'Last Lecture' Book Co-Authored by Columnist Tops Bestseller Lists

By: E&P Staff "The Last Lecture" has shot to the top of many bestseller lists.

Published April 8 by Hyperion (which reportedly paid a $6.7-million advance), the book is by Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch "with" Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow.

Pausch, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, gave a moving and upbeat "last lecture" last September that stirred a vast amount of interest. A big reason why Pausch's comments quickly spread worldwide was a Journal column Zaslow wrote about the talk that was accompanied by a video. Zaslow subsequently took a leave of absence from the newspaper to work on the book.

"The Last Lecture" was the subject of an April 6 cover story in Parade magazine and an April 9 ABC-TV special with Diane Sawyer.

For more on the book, see the interview with Zaslow in E&P's January 2008 issue.