Gerard Colby (earlier known as Gerard Colby Zilg) (born 1950) is an author and past-president of the US

National Writers Union National Writers Union (NWU), founded on 19 November 1981, is the trade union in the United States for freelance and contract writers: journalists, book and short fiction authors, business and technical writers, web content providers and poets. ...

, where he previously held various chair positions. From 1997 to 2001 he served as chair of the Vermont section. He is notable for authoring '' Du Pont: Behind The Nylon Curtain''. The 1974 publication was put under contract by

Prentice-Hall Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari ...

in anticipation of a significant quantity of books sold to

Book of the Month Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members ch ...

. The book painted a portrait of

DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

enterprises and the DuPont family that was characterized as "sober but unflattering" by some but as presenting a Marxist interpretation of the company by others. In response to pressure from DuPont, Book-of-the-Month cancelled its preorder. In anticipation of lower sales, Prentice-Hall reduced its print run and scaled back its marketing plans. Colby (Zilg) sued Prentice-Hall for breach of contract. In the federal case Zilg v Prentice-Hall, Inc., the Federal District Court in New York awarded Colby damages of $24,000. In 1984 the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the ruling. The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal the same year. The suit is an important example of case law relating to the practice of ''privishing'' (private publishing) where a publishing house reduces its print run and support of a book so much that the book fails to reach the public.

State Politics

Colby ran for the Vermont State Senate seat for Lamoille County in 2012 and 2016 but lost both races.

Honors and awards

In 2003 he received the

National Press Club Organizations A press club is an organization for journalists and others professionally engaged in the production and dissemination of news. A press club whose membership is defined by the press of a given country may be known as a National Pre ...

's "Arthur Rouse Award for Press Criticism" for the book ''Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press'' (Prometheus Books, 2002) that was edited by the co-award winner

Kristina Borjesson Kristina Borjesson is a freelance journalist. She edited an award-winning collection of essays, '' Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press'' (2002), for which she wrote a chapter detailing her investigation of the TW ...

Personal life

Colby is married to writer

Charlotte Dennett Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont (United States), Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Meckl ...

and lives in Lamoille County, Vermont.

Bibliography

*''Du Pont: Behind The Nylon Curtain''. Prentice-Hall, 1974. 600+ pages, by Gerard Colby Zilg, *''Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain''. Secaucus NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1984. 968 pages, by Gerard Colby, *''Thy Will Be Done, the Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil'' HarperCollins, 1995, Hardcover. 960 pages, by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, ; HarperCollins: Janice Temple, 1996, Paperback.1008 pages, *''Into The Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press'' (2002) as collaborator, author of Chapter 1, The Price of Liberty. The book is an anthology on the current state of investigative journalism in the US and was an Amazon.com top-ten best-seller.''Into The Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press'' Prometheus Books, 2002. 392 pages, Kristina Borjesson, editor,

References

External links

National Writers Union pageBook review in The Nation, 1996, Thy Will Be Done
{{DEFAULTSORT:Colby, Gerard American male journalists American political writers Writers from Burlington, Vermont Living people 1950 births