celebrating its themes of youth, escape, and possibility, just in time for the Boss's sixtieth birthday. To millions of listeners, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run is much more than a rock-and-roll album―it's a po... read more
Prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson explores the nature of leadership with his usual depth and vivid prose in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals (Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherma... read more
In Elixir, New York Times bestselling author Brian Fagan tells the story of our most vital resource and how it has shaped our history, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sunbelt. Fagan relates how every human society has been shaped by its ... read more
From the personal finance correspondent for public radio’s Marketplace Money, a new plan for a new economic reality—the philosophy and practice of living frugally. As a once-in-a-lifetime downturn deepens, our go-go economy has become an uh-oh economy. But as ... read more
As the global war on terror enters its second decade, the United States military is engaged with militant Islamic insurgents on multiple fronts. But the post-9/11 war against terrorists is not the first time the United States has battled such ferocious foes. T... read more
Barack Obama's inspirational politics and personal mythology have overshadowed his fascinating history. Young Mr. Obama gives us the missing chapter: the portrait of the politician as a young leader, often too ambitious for his own good, but still equipped wit... read more
While the American South had grown to expect a yellow fever breakout almost annually, the 1878 epidemic was without question the worst ever. Moving up the Mississippi River in the late summer, in the span of just a few months the fever killed more than eightee... read more
To understand why, you'll need to know how ...- an Australian metals trader named Garry-with help from the CIA-inadvertently triggered the invasion of Iraq - coalition troops were killed by bombs made with explosives that, according to the White House, never e... read more
The United States intelligence establishment is a colossus. With stations in 170 countries, armed with cutting-edge surveillance gear, high-tech weapons, and fleets of armed and unarmed drone aircraft, it commands the most extensive and advanced intel force in... read more
They survived by their wits in a snowbound world, hunting, and sometimes being hunted by, animals many times their size. By flickering firelight, they drew bison, deer, and mammoths on cavern walls- vibrant images that seize our imaginations after thirty thous... read more
In The Secret Life of Pronouns, social psychologist and language expert James W. Pennebaker uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics-in essence, counting the frequency of words we use-to show that our language carries secrets about our fee... read more
Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries brought the Enlightenment to America-an intellectual revolution that laid the foundation for the political one that followed. With the “first Drudgery” of settling the American colonies now past, Franklin announced in 1... read more
Executive Order 9981, issued by President Harry Truman on July 26, 1948, desegregated all branches of the United States military by decree. Truman's historic order is often portrayed as a heroic and unexpected move--but in reality, it was the culmination of mo... read more
The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region became the "arsenal of democracy"-the greatest manufacturing center in the world-in the years during and after World War II, thanks to natural advantages and a welcoming culture. Decades of unprecedented prosperity foll... read more
A powerful reappraisal of the role of cities and their inhabitants in solving global problems, from a leading expert in urban development. In the second half of the twentieth century, revolutions reshaped our world―the civil rights movement in America, the fal... read more
The year 2009 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 a... read more
In Beyond the Blue Horizon, archaeologist and historian Brian Fagan tackles his richest topic yet: the enduring quest to master the oceans, the planet's most mysterious terrain. We know the tales of Columbus and Captain Cook, yet much earlier mariners made equ... read more
A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution's complex and contested involvement in slavery-setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown's troubling past was far from uniq... read more
Bruce Springsteen often prefers to let his music do the talking. His onstage stories and shaggy dog tales have long entertained his fans, but his songs and his guitar provide the most direct line to their hearts. Considering his prominence on the rock 'n' roll... read more
When you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday's newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people and places that clean up what you don't want and turn it into something you can't wait to buy. In Junkyard Planet, Ad... read more
"Merchants of Doubt should finally put to rest the question of whether the science of climate change is settled. It is, and we ignore this message at our peril."-Elizabeth Kolbert "Brilliantly reported andwritten with brutal clarity."-Huffington Post Now a pow... read more
How many miles does a baseball team travel in one season? How tall would A-Rod's annual salary be in pennies? What does Nolan Ryan have to do with the Supremes and Mariah Carey?You might never have asked yourself any of these questions, but Craig Robinson's Fl... read more
Twenty years ago, the most common cause of death for medical humanitarians and other aid workers was traffic accidents; today, it is violent attacks. And the death of each doctor, nurse, paramedic, midwife, and vaccinator is multiplied untold times in the vuln... read more
Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy.The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled region... read more
Geraldlynn is a lively, astute 14-year-old. Her family, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, returns home to find a radically altered public education system. Geraldlynn's parents hope their daughter's new school will prepare her for college--but the teenager has i... read more
The world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico. Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squa... read more
Winner of the NBCC Award for General NonfictionNamed on Amazon's Best Books of the Year 2015--Michael Botticelli, U.S. Drug Czar (Politico) Favorite Book of the Year--Angus Deaton, Nobel Prize Economics (Bloomberg/WSJ) Best Books of 2015--Matt Bevin, Governor ... read more
