The publisher of The Lost Symbol says its release date, September 15, is significant to the book’s numerology. But it also happens (surely a coincidence) to be the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’s collapse. It’s been a long year, and an even longer wait for the sequel to Dan Brown’s best-selling The Da Vinci Code. The Lost Symbol was originally slated for 2005 and was supposed to keep its publisher, Doubleday, rolling in cash no matter what happened in the wider world. Yet the late arrival of the book seems perfectly timed to this strange, edging-out-of-the-recession fall. Already Doubleday has announced a record 6.5 million-copy first printing of the long-awaited, embargoed novel—a capital outlay of 2007 proportions. Happy days are here again?
What’s in the New Book???? If anyone can divine the contents of The Lost Symbol, it’s Dan … Burstein. Intelligence Service How Brown feeds the brain. Opus Diss From renunciation to rapprochement. How Dan Brown Became Dan Brown Tracing the career path of a modern Michelangelo. The Enemies List The Church isn’t the only one with a beef.