Random House

Ella Mae Bauerlien, a retired publishing house worker and community volunteer, died of cancer Sunday at Carroll Hospice in Westminster. The Westminster resident was 82. Born Ella Mae Esworthy in the Carroll County community of Gist, she attended Carroll County public schools. She worked at Butte Knits, later Westminster Knit Co., a clothing manufacturer, and at the Black & Decker plant in Hampstead. She retired from the book-return department at Random House in Westminster. She was a member of the Westminster Church of the Brethren, where she was a deacon, choir member and soup kitchen volunteer.

NEW YORK -- Bertelsmann AG, the third-largest media company in the world, has decided to walk away from $28 million in tax breaks for the new headquarters for its Random House publishing division rather than comply with a last-minute city request to conduct a full environmental review of the $300 million project.Nonetheless, the company will proceed with construction of the 31-story tower on Broadway, between 55th and 56th streets.The company has spent more than two years looking for a suitable location, and a year negotiating with city officials over an incentive package.

Random House deal benefits company, state and communityThe Sun's editorial "Giving state aid too randomly" (June 4) raised concerns about using public incentives to keep businesses in Maryland. I believe readers will benefit from some clarifications.Random House announced Nov. 5 that it had chosen Westminster over suburban Chicago as its national distribution center. This was after we received a conditional letter of agreement from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

The county Planning and Zoning Commission approved site plans yesterday for the expansion of two Westminster businesses and ordered a study of road development in the Freedom Area.By unanimous vote, the seven-member commission approved plans by Random House Inc. to expand its facility on the northeast edge of Westminster. The project calls for the construction of a 278,500-square-foot warehouse.Work on the building, which will be attached to an existing warehouse on the site, is expected to begin in June, according to Randy Bachtel of BPR Inc. The Westminster engineering firm has been working on the project for several months.

"Hillary's Choice" by Gail Sheehy (Random House, 389 pages, $23.95).Anyone who suffers from the delusion that President Clinton's wife is a simple or forthrightly understandable person has not being paying attention for the last seven years and more. Gail Sheehy makes no such error in seeking to present the full dimension of this complex and often contrary lawyer, mother, wife and candidate for the U.S. Senate for a state in which she has never lived. There will be millions of words more written about Mrs. Clinton in the next year -- or month.

Boats sailed to the little Island from far away and herring and mackerel leaped out of the water all silver in the moonlight. The seaweed squeaked at low tide and little green pears grew on the pear tree. A black crow flew over.And a little kitten came to the Island with some people on a picnic. The kitten prowled around the Island and saw that it was all surrounded by water."What a little land," said the kitten. "This little Island is as little as Big is Big.""So are you," said the Island.

A move by Random House Inc. to turn Westminster into its sole national distribution center was dealt a blow last night by the city's Planning and Zoning Commission.The panel voted to extend water and sewerage service to 9 acres Random House needs to expand its distribution facility only if the property is annexed by Westminster.If the property is annexed, Random House would have to pay property taxes to Westminster.Random House is the No. 3 media and publishing company in the world behind Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co. Its distribution center is on Lucabaugh Mill Road near Route 27 near Cranberry Mall.

Even by warehouse standards, Random House's Westminster Distribution Center is enormous.It has more floor space than 10 Wal-Marts, bookshelves that are seven stories high and more volumes than the world's largest library.Each week, Random House packs and ships 4 million books out of Westminster, about twice the number available in the Enoch Pratt Free Library's main library and 26 branches.Yet the center is not big enough.This 24-hour-a-day city within a city -- where safety crews rappel down 70-foot stacks, books zip along conveyor belts and forklifts are dispatched by radio commands -- is getting bigger.

An obscure yet stubborn Westminster zoning commission -- that includes a nurse, a high school wrestling coach and a college history professor -- is threatening a multimillion-dollar expansion by Random House, Carroll County's largest employer.The New York publishing giant wants to increase its sprawling warehouse complex and create a single, nationwide distribution center for its extensive list of imprints: Random House, Knopf, Ballantine, Bantam, Doubleday, Dell and Broadway Books. The expansion -- aided by a $2.5 million state grant -- has breezed through regulatory bodies.

COMMON SENSE and a sense of common purpose could clear up the complicated embroglio over Random House's $30 million expansion plans and the book distributor's need for added water and sewer services from the city of Westminster.To provide extended utilities to the site, Westminster wants to annex it. Random House objects to paying city property taxes, estimated at more than $100,000 a year. But the firm would get lower rates on water and sewer service than it now pays.Random House got $3.5 million in state and county aid this year to put its sole national distribution center in Carroll County.

If "summer reading" implies light and breezy, it follows that fall reading, especially in a presidential election, would be heavy at times and windy. Here are a few of this season's election books: * A new paperback edition of Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics (Random House, $15) by Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden outlines the "guiding principles" he learned early in life, including the importance of keeping promises, according to Random House. * Of six titles that list John McCain as an author, the book that offers the most background on the Republican nominee is Faith Of My Fathers (Harper, $8)

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World By Tim Harford Random House / 254 pages / $25.95 On speed dates, 20 young men and 20 young women gather together, usually at a bar. Each of them gets a name badge, a pen and a checklist. When the host rings a bell, the strangers pair up on a first date, which lasts no longer than three minutes. After half an hour, all the guys and girls have met each other. The next day, they log on to their Internet accounts to learn who has chosen them for a second date.

RICHARD LEIGH, 64 Best-selling author Richard Leigh, a writer of speculative history who unsuccessfully sued for plagiarism over themes in Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code, died Nov. 21 in London of complications from a heart condition, his agent said. The U.S.-born Mr. Leigh, who had lived in Britain for three decades, was co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a work of nonfiction that claimed Jesus Christ fathered a child with Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline continues.

Ella Mae Bauerlien, a retired publishing house worker and community volunteer, died of cancer Sunday at Carroll Hospice in Westminster. The Westminster resident was 82. Born Ella Mae Esworthy in the Carroll County community of Gist, she attended Carroll County public schools. She worked at Butte Knits, later Westminster Knit Co., a clothing manufacturer, and at the Black & Decker plant in Hampstead. She retired from the book-return department at Random House in Westminster. She was a member of the Westminster Church of the Brethren, where she was a deacon, choir member and soup kitchen volunteer.

Curveball Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War By Bob Drogin Random House / 343 pages / $26.95 You knew the case for going to war in Iraq was shaky, that Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," which President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the CIA swore existed, never existed. You may not have realized just how cravenly eager they all were, in the months before Bush launched the war, to swallow a shoddy, half-baked story told by a two-bit Iraqi who defected to Germany hoping for a Mercedes and a nice apartment.

FDR By Jean Edward Smith Random House / 859 pages / $35 At the conclusion of the conference at Casblanca, Morocco, in January 1943, Winston Churchill accompanied Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the airport. The prime minister watched as the president was helped up the runway. He then returned to his limousine and told the driver to depart before the plane took off. "It makes me far too nervous," he sighed. "If anything ever happened to that man, I couldn't stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known."

The 10th annual Random House Book Fair will feature about 1,300 titles for sale from a variety of publishers, three national authors and a new Family Literacy Resource Center. "The book fair is a two-pronged event," said Steve Wantz, Carroll Community College Foundation executive director. "We're supporting and encouraging literacy in our community, and it's a fundraiser for our foundation, with 100 percent of the money going back to the students." The event starts at 6 p.m. Friday with a screening of the Disney family movie Cars in the Scott Center Theater at the 1601 Washington Road campus in Westminster.

The Lightning Keeper Starling Lawrence We Are All Welcome Here Elizabeth Berg Random House / 208 pages / $22.95 Of all the bizarre Southern Gothic novels ever written, none has a stranger premise than Elizabeth Berg's novel about a single mother in an iron lung who is raising three children - one of whom was born inside the contraption. When the kids misbehave, the mother disciplines them by biting their fingers. People in her hometown of Tupelo, Miss., try to tell Paige Dunn that she can't take care of a family, but with the help of a housekeeper and the children themselves, she manages to stay in her home and keep her children.

The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story Ken Dornstein Random House / 304 pages / $23.95 [New York Times News Service] Among the 259 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103, blown to bits over Scotland in 1988, was a young writer named David Dornstein. He fell to Earth in the yard of a Lockerbie resident named Ella Ramsden. He had carried with him, according to one newspaper report, the manuscript of a brilliant novel eagerly awaited by an American publisher. Its pages were now scattered across the Scottish countryside or the North Sea, lost, like its author, forever.

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life By Tom Reiss Random House / 449 pages / $14.95 This exhilarating, best-selling biography tracks the fantastic, intercontinental tale of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew from the Caucasus who impersonates a Muslim prince and becomes a best-selling writer in Nazi Germany.