Max Sinsheimer

I launched my agency in the Fall of 2016 after nearly seven years as an editor at Oxford University Press. I represent exclusively adult nonfiction, across a range of genres but with a particular interest in food and culture, history, popular science, and social issues.

As a former academic editor, I welcome scholarly works that I think can reach a crossover trade market. For instance, a few food studies and “issues” books I’ve represented include Marion Nestle’s Unsavory Truth (Basic Books), Michael Jacobson’s Salt Wars (MIT Press), and Catherine Donnelly’s Ending the War on Artisan Cheese (Chelsea Green).

At the moment I’m less interested in cookbooks, unless there is a very clear sales hook; for instance, I recently sold Feeding Your Family the Anti-Inflammatory Way (Adams Media/Simon & Schuster), which was written by a team of chefs, pediatricians, and integrative nutritionists. I’m not likely to take on personality- or restaurant-driven cookbooks. But I am on the lookout for great place-specific food narratives; for instance, I just sold a sake travelogue called Rice, Water, Earth (Tuttle Publishing), in which the authors travel to 33 centuries-old sake breweries in Japan and meet the master brewers, yeast hunters, mold merchants, and bartenders who make sake culture a complete and alluring universe unto itself.

There’s more on my plate (pun!) than just food. In fact I represented the opposite of food with Fast (Abrams Press), a book about the new science of fasting. I’d love to take on more popular science, particularly where there is a personal narrative woven in.

I’m also keen to represent environmental and social issues books, having worked on Disposable City (Nation Books), about Miami’s existential sea level rise crisis, and If I Don’t Make It, I Love You (Skyhorse), an anthology of narratives from school shooting survivors. I’m not afraid to take on difficult, depressing topics, but I do expect the writer to leave the reader with something hopeful to cling to.