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.

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.

———-

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

Next week’s most-anticipated nonfiction book is bestselling business guru Seth Godin’s guide to mastering the new economy, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?  Three of the four libraries we checked had it, with holds of close to 2:1 on orders of 8-15 copies

Though the reserves aren’t huge, they appear to be a positive effect of Godin’s gamble on Internet-only publicity campaign, in which he bypassed the traditional media, giving away books at his own expense to the first 3,000 readers who agreed to make a minium $30 donation to the Acumen Fund.

So far, Godin has a page of positive blog reviews and tweets to show for his efforts, and the Acumen Fund has raised more than $100,000.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Seth Godin Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 1591843162 / 9781591843160

Audio available from Random House on 2/09/10:

• CD: $15; ISBN 9780307704078

Other Major Titles Going on Sale Next Week:

Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging by Greg Critser (Harmony) is a journalist’s irreverent look at the anti-aging industry. Kirkus found it ”a delightful, politically incorrect view of the life-extension movement, accompanied by the disappointing news that aging is reversible but not in the near future.”

I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne (Grand Central) is the legendary rocker and reality show star’s memoir, which Kirkus deemed “as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.”

Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour by Gayle Haggard (Tyndale) is a memoir by the wife of evangelical Christian leader Tim Haggard who had liaisons with a male prostitute.

Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies Table, Our Journey Through the Middle East by Ted Dekker and Middle East expert Carl Medearis  (Doubleday Religion) is an account of the Christian novelist’s effort to love his enemies.

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner is at it again - writing a review that immediately compels you to pick up a book you might not have given a second glance, based on his confident comparisons to similar titles, his sensitivity to good writing, and his own seductive storytelling flair.

This time it is I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, a look at the roots of the global financial crisis by English novelist John Lancaster (The Debt to Pleasure), who began by researching a novel but found the facts so compelling he chose to write a work of nonfiction. It’s already up to #94 on Amazon.

Forty-six libraries have this book, according to World Cat. Those we checked show reserve ratios of five to one on modest orders.

Here are a few of Garner’s most compelling endorsements of the book:

“Few if any [similar] books will be as pleasurable — and by that I mean as literate or as wickedly funny — as John Lanchester’s.”

“If you don’t know how derivatives or credit default swaps work, or what securitization is, or why futures are riskier than options, this is a book for you.”

“Mr. Lanchester’s history lesson is peppered with dead-on references to everything, including ‘Annie Hall,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘The Wire,’ Hemingway and Jacques Derrida. He is effortlessly epigrammatical.”

I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay John Lanchester Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 1439169845 / 9781439169841

None of the titles on Time magazine’s list of the five best business books of the year will be a surprise.

More useful from a library standpoint is 1-800-CEO-READ’s Best Business Book Awards of 2009, because it includes books on practical subjects people are looking for these days, like how to run a small business, management and salesmanship (here’s a title that speaks to our times – How to Sell When Nobody’s Buying).

800-CEO-READ was founded as the corporate sales division of  the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee. The retail stores were closed March 31, but CEO-READ continues to operate. They  run a monthly list of their top sellers and published The 100 Best Business Book of All Time this year.

Andy Sorkin’s book about Lehman Brothers has been on the NYT Nonfiction Best Seller list for six weeks. Some libraries are showing holds ratios as high as 20:1. Holds are also heavy on the audio, where it is owned.

Expect them to rise even higher after Sorkin appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Wednesday.

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves Andrew Ross Sorkin Retail Price: $32.95 Hardcover: 624 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 0670021253 / 9780670021253

Penguin Audio; Unabridged; 9780143144991; #39.95

Blackstone Audio; Unabridged:

• Cassette; 9781433297762; $72.95
• MP3CD; 9781433297809; $29.95
• CD; 9781433297779; $105

Book and audio downloadable from OverDrive

The Wall Street Journal notes that three books about Bernie Madoff have been moved to mid-Aug, ahead of their original fall pub. dates.

Moving from Sept. 8 to Aug. 11;

Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff Erin Arvedlund Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2009-08-11) ISBN / EAN: 1591842875 / 9781591842873

Also moving to Aug. 11, from October;

Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff Andrew Kirtzman Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-08-11) ISBN / EAN: 0061870765 / 9780061870767

Moving from Sept. 15 to Aug 11;

Madoff with the Money Jerry Oppenheimer Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-08-12) ISBN / EAN: 0470504986 / 9780470504987

Explaining the moves, Adrian Zackheim, publisher of the Penguin business imprint Portfolio, said,

Nobody wants to be second, third or fourth…You are either first or you get lost in the pack, or you have to come after all the other titles and have a different take.

However, two Madoff books have already been published,

• Catastrophe: The Story of Bernard L. Madoff, The Man Who Swindled the World by Gerald Strober and Deborah Strober (Phoenix Books, Paperback – Mar 2, 2009)
• Madoff: Corruption, Deceit, and the Making of the World’s Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme by Peter Sander (The Lyons Press; Paperback, March 24, 2009)

Neither one is turning over rapidly in libraries.

Chris Anderson, author of the business book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, seems to have weathered the plagarism charges we mentioned a few weeks ago, only to receive a smackdown from fellow business writer Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker and a tepid review by Janet Maslin in the New York Times. Yet those reviews have prompted defenses by BusinessWeek and mega-blogger Seth Godin of Anderson’s view that businesses must find new ways to compete in a market where digital technology has made it possible for many products to be offered for free. The Wall St. Journal and USA Today have also weighed in with respectful coverage of Anderson, who is well-known as Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief and the author of The Long Tail.

The fuss is pushing Free to #119 on Amazon – not to mention keeping Anderson busy on his blog, which includes links to free audio and e-book editons. Libraries we checked have reserves of up to 5 to one.

Anderson may have saved his credibility on the plagarism front by promptly admitting to sloppy editing and promising to rewrite the contested passages in future editions of his book. But last week the Chronicle of Higher Education added fuel to the fire with a complaint by Richard A. Muller, a physics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, that his experience wth giving free lectures is misrepresented in Free.  But so far, Anderson doesn’t seem to be too badly singed.

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

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 edtior-in-chief Chris Anderson is 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