We should have guessed; the Vanity Fair excerpt of Michael Wolff’s book on Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, has generated dozens of articles, proving once again that the media is obsessed with itself.

Reuters headline is Murdoch yearns to buy New York Times; New York Magazine likes the part about Rupert’s dye job, The Aubergine-Haired Mogul and the Girl From Shandong Province (the Financial Times, which has a “People” Column, who knew?, gets all NY Posty with Do or dye for Rupert Murdoch). Most, however, ran with the revelation that Obama, Murdoch and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes had a sit-down (e.g., Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post, Obama Met With Fox News Executives). That story dovetails nicely with news that Obama will appear on the O’Reilly Factor on Fox tomorrow night.

If so much news can be generated from a short excerpt, you’ve got to wonder what will happen when the book comes out in February.

As we mentioned in our story yesterday, the book has not yet been reviewed by prepub sources and is not on order in any of the libraries we checked.

The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch

Michael Wolff

• Hardcover: $27.95; 320 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (February 17, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0385526121
• ISBN-13: 978-0385526128

Your first question after hearing that McCain had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate was undoubtedly, “Is there a book about her?”

The answer is “yes, and it’s now #12 on Amazon.”

Published with uncanny foresight in April by Alaska’s Epicenter Press, the book is partisan towards its subject (as is clear from its subtitle). 

According to Publishers Weekly.com the publisher is out of stock and is working with Lightning Source to meet demand until it can do another reprint. 

Joe Biden’s book, Promises to Keep went to #8 on Amazon after his nomination last week. It is now at #246.

The libraries I checked do not own it.

Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment on Its Ear 
by Kaylene Johnson

• Hardcover: $19.95; 159 pages
• Publisher: Epicenter Press (April 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0979047080
• ISBN-13: 978-0979047084

Libraries have had the authorized bio of Warren Buffett on order since February (the book was originally scheduled for May). Don’t let those orders get cancelled; USA Today reports that it will be released on September 29. 

The story also explains that the curious title, The Snowball comes from a Buffett quote: “Life is like a snowball. The really important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.”

Phew; I was afraid it had to do with one’s chances of investing like Buffet.

Note that audio and large print versions will also be available.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Live

Alice Schroeder

• Hardcover: $35; 976 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (September 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0553805096
• ISBN-13: 978-0553805093

Starbucks announces that they have chosen a Simon and Schuster title, The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper as the next selection for their book program. Beginning September 3rd, the book will be featured at 6,500 of the chain’s coffee shops. The current selection is The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.

The Starbucks press release describes the book this way,

Cooper’s poignant memoir tells the haunting story of a privileged Liberian childhood torn apart by civil war and exile, and of her return to her native country after two decades to reconnect with the foster sister who had been left behind. First told in a Wall Street Journal cover story that generated far-reaching critical acclaim and reader interest, the story of Helene Cooper’s extraordinary life, now fully explored in memoir form, is a compelling personal tale rent from the broader pages of Liberia’s recent turbulent history.

And, they quote the author’s reaction to the selection,

I remember going into my local Starbucks on K Street in Washington for my morning coffee on my way to work, and seeing Ishmael Beah’s Long Way Gone on the counter. I was thrilled for him as a fellow West African–and so envious myself at the same time! I’m not ashamed to say that I stood in line daydreaming that one day it would be me. I’m absolutely thrilled ‘The House at Sugar Beach’ is a Starbucks selection,” says Helene Cooper.

Some libraries have not ordered it. Others have it on order in modest quantities, with comfortable holds to copy ratios. None of the libraries I checked have ordered the audio.

The House at Sugar Beach

Helene Cooper

• Hardcover: $26.00
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0743266242
• ISBN-13: 978-0743266246

• Simon & Schuster Audio, September 2008 
• 9 Compact Disks (Unabridged)
• ISBN-10: 0-7435-7951-8
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7435-7951-3

Coming up on this week’s CBS Sunday Morning is the new bio of Doris Day by David Kaufman. Consumer media coverage for the book to date includes,

• USA Today, 7/10, “The new dish on Doris Day,” Deirdre Donahue

• USA Today Weekend interview, 6/20
  

• Los Angeles Times, 7/5, A new biography looks into the shadows and ‘Untold Story’ of Doris Day

“On screen, she was America’s smiling, singing darling. But off screen, her husbands weren’t Rock Hudson and her life was no light romp.”

• Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7/7, Ten minutes with . . . the author of Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door. Both the author and Doris Day are from Ohio.

• Excerpt in last month’s Vanity Fair.

All these stroies lead with a version of “her life was not what it seemed.” Even though Day herself made that clear in her 1976 autobiography, it still seems to surprise some.

Most, but not all, libraries I checked have received the book or have it on order.

Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door
by David Kaufman

• Hardcover: $29.95
• Publisher: Virgin Books; (June 10, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1905264305
• ISBN-13: 978-1905264308

The New York Post gossip columnist Richard Johnson is not happy. In today’s column, he calls S&S’s Adam Rothberg a “fork-tongued flack.” It seems Adam refused to give him the scoop about Madonna’s brother’s tell-all book, due next month. Instead, he gave the story to Hillel Italie of the AP.

Good for you, Adam. Hillel is on the publishing beat full time and Johnson only covers books when it suits his gossip-mongering.

Johnson adds some tidbits to the story — he claims the book will be “brutal”;

“It’s extremely graphic and devastating,” said a source who declined to give details. “He wrote it on the sly without telling Madonna. They want to put it out before her lawyers can get a hold of it.”

We’ll let you know when we get biblio info on the title, due next month.

Last week, we suggested that The Soloist, which landed at #25 on the Amazon list after an NPR interview, is a book to watch. Additional attention comes to the book this week, with Dana Goodyear’s five-page article in the New Yorker about the making of the movie. Unfortunately, the story is not on the New Yorker’s site, so we can’t link to it, but it’s worth seeking out in print. Much of the book and therefore the movie takes place in L.A.’s Skid Row. Director, Joe Wright (Atonement), insisted on casting the local street people as extras. Goodyear writes about the movie’s impact on their lives as well as on that of the soloist himself.

The movie is scheduled for release around Thanksgiving.

The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music Steve Lopez

• Hardcover: $25.95
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (April 17, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0399155066
• ISBN-13: 978-0399155062

• Audio CD: Unabridged, $19.95
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks, (May 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1433215225
• ISBN-13: 978-1433215223

• Audio Cassette: Unabridged, $44.95
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks, (May 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1433215217
• ISBN-13: 978-143321521

Pico Iyler, known for his writing on travel (Time magazine’s managing editor calls him “one of the world’s premier prose stylist.” Booklist says, “calling Iyer a travel writer is reductive, like saying George Plimpton was a sportswriter”) is the author of this week’s Time magazine cover story on the Dalai Lama. It is based on his forthcoming book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Knopf, 3/25). The book is on order, in small quantities, in most libraries.

Now that Fidel Castro has stepped down, many are wondering about Cuba’s future under his brother Raul. The Wall Street Journal today reviews a book on just that subject first published in 2005 and updated last year.

The older edition is owned by the majority of the libraries I checked. It’s a good time to pull it out for display.

• Paperback:$14.95
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (February 6, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 1403975078
• ISBN-13: 978-1403975072

You know you want to read more about Andrew Morton’s new Tom Cruise tell-all. And, amazingly, the New York Times, yes the Times, has a review today by Janet Maslin (pub date is Tuesday).