The first of what will be many reviews of Michael Lewis’ The Big Short are in. The Washington Post says,

If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis’s, The Big Short.

That’s not because Lewis has put together the most comprehensive or authoritative analysis of all the misdeeds and misjudgments and missed signals that led to the biggest credit bubble the world has known. What makes his account so accessible is that he tells it through the eyes of the managers of three small hedge funds and a Deutsche Bank bond salesman, none of whom you’ve ever heard of. All, however, were among the first to see the folly and fraud behind the subprime fiasco, and to find ways to bet against it when everyone else thought them crazy.

In today’s NYT, Michiko Kakutani says that, “No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, that now classic portrait of 1980s Wall Street,” but, she feels, by focusing on individuals who made millions by betting against the bubble, “the reader is put in the position of rooting for [them].”

Business Week also criticizes the Lewis for “glamorizing” these people, but “For those who enjoy a knife cutting through the obfuscation and arrogance of Wall Street, Lewis is king.”

Lewis appeared on Sixty Minutes on Sunday; he will appear on many others this week — the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others today, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose tomorrow.

On Friday, we noted that library holds were surprisingly light; they began increasing rapidly over the weekend. The book is now at #1 on Amazon. Lewis’s earlier books are also rising — Liar’s Poker, Panic, Moneyball and Blind Side.

PART ONE

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PART TWO

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Cotinuing at #5 on the 3/21 NYT Nonfiction best seller list after five weeks, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks got feature treatment on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday.

Author Rebecca Skloot will also appear on the Colbert Report on Tuesday.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 1400052173 / 9781400052172

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307712509; $35
Audio and e-book available from OverDrive

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The program also aired a shorter version of this segment on Letters to Jackie that originally appeared on CBS Evening News on Monday, March 8th.

Watch CBS News Videos Online
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Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.

Coming to theaters April 9th is The Runaways, a movie based on Cherie Curry’s 1989 memoir, Neon Angel, recently updated as a tie-in.

The movie was previewed in the NYT this weekend,

…a new film about the trailblazing bad-girl rock band from the 1970s that spawned Joan Jett, is how authentic it feels…One reason may be that the movie partly based on “Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway” (Harper Collins), a newly revamped autobiography by the group’s lead singer Cherie Currie, whose chillingly quick self-destruction is relived through Dakota Fanning.

Official Web site: RunawaysMovie.com

Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway Cherie Currie, Tony O’neill Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: It Books – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061961353 / 9780061961359

In this Sunday’s NYT Magazine Frank Bruni profiles Katie Lee, aspiring food celebrity.

She appears regularly on The Early Show. Her cooking column, Eat This Up, appears monthly in Cosmopolitan. She’s published books; a requirement for any food celebrity. The first book even landed her a spot on Oprah (perhaps largely because her husband at the time, Billy Joel, appeared with her).

Sales of Lee’s second book, minus the Oprah effect, have been modest. Lee observes to Bruni that the cookbooks that sell the best are by people who have their own show. Having failed to sell an earlier pilot, she is now working on another one. She also has a contract with S&S for a novel, loosely based on her life with Billy Joel.

Trying to become famous must be exhausting.

The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions Katie Lee Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 1439126747 / 9781439126745

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The Comfort Table Katie Lee Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2008-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 141694835X / 9781416948353

After dozens of high-profile best selling titles about various aspects of the financial crisis, the most anticipated title, and the one the may be the most accessible to the broadest audience is…

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 0393072231 / 9780393072235

It arrives with much fanfare; an excerpt in Vanity Fair, appearances on Sixty Minutes (Sunday), the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others on Monday, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose on Tuesday.

Holds in libraries are surprisingly light; all the publicity could change that.

On Tuesday night, Jon Stewart interviewed Mark Thiessen on Comedy Central’s Daily Show. Going in, you had to know, simply from the title of the book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, that the interview would be contentious.

The extended interview continues in two additional parts:

• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 2
• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 3

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack Marc A. Thiessen Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-01-18) ISBN / EAN: 1596986034 / 9781596986039

As an NPR correspondent covering Iraq, Deborah Amos became interested in talking to Iraqis, not an easy task under Saddam, when they feared talking, or now, as violence has made communication nearly impossible. Nonetheless, she never tires of Iraq. As she told Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (listen here),

I actually love the culture. I love the food, and the people — and I’m comfortable there. … I’m always happy when I get off the plane, and it hardly matters where I land.

Her new book is about the forced migration of the Sunnis.

Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East Deborah Amos Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: PublicAffairs – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1586486497 / 9781586486495

Today’s Oprah Show repeats the January segment that launched Alicia Silverstone’s vegetarian book, The Kind Diet, which is still on the NYT Hardcover Advice list, currently at #2. Also on the show is Michael Pollan, discussing his book, Food Rules, which is at #1 on the Paperback Advice list.

Jonathan Safran Foer appeared on the The Ellen DeGeneres show yesterday; as a result, his book on vegetarianism, Eating Animals, rose from #383 on Amazon to #6.

It’s amazing to realize that there was a time before consulting firms and endless talk about business strategy. The former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review writes about how we got here in Lords of Strategy. It’s currently rising on Amazon (now at #308), even though the listing indicates it won’t be published for three more weeks (the publisher listing, however, shows a 3/3/10 pub date).

It was just reviewed in the The Wall Street Journal, “Big Think In the Boardroom“;

…a clear, deft and cogent portrait of what the author calls the most powerful business idea of the past half-century: the realization that corporate leaders needed to abandon their go-it-alone focus on their company’s fortunes and instead pursue policies based on a detailed study of the competitive environment and of broader business trends.

The author was interviewed earlier in Business Week; “Lords of Strategy: A Talk with Walter Kiechel.”

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World Walter Kiechel Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press – (2010-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1591397820 / 9781591397823

Check your holdings; it wasn’t review prepub and the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet.

Harry Markopolos, a Boston deratives analyst, was asked by his boss to look into a very successful hedge fund and try to figure out why it was doing so well. He instantly realized that it was a fraud and tried many times to blow the whistle on it. He wasn’t subtle; in 2000, he sent a memo to the SEC  titled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.” Fittingly, his book about the experience is titled No One Would Listen.

That fund was, of course, Bernie Madoff’s. In an interview with Jon Stewart on Monday night, Markopolos was clear about his distain for the SEC, causing Stewart to burst out, “You are an angry dude; you’re just rippin‘ these guys.”

The book rose to #18 on Amazon (it’s now at #21) and has heavy holds in libraries.

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No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Harry Markopolos Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0470553731 / 9780470553732

ebook available from OverDrive

As Terry Gross says in her interview with Melissa Febos on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, “this may be the first memoir by a dominatrix who grew up listening to NPR,” a reflection of her obvious intelligence which is behind the book’s clever title, Whip Smart (listen to the interview here).

Why did she become a dominatrix? She couldn’t get a job in publishing.

The book rose to #77 (from 10,630) on Amazon.

Whip Smart: A Memoir Melissa Febos Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0312561024 / 9780312561024

More national press is arriving for Letters to Jackie (see our earlier story).

The AP ran a story that was picked up by many news outlets today. Author Ellen Fitzpatrick and two of the letter writers in the book will appear on CBS Evening News tonight and the New York Times is running a story in the “National” section tomorrow. The book rose to #195 on Amazon today.

Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.

Releasing on Tuesday is Karl Rove’s memoir Courage and Consequence. The book is embargoed, but news began breaking about it this week (see NYT story, “Ultimate Bush Insider Lifts Veil on Presidency“). It is currently at #52 on Amazon.

Since there were no prepub reviews, you may want to check your holdings. However, most of the libraries we checked own it, with fewer than 1 hold per copy ordered.

Courage and Consequence Karl Rove Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 608 pages Publisher: Threshold Editions – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1439191050 / 9781439191057

S&S Audio; ABRIDGED; 9781442334069; $29.99

Next week, The Story of Stuff, by environmentalist Annie Leonard, launches with the author’s appearance on the Colbert Report on Tuesday and an interview with Christine Amanpour on CNN.

Many know the author’s work because of her online video with the same title, which has been viewed by millions and has been used by teachers as a way to get students to think about sustainability. It achieved the ultimate compliment when it was banned by a Montana school board after a parent complained the video’s message is anti-capitalist. It was featured on the front page of the New York Times last May. The author wrote the book to answer questions she received from people had viewed the video online and wanted to know more.

The book received starred reviews in both LJ and Booklist; the PW and Kirkus reviews were also strong.

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change Annie Leonard Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Free Press – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 143912566X / 9781439125663

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9780743599153; $26

Just posted on the NPR site, a review of Marilyn Johnson’s This Book is Overdue (warning: some librarian stereotypes, but used to illustrate how outdated they are).

We’re also expecting a review in the upcoming 3/7 NYT Book Review.

The book hit #130 last week, its highest point to date on Amazon sales rankings. Clearly, the general public is more interested in us than we imagined.

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This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All Marilyn Johnson Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061431605 / 9780061431609

Audio: Tantor; 2/22/10
Trade: 9781400116348; 7 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146345; 7 CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166343; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99