The ability to slice and dice content digitally, giving new life to backlist titles, is often touted as a major advantage for publishers. Often touted, but so far, rarely used.

Simon and Schuster just announced that they are releasing an eBook called Truman Fires MacArthur, about the event that is the historical precedent of “Obama Fires MacChrystal.” The ebook is an excerpt of David McCullough’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning bio, Truman.

It appears the excerpt is not available to libraries. However, the full book is available electronically through OverDrive.

In her L.A. Times blog “Jacket Copy,” Carolyn Kellogg notes calls this a smart move by S&S’s brand-new publisher, Jonathan Karp, the former publisher and founder of the Grand Central imprint Twelve, and says it  bodes well for  his leadership of S&S.

By the way, for libraries that haven’t already done so, this is a good reminder to bring the book out of the stacks and display it.

Truman David McCullough Retail Price: $22.00 Paperback: 1120 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (1993-06-14) ISBN / EAN: 0671869205 / 9780671869205

The New Yorker has announced their picks of the best 20 writers under 40. This is the magazine’s first such list since 1999, when it identified several future literary successes, such as Junot Díaz and Jhumpa Lahiri. Stories by the authors will be featured in upcoming issues.

By the way, the list is evenly divided between women and men.

Several of the authors have new books coming this fall; all but one were featured at the recent BEA librarians’ Shout & Share program:

Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel Gary Shteyngart Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-07-27) ISBN / EAN: 1400066409 / 9781400066407

Also picked as a summer read by Time magazine, this is the author’s third book after The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2003) and Absurdistan (2007).

———————-

Great House: A Novel Nicole Krauss Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-10-04) ISBN / EAN: 0393079988 / 9780393079982

This is the third novel by Krauss, who is married to another author on the list, Jonathan Safron Foer. Her History of Love (Norton, 2005) received acclaim and was a fixture on several best seller lists in paperback.

———————-

How to Read the Air Dinaw Mengestu Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-10-14) ISBN / EAN: 1594487707 / 9781594487705

Mengestu’s first book, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, won many awards

———————-

The only one of the group not mentioned during Shout & Share is a title coming out in March, 2011.

———————-

The rest of the authors have published books that are well-represented in libraries; a good opportunity for a display. The list below shows each author’s latest titles; links are to EarlyWord coverage.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32 — The Thing Around Your Neck, Knopf, 6/10

Daniel Alarcón, 33 — Secret Miracle: The Novelist’s Handbook, Holt, 4/10

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38 — Ms. Hempel Chronicles, Holt, 9/08

Joshua Ferris, 35 — The Unnamed, 1/10

Jonathan Safran Foer, 33 — Eating Animals, Little, Brown, 11/09

Nell Freudenberger, 35 — The Dissident, Ecco, 8/06

Rivka Galchen, 34 — Atmospheric Disturbances, 5/08

Yiyun Li, 37 — Vagrants, 3/09

Philipp Meyer, 36 — American Rust, Spiegle & Grau, 2/09

C.E. Morgan, 33 — All the Living, FSG, 3/09

ZZ Packer, 37 — Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, Riverhead, 3/03

Karen Russell, 28 — St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Knopf, 9/06

Salvatore Scibona, 35 — The End, Graywolf Press, 10/09; was a surprise nominee for the National Book Awards in ‘09, but lost out to Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country

Wells Tower, 37 — Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, FSG, 2/10 — was on several Best Books lists last year.

For a roundup of books being released for Mother’s Day gift giving, check out the BookReporter.com’s special section, promoted on EarlyWord’s top banner this week. You can also win one of 15 special Mother’s Day Gift Baskets, including 12 of the 36 book selections.

It’s interesting to see the range of titles, from Janice Y.K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher to How Never to Look Fat Again (we want to meet the people willing to give their mothers the latter).

Included is a title that may look like a new book by Ruth Reichl, For You Mom, Finally. It’s actually the paperback edition of last year’s Not Becoming My Mother. Yes, the friendlier title works better for Mother’s Day (imagine giving the original title along with How Never to Look…), but according to the Washington Post’s food blog, Reichl never liked the original title anyway.

For You Mom, Finally Ruth Reichl Retail Price: $13.00 Paperback: 144 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0143117343 / 9780143117346

If you’re looking for a quick reminder of favorite winter-themed titles for a book display, check out my article in the new Nick Jr. on “Books that Celebrate Winter.”

If you’re experiencing a sudden run on Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, it may be because Stephenie Meyer, in her “Behind the Scenes” Oprah interview, said it’s the book she’s reading now and can’t wait to get back to. Amazon’s editors chose it for their Top 100 of 2009, at #63. It also got strong reviews in the L.A. Times, and the NYT.

Summarizing the book is next to impossible, as Library Journal demonstrated in their review:

This book is difficult to categorize. It’s a comedy, but it’s not particularly funny. It’s a novel of ideas, but it mocks intellectualism. It’s a fantasy, but it includes a cameo appearance by Sen. Olympia Snowe. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea…

Everything Matters! Ron Currie, Jr. Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2009-06-25) ISBN / EAN: 0670020923 / 9780670020928

As most of her fans already know, she loves Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Shakespeare is a “foundation block” of her first reading experiences. Among YA authors,  she likes Scott Westerfeld and loves Shannon Hale. Science fiction is a favorite; Orson Scott Card is her “personal hero.”

Newsweek’s book coverage had become a bit sporadic (also true, sadly, for most of the weeklies, with the notable exceptions of People, Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker).

The current issue (July 13; Michael Jackson on the cover, of course) makes up for that with a feature on the 50 books that are not “best books,”  but books that “open a window on the times we live in.” Who needs “another list telling you how great The Great Gatsby” is, they say (nonetheless, online, perhaps as a form of self-protection, they also provide a best list – Newsweek’s Top 100 Books).

It’s interesting to see the mix of older and contemporary books on the list; number one is Trollope’s 1875 masterpiece, The Way we Live Now. Newsweek says,

Trollope’s satire of financial (and moral) crisis in Victorian England even has a Madoff-before-Madoff, a tragic swindler named Augustus Melmotte.

Harry Potter doesn’t make the cut, but Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series does.

This list is more fun than the over-familiar “bests” lists. It would make a great book display or a reading group discussion (“What books would you choose?”)

This is off topic, but we thought you’d like to know:

Maybe it’s not completely off topic, though; how about a memorial display, featuring the book:

Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets
by Clinton, Hillary Rodham
Unfortunately, no longer in print.

Buddy, who did not get along with Socks (which is the reason that Socks went to live with President Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, when the Clintons moved to Chappaqua, NY) died after he was hit by a car in 2002.

Paste magazine asked various authors to pick the books they liked most this year.

Stephen King says that 2008 marks his discovery of British thriller/suspense writer Robert Goddard. He calls the books “amazing tricks of conjury. Here are surprises that really surprise.”

As King says, a “handful” of his books have been reissued in the U.S (large libraries I checked have about a dozen); a good opportunity for a display — “What Keeps Stephen King Up at Night.”

(Thanks to Publishers Lunch for pointing this article out).