Publisher Yanks Monica Crowley’s Plagiarized Book

The New York Times reports:

HarperCollins is withdrawing the digital edition of Monica Crowley’s 2012 book “What the (Bleep) Just Happened?” from retailers, after evidence of plagiarism. Its decision to recall the book comes after a report by CNN that Ms. Crowley, a conservative columnist and TV personality who was chosen by President-elect Donald J. Trump for a high-ranking communications role at the National Security Council, had included plagiarized passages from Wikipedia and newspaper articles.

“The book, which has reached the end of its natural sales cycle, will no longer be offered for purchase until such time as the author has the opportunity to source and revise the material,” HarperCollins said in a statement on Tuesday.

The book, which took aim at Barack Obama’s presidency and policies, was a modest commercial success, selling around 20,000 hardcover copies, according to Publishers Marketplace. Ms. Crowley’s book was published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint at HarperCollins; it included identical language to passages published by other sources without attributing credit — in some 50 instances — CNN reported over the weekend. More examples of plagiarism surfaced in Ms. Crowley’s Ph.D. dissertation, according to Politico, which found more than a dozen examples of passages that had been lifted from scholarly works.

She’ll still get the Trump gig, of course.