He thought about it a loooong time

Karl Fleming, the former Newsweek bureau chief in L.A. and editor at Channel 2, has sold a book called Nothing to be Ashamed Of: The Memoir Of A Civil Rights Reporter. Publishers Lunch says it depicts "how a Southern boy from a rough background, whose background should have made him into a bigot worse than any other, became a witness to and friend of the civil rights movement." Sold to PublicAffairs for publication next spring.

Also in this week's Publishers Lunch:

Michelle Feynman, daughter of Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman, gathers her father's previously unpublished correspondence as Infinite Variety: The Collected Letters of Richard P. Feynman. To Basic for publication in April 2005.

Peter DeLeo's Surviving the Sierras, the saga of one's man thirteen day fight for survival after his plane crashes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. To Simon & Schuster.

Brooke Shields' Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Post Partum Depression, discussing how it affected her family, friends, marriage and daughter, as well as her self-image. To Hyperion, for publication in spring 2005, with Mary Ellen O'Neill editing.

If you want to feel very intimidated, there are also these minor undertakings from Jane Jacobs: A Short Biography of the Human Race, for publication in May 2006, and Discovering a New Economics, a self-edited anthology of her writings on cities.