worked to bring attention to the environmental
problems of the Salton Sea in Southern California.
In honor of his work, H.R. 3267 was named the
Sonny Bono Memorial Salton Sea Reclamation Act.
Another act named for him is the Sonny Bono Copy-
right Term Extension Act of 1998. Bono had worked
on an earlier version of this act, which added twenty
years to all term provisions set forth in the Copyright
Act of 1976.
When he died at the age of sixty-two in a skiing ac-
cident, his wife, Mary, carried on his job in Congress.
His headstone quotes a line about the cycle of life:
“And the Beat Goes On.”
Impact Bono’s copyright legislation provided more
protection for creative works, and his efforts to re-
store the Salton Sea raised public awareness of envi-
ronmental issues.
Further Reading
Bono, Chastity.Family Outing. Boston: Little, Brown,
1998.
Bono, Sonny.And the Beat Goes On. New York: Pocket
Books, 1992.
Cher.The First Time. New York: Isis, 1998.
Jan Hall
See also Conservatism in U.S. politics; Copyright
legislation; Music; Water pollution.
Book clubs
Definition Commercial organizations that sell
books to members, or a group of people
who read books and meet to discuss those
works
Book clubs represented big business throughout the 1990’s.
The New York Timesreported on December 14, 1999,
that for the year through October, net sales for book clubs
had reached $950 million, an increase of 4.5 percent over
the comparable period a year earlier. Book discussion clubs
became increasingly popular, in part because of Oprah’s
Book Club.
Three major corporations represented the key play-
ers in the book club business during the 1990’s:
Bertelsmann’s Doubleday Direct, Time Inc.’s Book-
of-the-Month Club, and Rodale Press’s six holdings.
Bertelsmann claimed in 1999 that together, the
clubs boasted a combined membership of 4.5 mil-
lion people.
Bertelsmann International Media Company German-
based Bertelsmann is the largest book club opera-
tion in the world. In 1998, Bertelsmann’s Doubleday
Direct (formerly the Doubleday One Dollar Book
Club) acquired Newbridge Communications, re-
naming it Doubleday Select, Inc. In July of that year,
Bertelsmann acquired Random House from Ad-
vance Publications, merging it with Bantam Double-
day Dell. Bertelsmann then represented the biggest
trade publisher in the English-speaking world, with
the United States becoming Bertelsmann’s most im-
portant market at the time. The U.S. operations of
Bertelsmann included the Literary Guild and
Doubleday’s book and record clubs. By December,
1999, the media conglomerate planned to consoli-
date a partnership with Bertelsmann’s Literary
Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club unit of
Time Inc.
Bertelsmann maintained a substantial stake in
the online book business. In 1995, the company, to-
gether with America Online (AOL), launched the
online service AOL Europe. By 1999, Bertelsmann
held a 40 percent interest in Barnesandnoble.com.
In the same year, Bertelsmann launched Bertels-
mann Online (bol.com), the Internet book re-
tailer.
School Book Clubs School book clubs expanded
dramatically in the 1990’s, perhaps driven to some
degree by pedagogic movements such as “whole lan-
guage” or “literature-based” approaches to teaching
and learning. These approaches focused on litera-
ture-rich learning environments, which conceivably
offered major book clubs such as Scholastic, Trum-
pet, and Golden Book Club opportunities to grow
and diversify. School book clubs continued to supply
children with books and other materials throughout
the 1990’s but also began supplying classrooms with
literacy materials in the form of trade books for
elementary literacy programs. These book clubs
also began supplying miscellaneous merchandise to
children. Some of the most popular serialized
school book club titles in the 1990’s, such as those
of the Baby-sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, and
Boxcar Children mystery series, included miscella-
neous merchandise such as stickers, posters, puzzles,
stamps, pencils, activity sheets, computer software,
and games. Book clubs also supplied children withThe Nineties in America Book clubs 111