Two women’s memoirs are likely to get significant media attention next week.

Rosanne Cash’s Composed, about her music career and life as Johnny Cash’s daughter, is already getting admiring attention, though holds are modest on light ordering at libraries we checked.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read. Yes, Cash comes from a well-known family and makes her living in the entertainment business, but ‘Composed’ is really about her spiritual growth as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife and an artist.”

New York Magazine profiles Cash and O, the Oprah Magazine selects it as one of 10 Books to Pick Up in August 2010.

Composed: A Memoir Rosanne Cash Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

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Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the Boston Globe book critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s account of her deep friendship with writer Caroline Knapp. Like Caldwell, Knapp was single by choice, dedicated to her writing and recovering from alcoholism, before she died of cancer in 2002.

Laura Miller in Salon calls it

…a slender and beautiful book… [Caldwell] never stoops to tear-jerking or sentiment. Which is not to say she won’t make you cry. It might be something as simple as her first-page description of love’s tempo that does it: “For years,” she writes, “we had played the easy daily game of catch that intimate connection implies. One ball, two gloves, equal joy in the throw and return.”

It was also a LA Times summer reading pick, and the #3 Indie Next pick for August .

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship Gail Caldwell Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is a new series of reminiscences from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter. Booklist says the chapters are “disconnected,” and “his descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.”

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others by Mother Teresa (Doubleday) offers more wisdom from Mother Teresa culled from private lessons she gave to fellow nuns.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham) is about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group.  USA Today has a Q&A with the author. This one’s also an August Indie Next pick.

Niall Ferguson is known for his 2008 best seller, The Ascent of Money. His new book High Financier, a bio of Siegmund Warburg and how his economic principles could have prevented the current global economic crises, releases tomorrow.

High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg Niall Ferguson Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-06-24) ISBN / EAN: 159420246X / 9781594202469

Tantor Audio:

On Sale Date: 06/24/2010
Trade; 9781400114986; 14 Audio CDs; $34.99
Librar;y 9781400144983; 14 Audio CDs; $69.99
MP3; 9781400164981; 2 MP3-CD; $24.99

Ferguson has emerged as a major critic of economist Paul Krugman, who supports economic stimulus. He discussed his views yesterday with Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s On Point.

He also stepped out of his role as an economist to comment on General McChrystal’s critism of the President’s handling of the war in Afghanistan in Rolling Stone article on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

As a result, his book, which was regarded by PW as a weak bio of a largely-forgotten figure in British banking, rose to # 126, from #7,111 on Amazon’s sales rankings yesterday. Libraries we checked are showing holds of 1:1 on light ordering.

The On Point with Tom Ashbrook web site features the following rap about the schism between two schools of economic thought; John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek (whose 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom rose  to #1 on Amazon last week and continues at #7 today, because of a passionate endorsement by Glenn Beck).

The bio of Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff coming in November caught the attention of several librarians at BEA’s Shout & Share program. It’s also caught the attention of film producer Scott Rudin, who has bought the rights to the book, reports USA Today’s Book Buzz column.

Who will play the lead?

Rudin says he is developing it “for and with” Angelina Jolie.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; 34.98

Political commentator and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, reviews Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One by Zev Chafets in today’s Washington Post. Since the book is a longer form of a profile already published in The New York Times Magazine, Frum wonders what if anything new can be discovered in the book and discovers,

…some disconnects between Limbaugh’s private life and public presence…some distinctly grandiose tastes in this self-imagined tribune of Middle America…Limbaugh has skillfully conjured for his listeners a world in which they are disdained and despised by mysterious elites — a world in which Limbaugh’s $4,000 bottles of wine do not exclude him from the life of the common man.

Summing up, Frum says,

It might seem ominous for an intellectual movement to be led by a man who does not think creatively, who does not respect the other side of the argument and who frequently says things that are not intended as truth. But neither Limbaugh nor Chafets is troubled.

The book is currently at #276 on Amazon.

Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One Zev Chafets Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Sentinel/Penguin – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 1595230637 / 9781595230638

Jonathan Alter’s book evaluating Obama’s first year in office lands next week. Alter, who writes for Newsweek and is a contributor to NBC News, has a strong media lineup, beginning with The Today Show this morning, The Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight and Meet the Press on Sunday. He’s even going to be on Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

The book has already been reviewed in the NYT. The Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” blog offers a “handy guide” to the book. According to Time magazine’s political blog, “Swampland,” members of Congress are upset by Alter’s take on how they handled health care legislation.

The Promise: President Obama, Year One Jonathan Alter Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 1439101191 / 9781439101193

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442334458; $49.99

Among the nonfiction titles going on sale next week, War by Sebastian Junger is poised to get the lion’s share of media attention. Holds are mounting at libraries we checked, undoubtedly helped by the advance publicity for this account of a platoon fighting in Afghanistan, which includes a New York Times op-ed by Junger and an excerpt from the book in Newsweek.

Junger will kick off his media tour with an interview on Good Morning America next Tuesday, May 11.

PW says that ”Junger mixes visceral combat scenes raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.”

Kirkus finds the book “often harrowing, though mostly conventional.”

WAR Sebastian Junger Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Twelve – (2010-05-11) ISBN / EAN: 0446556246 / 9780446556248

Large Print; Hachette; hardcover; ISBN 9780446566971; $28.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR CD; ISBN 9781607881988; $29.98
BBC Audio; UNABR; 9781607885344; 10 CD’s; $74.99
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive

Other Major Titles on Sale Next Week

Storm Warning: Whether Global Recession, Terrorist Threats, or Devastating Natural Disasters, These Ominous Shadows Must Bring Us Back to the Gospel by Billy Graham is the Christian evangelist’s latest examination of America’s problems. Though it’s the top pick on B&N.com’s “Coming Soon” list for next week, three out of four libraries we checked do not have it.

Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together by the Dalai Lama (Doubleday) advocates peaceful coexistence based on shared human experience. Not all libraries we checked had this one either.

The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies and a Company Called DreamWorks by Nicole LaPorte (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is a behind-the-scenes look at the Hollywood studio formed in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B-, saying that “LaPorte offers sharp critiques of business blunders made by DreamWorks’ founders… but with her blow-by-blow tale running well over 400 pages, it’s clear that she could learn a thing or two from the man about storytelling.”

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm (Penguin) gets a positive review from hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times: “Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, uses his gifts as a teacher to give the lay reader a succinct, lucid and compelling account of the causes and consequences of the great meltdown of 2008.”

Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball by Bill Madden (Harper) gets thumbs up from Kirkus: “Having covered the Yankees for 30 years, and with access to previously unavailable material, Madden provides a definitive and captivating biography of ‘The Boss.’ “

An as-yet untitled book by presidential chronicler, Robert Bernstein, will be published in September, reports the AP.

S&S Audio; UNABR; Simultaneous; 9781442335264; $29.99

Check out the book trailer for Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand, a PLA buzz title that was also part of our Galley Chat.

Yes, Philbrick was influenced by the movie Little Big Man.

Thanks to today’s Shelf Awareness for the heads up.

.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn Nathaniel Philbrick Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 0670021725 / 9780670021727

Audio; Penguin Audio; UNABR; 9780142427699; $39.95

In this week’s New Yorker, writer Richard Rayner reports that the late historian Stephen Ambrose fabricated interviews with former President Eisenhower for the books that brought Ambrose to fame. The information is based on discoveries by Tim Rives, the deputy director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Back in 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarism, first in his book The Wild Blue and then in several others. Ambrose refuted the claims by saying he simply neglected to put quote marks around several passages.

Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers was the basis of the highly-acclaimed and popular TV series; his son, Hugh Ambrose, wrote the tie-in book to the follow-up series on HBO, The Pacific.

There’s a common theme among big titles arriving next week; many are aimed at Father’s Day gift giving (don’t panic, fellow procrastinators, it’s not until June 20th).

Media is lined up for The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me by Bruce Feiler. It was already in USA Weekend, featuring interviews with the men Feiler chose to take on a parenting role to his two girls, in the event he succumbed to the cancer that was successfully removed from his body in 2008. Upcoming coverage includes a profile in People (May 10; on newsstands next week), an appearance on the Today Show and The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News.

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me Bruce Feiler Retail Price: $22.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061778761 / 9780061778766

HarperAudio; UNABR; 9780061988493; $29.99
Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive.
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The leadup to Father’s Day is also considered good timing for history titles. Heading that group is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by historian Hampton Sides. Libraries we checked have ordered solid quantities.

In Salon, critic Laura Miller praises the book as “a genuine corker”:

Sides’ meticulous yet driving account of James Earl Ray’s plot to murder King and the 68-day international manhunt that followed is in essence a true-crime story and a splendid specimen of the genre.

The Los Angeles Times adds that this “taut, vibrant account. . . shows the synchronicity of movements as King and his colleagues plot political strategy and follow his speaking itinerary, while Ray draws ever closer.”

Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin Hampton Sides Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385523920 / 9780385523929

Random House Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7393-5892-4; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

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Other Major Titles on Sale Next Week

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson (Bloomsbury) is an anthology of previously published essays that, according to PW, are “well written, sometimes elegantly so, and closely reasoned. They address familiar material from original and stimulating perspectives. Hanson’s arguments may not convince everyone, but cannot be dismissed.”

Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq by Dave Hnida (Simon & Schuster) is a physician’s account of serving in Iraq that’s “realistic, gritty and full of black humor,” according to Kirkus, but “surrenders to mawkishness and, worst of all, bad puns, seemingly in an effort to be the Patch Adams of Baghdad.”

Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max Hastings (Random House) is “a joy to read,” says Library Journal. “Despite other works examining this subject, libraries and readers of many persuasions will want this massive and detailed examination of the prime minister and his personal war.”

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore (Random House) is the account of an investment banker, Rhodes scholar and former aide to Condoleezza Rice who investigates the life of another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, who was wanted for killing a cop. In a starred review, PW says:

“Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures… that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.”

Newsweek’s online column “We Read it [So You Don't Have To]” is a Cliff’s Notes of current popular titles. Today, it analyzes Kitty Kelley’s bio of Oprah. The “Don’t Miss These Bits” section offers a synopsis of the juicier parts (with helpful page references) for those that haven’t been reading the press coverage.

Newsweek says what many others already have, that the book lacks a bombshell, but has “a gossipy nugget on every page” and raises the key question, “…who buys the book? Her many fans? Or her many detractors?”

The audience may be finite; the book has slid down Amazon’s sales rankings, from #1 to #4, with a down arrow. The rate of new holds added in libraries we checked is also slowing.

Oprah: A Biography Kitty Kelley Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 544 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0307394867 / 9780307394866

Large Print from Random House; $30; ISBN 9780739377857
Audio from Random House Audio; CD: $50; ISBN 9780307749246

Ironically, the biggest news in Kitty Kelley’s biography of Oprah, releasing today, may be that she was NOT abused as a child, as she claims. Today, the Huffington Post features a photo essay on Oprah’s “Aunt Katharine” (she’s actually an older cousin), who is quoted in Kelley’s book on the abject poverty Oprah claims she was raised in,

Now, you have to understand that I love Oprah, and I love all the good work she does for others, but I do not understand the lies that she tells. She’s been doing it for years now.

NPR’s Morning Edition (audio will be available some time after 9 a.m.), is interested in Kelley’s claims that she got the cold shoulder from many news outlets, including ABC, commenting,

Perhaps that’s not surprising, given that ABC’s parent company, Disney, is partnering with Winfrey on several of the new shows she’ll present on the Oprah Winfrey Network. But it is troubling to some.

In Kelley’s interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show yesterday, Kelley lists the shows that turned her down. Asked whether her motivation to choose Oprah as a subject was the millions of fans who might buy it, Kelley responds that “they will love it.”

Media attention has increased sales; the book is now at #3 on Amazon (from being in the 300’s over the weekend) and library holds have nearly doubled in the libraries we checked (bringing the average to 1.75 holds per copy). Half the libraries have received their copies.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Kitty Kelley, author of an unauthorized bio of Oprah, releasing tomorrow, has famously not been invited to many TV talk shows that usually vie for such high-profile books. The only show it is booked for is the Today Show this morning.

As of Friday, the book was in the 300’s on Amazon sales rankings and few details had been released (the media was a bit distracted by Oprah’s announcement that she is planning to host a prime-time show on her new network, OWN, which debuts in January).

But the print media has not been so reticent. Over the weekend, details began to leak and the book broke into the Top  20 on Amazon. It’s currently at #16, just behind David Remnick’s bio of Barack Obama (which is the lead review of the NYT BR this week) and well behind books about the founders that Glenn Beck is currently promoting. Today, the New Yorker, USA Today and the New York Times‘ Janet Maslin all parse Oprah, the book.

So, what’s the big “revalations”?

• Oprah won’t give her mother her phone number (but she does have people check on her daily, gives her a car and driver and provides her with $500 hats) –the UK’s Times Live
• Kelley names the boy Oprah gave birth to at 14 (or 15, sources differ. He died just weeks after he was born) — New York Times Magazine
• She once ordered two pecan pies and ate them both — New York Times Magazine
• Oprah lived with John Tesh briefely when they were both in Nashville (the New York Daily News)
• Kelley found out the name of Oprah’s father, but is not revealing it in the book (Janet Maslin, the NYT)
• Is she a lesbian? Kelley raises the question, but doesn’t give a definitive answer (the New Yorker)
• Her cousin claims that the sexual abuse Oprah has been open about just didn’t happen (USA Today)

Damning with faint praise, Maslin says,

After some hollow authorial claims of respect and admiration, Oprah just aims for the jugular. It doesn’t draw blood.

Part of the problem is that much of this has been revealed already, often by Oprah herself; the dieting, the James Frey brouhaha; “Ms. Kelley simply replays the televised version. She has nothing new to add to these stories.”

Library holds are averaging 1:1.

Oprah: A Biography Kitty Kelley Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 544 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0307394867 / 9780307394866

Large Print from Random House

• $30; ISBN 9780739377857

Audio from Random House Audio

• CD: $50; ISBN 9780307749246

Kitty Kelley’s Oprah: A Biography goes on sale next week, but it may get short shrift on national TV: only NBC will interview Kelley (0n Weekend Today this Sat. and the Today Show, Mon. & Tues.), according to the New York Post.  Library demand for the book is moderate, so far, at those we checked.

Relatively few of the book’s details have been released so far, aside from the National Enquirer’s headline about the ”Big Gay Lie” of Winfrey’s relationship with Stedman Graham, as we reported earlier.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Oprah herself is currently dominating entertainment headlines with the announcement of an evening talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, which launches in January. Reports also indicated that a book club show may be part of the lineup, with Oprah appearing on it occassionally.

Oprah: A Biography Kitty Kelley Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 544 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0307394867 / 9780307394866

Large Print from Random House

• $30; ISBN 9780739377857

Audio from Random House Audio

• CD: $50; ISBN 9780307749246

Also Available Next Week:

Michael J. Fox’s A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Future, (Hyperion) is the former TV and film star’s third memoir. He will appear on Entertainment Tonight on April 12 or 13, and Good Morning America on April 15.

FICTION

Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil, (Random House). Heavily anticipated, after the author’s beloved Booker winner, The Life of Pi, the new book’s reviews have not been strong, causing Kirkus to bring out some scary comparisons; “Like a Russian doll, the novel contains parables within parables…[the] dialogue sounds like Aesop filtered through Samuel Beckett.” PW was in agreement, but Booklist gave it a star. The new issue of Entertainment Weekly is in the Kirkus/PW camp, giving it a C+.

Anna Quindlen, Every Last One, (Random House). Entertainment Weekly reviews this title jointly with Anne Lamont’s Imperfect Birds (Riverhead, published last week), giving both books about parents trying to cope with teenage daughters C ’s and saying, “Bottom line here? Fans of Quindlen and Lamott may want to give these two a skip.” Prepub reviews of both were very strong, however.

For more titles coming this week, go to BandN.com, Coming Soon.

Several new books about Barack Obama are in the works, in addition to the just-announced Bridge by New Yorker editor David Remnick (Knopf, 4/6/10) — see earlier post.

Coming a few days before Remnick’s bio, is a book by Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the liberal magazine The American Prospect and author of Obama’s Challenge. Libraries we checked are not showing it on order.

A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future Robert Kuttner Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing – (2010-04-02) ISBN / EAN: 1603582703 / 9781603582704

Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter’s The Promise: President Obama, Year One will be published in May (most large libraries have it on order in small quantities). Alter also wrote The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, 2006, which got a boost in sales when Obama himself said he was reading it prior to taking office.

The Promise: President Obama, Year One Jonathan Alter Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 1439101191 / 9781439101193

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442334458; $39.99

According to USA Today, other books by presidential biographers are in the works. David Maraniss, whose account of the early Clinton years, First in his Class, is considered, “a standard text for the early life and political rise of the 42nd president” is at work on a “long-range project” about Obama.

And, Robert Draper, (Dead Certain: The Biography of  George W. Bush) is working on a book that considers Obama “in the context of the civil rights movement.”