What’s that sound? Could it be tech reporters sharpening their nails, in anticipation of next month’s release of Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, billed as the true story of the founding of Facebook?  Mezrich, you’ll remember, is the author of the nonfiction bestseller Bringing Down the House, about MIT students who beat the odds in Las Vegas, who later conceded that he had fictionalized parts of that book. 

The New York Times Bits blog and Boston magazine both note that the stakes are higher for Mezrich in the new book — and not only because Mezrich will face stiff scrutiny from tech reporters and bloggers, who have already debunked some details in leaked copies of his original proposal for the book. Mezrich has also received a $1.2 million advance for the book and has made a film deal with West Wing creator Alan Sorkin. And let’s not forget that the Facebook founders could be litigious. In addition, the Bits blog says, Mezrich’s main source is not airtight: he had access only to Eduardo Saverin, who provided seed money to one of the site’s founders, Mark Zuckerberg, before Saverin was ousted from the Facebook team. 

Libraries are showing some reserves on the book. This could be one to watch, depending on how other reporters and Facebook respond to the book.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal Ben Mezrich Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2009-07-14) ISBN / EAN: 0385529376 / 9780385529372

Available from Random House audio (July 7, 2009)

• CD; $35; 9780739383582

Much touted at Book Expo, Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Wired magazine founder Chris Anderson is now drawing a round of negative publicity less than two weeks before its July publication, stemming from accusations that Anderson lifted content from the Web without attribution. Though the book has been in the news for several days, preorder activity on Amazon is relatively mild: Free is currently at #4897. Libraries we checked show some reserves, with between 10 and 25 copies on order.

The charges against Anderson first emerged in a post by Waldo Jaquith on the Virginia Quarterly Review blog, and were seconded by Edward Champion, who posted examples of possible plagarism from other websites on his own blog. Anderson, in turn, responded to Jaquith’s claims on his blog, stating that the unattributed passages would be rewritten or credited to Wikipedia in all digital and future print editions of the book.

It remains to be seen if the controversy will overshadow the book itself, which PW gave a starred review, saying “Anderson provides a thorough overview of the history of pricing and commerce…As in [his] previous book, the thought-provoking material is matched by a delivery that is nothing short of scintillating.”

Amazon has also posted a video interview with Anderson from Book Expo, taped before the controversy erupted, in which Anderson explains how business models involving “free” giveaways have evolved between the 20th and 21st centuries.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price Chris Anderson Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2009-07-07) ISBN / EAN: 1401322905 / 9781401322908

CNBC’s David Faber appeared this morning on the Today show with host Matt Lauer, sending his book, And the Roof Caved In: How Wall St. Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to its Knees, to #12 on Amazon. None of the libraries we checked had copies.

On the show, Farber said that his book tries to connect the dots between the experience of individual Americans and the economic forces that created the collapse of the mortgage market. He also commented that President Obama’s proposed mortgage industry regulations leave too much discretion to the states; discussed the problem of companies that become “too big to fail;” and contrasted current levels of consumer spending with the views of financial experts who project recovery beginning in 2010 at the earliest.

And Then the Roof Caved In David Faber Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-06-22) ISBN / EAN: 0470474238 / 9780470474235

Ignore Everyone and 39 Other Keys to Creativity, a self-help book by cartoonist and popular blogger Hugh McLeod, landed in Amazon’s top 25 last week, and is now at #313, fueled almost entirely by mentions on blogs and Twitter. None of the libraries we checked had copies of the book.

The biggest plug came from mega-blogger Seth Godin, who called the book ”brilliant” and highlighed McLeod’s willingness to write about sex and “to use language that would look good on Jack Nicholson.” Many other bloggers have praised the book or interviewed McLeod in the past week, and more plan to do so in the next few weeks, according to the publisher. The author himself attracts about a million visitors a month to his own blog, The Gaping Void, which he began in 2001 as a way to sell his art.

McLeod is also well-known on Twitter, where legions of his followers have recommended his book to others since its publication on June 9. (You can see all the “tweets” that mention #ignoreeverybody on Twitter Search.)

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity Hugh MacLeod Retail Price: $23.95 Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2009-06-11) ISBN / EAN: 159184259X / 9781591842590

UPDATE:

Also coming in audio from Tantor Media:

• Narrator: William Dufris
• Release Date: On or about July 20
• Retail: $19.99; 9781400113392
• MP3: $19.99; 9781400163397
• Library ed: $39.99; 9781400143399

Also on Playaway

That’s what a blogger called The Myth of the Rational Market, by Justin Fox. The book is excerpted in this week’s Time magazine, where Fox is the business editor, and has received strong reviews in the consumer press:

• The Wall Street Journal, “ The Price Is (Usually) Right” — “… a lively chapter in the history of ideas, describing the recent evolution of financial thinking…”
• Bloomberg, “Yale Oddball, Math Whiz Drove Efficient Market to Ruin“
• Washington Post,” On Wall Street, the Price Isn’t Right“

Just a few of the libraries we checked have it on order. It’s currently at #103 in Amazon sales rankings.

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street Justin Fox Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: HarperBusiness – (2009-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060598999 / 9780060598990

Nearly a month after publication, Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller climbed to #196 on Amazon last week, suggesting the book has some staying power thanks to New York Times Science section and Time magazine coverage. Half the libraries we checked had no copies, the rest have at least a couple, and one library has 92 holds, possibly because the author recently made a local appearance on his book tour.

Miller argues that biologists have sharper insights into our buying habits than marketers or consumers, who both miss the point that Ivy League diplomas and smart phones serve the same social functions as a fancy peacock’s tail. The New York Times focuses on how Miller deconstructs the social signals we send by choosing, say, the “conspicuous precision” of a BMW or Lexus  (e.g. extraversion and aggression) over a Toyota and Honda (e.g. high conscientiousness). The Times also notes that Miller bursts the “fundamental consumerist delusion” that everyone cares about what we buy, and concludes that evolution “is good at getting us to avoid death, desperation and celibacy, but it’s not that good at getting us to feel happy.”

Time magazine is more skeptical of Miller’s view that our personal acquisitions “are motivated by the primal desire for procreation, pleasure or both,” and criticizes him for ”broad, rambling arguments read at times like a college professor’s lecture notes.” Yet the reviewer’s observation that Miller’s ideas “don’t seem particularly groundbreaking,” and his recommendation the readers skim the book rather than read it all the way through, is somewhat at odds with his lively overview of Miller’s arguments.

Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior Geoffrey Miller Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2009-05-14) ISBN / EAN: 0670020621 / 9780670020621

Also available from Overdrive:

• Adobe EPUB eBook; $26.96; 9781101050842
• Adobe PDF eBook;  $26.96; 9781101048405
• MobiPocket eBook; $26.96; 9781101050231

Motivational speaker and entrepreneur Bill Bartmann reaches #1 on Amazon this morning with Bailout Riches! How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar.  The book’s rise has been driven by his own direct marketing to his followers and a smattering of appearances in business news outlets in the last few months, according to his pubicist at Wiley, Jocelyn Cordova. Only a few libraries we checked had copies, with a few reserves.

Bartmann rose from teenage homelessness to become a lawyer, a successful speculator in the foreclosure market and a pioneer in the debt resolution business. In the book, he promises a “step by step plan on how to find the best deals from the federal government, local Financial Institutions, and loan broker,” and shows how to make investments using credit card debt, consumer loans, business loans, commercial loans, and real estate loans.

Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar Bill Bartmann, Jonathan Rozek Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 229 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-05-26) ISBN / EAN: 047047825X / 9780470478257

Few business authors consistently prevail when the zeitgeist changes, but Jim Collins sure looks like one. His Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t became a longrunning bestseller shortly after 9/11, just as the economy took a dive. In 2004, when the markets were back on track, his Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies performed almost as well, bringing the combined sales for both books up to seven million copies. Now, despite the steep downturn, he’s right in step with How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. It’s up to #31 on Amazon, after an author profile in the Sunday New York Times Business section that’s #9 on the newspaper’s most e-mailed list today. But surprisingly for such a major author, a number of libraries have not ordered the new book; and those that did have only a few copies. (Maybe that’s because it didn’t get a lot of pre-pub reviews?)

The Times attributes the success of Collins’s books to his “tangible frameworks for understanding why organizations succeed.” In the new book, for example, Collins maps out the stages of decline: “hubris born of success; undisciplined pursuit of more; denial of risk and peril; grasping for salvation with a quick, big solution; and capitulation to irrelevance or death.” The Daily Beast, meanwhile, finds Collins’ appeal in his cult of discipline, going so far as to declare, ”If How the Mighty Fall has anything like the impact of Good to Great, this model of disciplined attention to constant improvement may come to be seen as the guiding principle of economic and social renewal.”

How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In Jim Collins Price: $23.99 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Jim Collins – (2009-06-01) ISBN-10: 0977326411 ISBN-13: 9780977326419

Available from HarperAudio (June, 2009)

• CD; $29.99; 0061939234

Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours in the Toughest Firm on Wall St. by Kate Kelly has risen to #37 on Amazon, but none of the major library systems we checked had it in stock (it may have been embargoed, preventing prepub reviews). 

Released May 12, the Wall St. Journal reporter’s book is riding a publicity wave that began with yesterday’s New York Post report on Kelly’s revelation that Bear Stearns rebuffed last minute aid by rival investment bank Goldman Sachs shortly before its collapse last spring. Other major media hits include an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air and a rave Los Angeles Times review, which described Kelly’s look at the firm’s final 72 hours as “brilliantly reported” and “grippingly propulsive,” with well-sketched portraits of Bear’s upper ranks, “where executives were fiercely territorial and oddly inattentive to even critical operational questions. Bear Stearns was, in the end, an institution where denial was the executive suites’ emotion of first resort.”

Librarians may have skimped on Kelly’s book in favor of William D. Cohan’s book about Bear Stearns, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, which beat Kelly’s book to market by two months and is currently #4 on the New York Times bestseller list. That book, which focuses on the firm’s final 10 days, received a rave review from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. Now #117 on Amazon, Cohan’s book is better represented in the libraries we checked, although the ratio of holds to available copies is high – ranging from 117 to 158 holds on 4 – 39 copies. 

Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street Kate Kelly Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2009-05-12) ISBN-10: 1591842735 ISBN-13: 9781591842736

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street William D. Cohan Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2009-03-10) ISBN-10: 0385528264 ISBN-13: 9780385528269

House of Cards is available in audio:

• Publishers: Tantor Media.
• ISBN: 9781400141685
• $54.95; unabridged; 20 discs

There is also an e-book version:

• Overdrive Adobe ePub eBook; $27.95

Breaking into the top ten on Amazon over the weekend is a book with the dreaded “D” word in the title; The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide.

As of this writing, it’s at #15, making it the 8th highest-ranking nonfiction title and the top personal finance book. 

The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide: Protect Your Savings, Boost Your Income, and Grow Wealthy Even in the Worst of Times Martin D. Weiss Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-04-06) ISBN-10: 0470393777 ISBN-13: 9780470393772

The current #1 title on Amazon is NOT by Stephenie Meyer, it’s not a skinny cookbook and it’s not about how to do more with less.

No, it’s a business book on succession planning (amazing to think that there are people actually planning to leave their high-level jobs!) from Harvard Business Press and it’s owned by few libraries.

Succession: Are You Ready? by Marshall Goldsmith hit #1 nine hours ago (how do I know? Twitter tells me so).

Why do business people want to know more about Goldsmith? BusinessWeek recently profiled Alan Mulally of Ford, who has, they say, “meant the difference between death for the automaker and merely being sick” (folks, we’re in a new era. Flat is no longer the new up; “merely sick” is the new up). The article says that Mulally’s approach to managing Ford was shaped by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. 

Goldsmith’s 2007 title, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, was on the NYT Hardcover Advice bestseller list for two weeks last year. It’s remained in the top 500 for the last few months, and in the top 300 recently. Libraries are showing reserve lists for it.

Succession: Are You Ready? (Memo to the CEO) Marshall Goldsmith Retail Price: $18.00 Hardcover: 125 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press – (2009-02-10) ISBN / EAN: 1422118231 / 9781422118238

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There:   How Successful People Become Even More Successful Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2007-01-09) ISBN / EAN: 1401301304 / 9781401301309

My favorite new phrase is “trailer park aesthetics.” Janet Maslin uses it to describe MySpace in today’s NYT review of a new book that digs the dirt on the site, Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America, by Wall Street Journal reporter, Julia Angwin. Maslin clearly finds the book fascinating.

The Washington Post review on Saturday agrees, but, given that Facebook has already surpassed MySpace as “the most popular website in America,” feels it is ancient history.  Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp acquired Facebook for $580 million in 2005 (the Post says this section “sparkles as a boardroom page-turner”). Despite the Post’s judgment, as long as Murdoch is around, insights into his business practices remain relevant.

USA Today also mentions the book on their tech blog, and raises this interesting question, “How will News Corp head Rupert Murdoch react to one of his own, the Journal’s Angwin, in her dissection of a prized Fox Interactive property?” 

Larger ibraries have ordered the book in small quantities and show equally small reserves at this point. It is also available in audio, which fewer libraries have on order.

Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America Julia Angwin Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Random House – (2009-03-17) ISBN / EAN: 1400066948 / 9781400066940

Unabridged Audio

Blackstone

• 8 Tape; 1-4332-5886-2; $65.95
• 1 MP3CD; 1-4332-5890-9; $29.95 9
• CD; 1-4332-5887-9;$90.00

The New York Times’s Silicon Valley reporter, John Markoff  recommends the book Geeks Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson to the “self-congratulatory computing industry,” suggesting his ideas may still “point the way forward.”

Nelson, a computer pioneer, “anticipated and inspired the World Wide Web, … he coined the term hypertext…Despite the fact that he had an original and prophetic vision of the future, Mr. Nelson has remained an outsider …”

His 1974 book, Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now, inspired  ”A generation of young computer enthusiasts who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s… deeply influenced by Mr. Nelson’s ideas.”

The cover of the book features a 1977 mug shot of Bill Gates, reportedly taken as a result of a speeding arrest.

The self-published book is available on lulu.com.

Geeks Bearing Gifts:  How the Computer World Got This Way
Nelson, Ted

Paperback: 202 pages; $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-578-00438-9
Publisher: Mindful Press
Available: through Lulu.com

Rising to #5 on Amazon today is The Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio. Several large libraries are not showing it on order yet.

It is also available in large type and unabridged audio.

The Motley Fool  Million Dollar Portfolio: How to Build and Grow a Panic-Proof Investment Portfolio

David Gardner and Tom Gardner

• Hardcover: $26.99; 288 pages
• Publisher: Collins Business;  (December 30, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 006156754X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061567544

• Large Type Edition: $26.99
• Publisher: HarperLuxe; 2/3/2009
• ISBN: 9780061720031
• ISBN10: 0061720038

• Unabridged Audio: $34.99
• Publisher: HarperAudio; 12/30/2008
• ISBN: 9780061729904
• ISBN10: 0061729906

Business Week gets into the best books act with their picks of the best business books of the year in the new issue.

Topping the list is the book that best “understood the sad shape of things to come” in the economy; Charles R. Morris’ The Trillion Dollar Meltdown (PublicAffairs), “which explains what happened and why in under 200 pages.”

A revised paperback edition is coming in February. Frighteningly, it’s retitled and the ante has gone up. It’s now The Two-Trillion Dollar Meltdown.

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

Charles R. Morris

• Hardcover: $22.95
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (March 3, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1586485636
• ISBN-13: 978-1586485634

The Two-Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

Charles R. Morris

• Paperback: $13.95; 240 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; Revised edition; (February 9, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 1586486918
• ISBN-13: 978-1586486914