Madeline McIntosh, chief executive of Penguin Random House.Credit…Erik Tanner for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Madeline McIntosh, the chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., took the stand on Monday to defend its bid to buy the rival publishing house Simon & Schuster.The Department of Justice has sued to stop the $2.18 billion acquisition on antitrust grounds, and speaking in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, Ms. McIntosh disagreed with the government’s assertion that the combined publisher would become too dominant in a particular slice of the market.The slice of the market that the government has focused on are books that earn advances of $250,000 or more, which it called “anticipated top-selling books.” It says that the five largest publishers in the country — which include Penguin Random House, the biggest; and Simon & Schuster, the fourth largest — compete mainly against one another to buy those titles, and if the number of publishers were to shrink, so too would the competition.Penguin Random House argued that the industry is vast …
