• Editor & Publisher, Wednesday, November 30, 2005 10:45 AM

Editor & Publisher reports that the dispute over cover art on Thomas L. Friedman's best-selling book The World Is Flat has not been resolved, and that a lawsuit filed this week by the cover artist against Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the publisher, expresses the artist's anger over the entire matter. "Mr. Friedman's representatives implied that [painter Ed Miracle] should be grateful that a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer 'chose' his work," Rose van Perbandt, Miracle's agent, told E&P.  "Some benefit--removing his name from the image" on the book's cover. Moreover, said the agent, not only had the original, now-familiar painting (of two ships sailing off the edge of a flat earth) been somewhat altered from the original, but, worse, the artist is not a fan of Friedman's political views. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York this week, alleges that Farrar did not legally obtain rights to Miracle's painting. The World Is Flat has been sporting different cover art since April of this year, when the first-edition cover was challenged by Miracle.  "We didn't try to cheat anybody.... We thought this was all legal, kosher, and right," Friedman, a New York Times columnist, told E&P. "I feel bad that this happened, and I couldn't feel more bad" for the artist. 

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