Beacon Books has signed a deal with Dexter King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s son and chief executive officer of King, Inc., to release new editions of four King books in 2010, according to an AP story that appeared in USA Today:

• Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story – The story of the 1955-56 bus boycott organized by King
• Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? – King’s penultimate book, written in 1967, on combatting poverty and responding to the Black Power movement
• Trumpet of Conscience: A collection of speeches King delivered in November and December 1967
• Strength to Love: A collection of King’s sermons

Under the agreement, Beacon will also compile King’s writings, sermons, lectures and prayers into new editions with introductions by leading scholars.

So far, it’s unclear whether this deal will reignite the objections of siblings Bernice King and Martin Luther King III, who have not settled three lawsuits related to their brother Dexter’s management of the King estate, and the control of their mother Coretta Scott King’s personal items, which caused a $1.4 million book deal to fall through last year, according to a previous AP story.

Let’s start a new award, for “The Review That Most Makes You Want to Read the Book.” It’s surprising how few would qualify.

My nominee this week comes from the NYT BR, in a special category, “Most Made Me Want to Read a Book about a Subject I’m Not Drawn to,” for Dwight Garner’s review of Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman.

Library reserves are averaging 5 to 1 in six large systems we checked. It’s been moving up Amazon and is currently at #22, indicating it will appear on next week’s best seller lists.

What about you? Seen any reviews lately that made you say, “I’ve just gotta read that one”?

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath Michael Norman, Elizabeth M. Norman Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2009-06-09) ISBN / EAN: 0374272603 / 9780374272609

Also in audio from Tantor:

Narrator: Michael Prichard

• 14 Audio CDs (Retail Unikeep Pkg); EAN: 9781400111671
List Price: $39.99
• 14 Audio CDs (Library BinderL Pkg); EAN: 9781400141678
List Price: $79.99
• 2 Mp3-CDs (Retail SlimlineL Pkg); EAN: 9781400161676
List Price: $29.99

Already a New York Times bestseller, Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by Doug Stanton, has risen to #14 on Amazon following the author’s Memorial Day appearances on the Today Show, where Lester Holt called the book ”fascinating” and “important,” and on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. Libraries we checked are showing heavy reserves on light ordering.

It tells the story of a dozen of the elite U.S. Special Forces and CIA operatives who went to Afghanistan after 9/11, who were able to inspire Afghan forces to overthrow the Taliban, although it emerged again after the U.S. turned its attention to the invasion of Iraq. Kirkus found the events in the story ”irresistible,” though it took the author to task for “quoting inner monologues and inventing dialogue to dramatize events.” The New York Times Book Review was more charitable, characterizing Horse Soldiers as a story “for those who like their military history told through the eyes of heroic grunts, sergeants and captains. Think of Stephen E. Ambrose’s Band of Brothers or Stanton’s own best seller, In Harm’s Way, the story of the survivors of the cruiser Indianapolis, which sank in shark-infested waters during World War II.”

Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan Doug Stanton Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2009-05-05) ISBN-10: 1416580514 ISBN-13: 9781416580515

Available from Simon & Schuster Audio (May, 2009)

• CD; $29.99; 0743580818

On the Daily Beast, Daphne Merkin writes about the cleverly titled Masters of Sex, a biography of Masters and Johnson, the pioneers of sex research, Masters and Johnson, calling it

…a richly informed and elegantly organized account of the two people behind the logo that stood for new sexual horizons.

The review is as fascinating as the book sounds.

Several libraries have not yet ordered it.

Masters of Sex Thomas Maier Price: $27.50 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Basic Books – (2009-04-13) ISBN-10: 0465003079 ISBN-13: 9780465003075

Obama continues to make bestsellers. In the latest incident, he did so simply by accepting a book as a gift.

As reported in the Guardian, during the Summit of the Americas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez presented Obama with a copy of Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, a book that “contends that Latin America has been abused as industrialised nations plundered its natural resources, ranging from gold and silver to cocoa and cotton” and a “classic work in left-wing circles.”

Not only did the English edition rise to #2 in the US Amazon sales rankings, the Spanish edition rose to #288.

Libraries are showing reserve lists.

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent Eduardo Galeano Price: $18.00 Paperback: 317 pages Publisher: Monthly Review Press – (1997) ISBN-10: 0853459916 ISBN-13: 9780853459910

Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina Eduardo H. Galeano Price: $36.00 Paperback: 500 pages Publisher: Siglo XXI Ediciones – (1994-06) ISBN-10: 9682319005 ISBN-13: 9789682319006

The Fall/Winter publishing season was brought a deluge of Lincoln books, in anticipation of the 200th anniversary of his birth, no doubt the reason that Gettysburg College chose to award the 2009 Lincoln prize to two authors.

The winners are announced in the New York Times. A list of past prize winners is available on the Gettysburg College site.

First Place winners:

Tried by War

McPherson, James

• Hardcover: $35; 384 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press, (October 7, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1594201919
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201912

• Audio CD: Unabridged; $39.95
• Publisher: Penguin Audio; (October 7, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0143143603
• ISBN-13: 978-0143143604
• Audio Download: NetLibrary

• Large Type Hardcover: $31.95
• Publisher: Thorndike Press
• ISBN-10: 141041339X 
• ISBN 13:  9781410413390 

Lincoln and His Admirals

Symonds, Craig

• Hardcover: $27.95; 448 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 17, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0195310225
• ISBN-13: 978-0195310221

The 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth is nearly upon us. Henry Louis Gates’s new book, Lincoln on Race & Slavery comes out next week; his documentary, Looking for Lincoln, also airs on PBS next week. He is interviewed in both the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine.

Wall Street Journal, Lincoln in Black and White

Time, 10 Questions for Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The book is owned by surprisingly few public libraries; it appears it wasn’t reviewed prepub.

Lincoln on Race & Slavery

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.

• Hardcover: $24.95; 408 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 11, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0691142343
• ISBN-13: 978-0691142340

Lincoln has always been a favorite subject (Gates claims that around 14,000 books have been written about him; more than any other American). Two publications look at  some new titles.

USA Today, Literature hails Lincoln on his bicentennial

Wall Street Journal, Abe Lincoln as He Really Was

Today’s New York Times coverage of Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor, adds to a growing number of enthusiastic reviews. Library ordering is light and so are reserves. This is a title to consider buying extra copies for your readers advisors.

NPR, in its “Books We Like” column, describes the book as being about the “Young, Idle And Terribly Jaded In The Jazz Age.”  Add “British” to that string of adjectives and you have to wonder why this would appeal to Americans facing what is nicely termed “the current economic downturn.” The NYT Book Review tries to answer the question by saying it “…may be the ideal escapist fantasy for these sober economic times.” And the Wall Street Journal, after dithering that we should care because many of the Bright Young People,

…came from the aristocracy and families prominent in government …[and] they were part of what decades later would come to be termed the “establishment.”

finally admits, “It is simply interesting to know what they were getting up to.”

Carolyn See, who is generally able to zero in on a book’s appeal, in her review in the Washington Post, comes up with as good a readers advisory line as any by saying it’s,

Jampacked and delicious, crammed with a cast of selfish, feckless, darling, talented, almost terminally eccentric, good-looking men and women.

Not all the reviews are completely positive, however. The NYT BR reviewer, while cleary captivated by the book, carps,

Taylor, a novelist and the respected biographer of Thackeray and Orwell, is so intent on his “morality play” that he nearly loses sight of why his characters were a source of fascinated delight and sniping in the first place….[but] His moralizing tone is lightened by the book’s beautiful design, laced with mordant period quotations and delicious satiric cartoons from newspapers and magazines.

The book offers an opportunity to recommend some older classics. Every review mentions Evelyn Waugh’s “hysterical” 1930 novel, Vile Bodies, which is based closely on actual Bright Young People (Waugh was one of them). The WSJ also mentions that,

V.S. Naipaul lived for some time at Wilsford, the estate of the effete Stephen Tennant, one of the last surviving bright young people, who is portrayed in Mr. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival.

Anthony Powell’s twelve volume, Dance to the Music of Time also portrays the period.

Reviews:

• Daily New York Times, ‘Bright Young People’, Dwight Garner
• Sunday NYT Book Review, ‘Bright Young People,’ by D. J. Taylor: Oh So Amusing, Caryn James
• NPR, Young, Idle And Terribly Jaded In The Jazz Age, Troy Patterson
•  Wall Street Journal, Revels and Reverberations, Martin Rubin 
• Washington Post, A Gem of London’s Gilded Youth, Carolyn See

Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age

• Hardcover: $27; 384 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; (January 6, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0374116830
• ISBN-13: 978-0374116835

Vile Bodies Waugh, Evelyn 

• Paperback: $14.99; 336 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (September 1999)
• ISBN-10: 0316926116
• ISBN-13: 978-0316926119

The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul, V.S. 

• Paperback: $15.95; 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 12, 1988)
• ISBN-10: 0394757602
• ISBN-13: 978-0394757605

The twelve volumes of Dance to the Music of Time have been collected into four. Below is the bibliograpic information on the first volume.

A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement, Powell, Anthony 

• Paperback: $24; 732 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 31, 1995)
• ISBN-10: 0226677141
• ISBN-13: 978-0226677149

At this time of the year, it’s refreshing to be reminded that Christmas has not always been such a big deal. In an interview in today’s Wall Street Journal, Les Standiford, author of The Man Who Invented Christmas, says that in the 1840’s, it was celebrated only in “rural areas by the more superstitious folk. Its status as a civil holiday was nil. Factories operated, shops were open.”

The man who helped to change all this, reviving his own career in the process, was Charles Dickens.

Standiford’s book is reviewed in the current issue of USA Today and has received strong reviews in the NYT Book Review and the Washington Post.

Most large libraries own it in limited quantities.

The Man Who Invented Christmas:

How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits

Les Standiford

• Hardcover: $19.95; 256 pages
• Publisher: Crown (November 4, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0307405788
• ISBN-13: 978-0307405784

What book was Barack Obama referring to when he appeared on 60 Minutes on Sunday? He mentioned “a new book out about F .D. R.’s first 100 days,” but gave no author or title.

According to the NYT, this lead to a scramble to figure out which book it might be. Speculation focused on three titles:

1.  F D R: The First Hundred Days, Anthony J. Badger
2. Nothing to Fear: F D R’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America, by Adam Cohen (due in January)
3. The Defining Moment: F D R’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, by Jonathan Alter

An Obama spokesperson brought an end to the debate late yesterday when it was revealed that the President-elect was referring to not just one, but two books; Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment and a title that didn’t even appear on the list of possibilities, F D R by Jean Edward Smith.

Below are all four titles, in order by their rankings on Amazon as of this morning:

#58 on Amazon:

The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope

by Jonathan Alter

• Paperback: $16; 432 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 8, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 0743246012
• ISBN-13: 978-0743246019

Havana Nocturne climbed on to the Amazon Top Ten for several days last week (it’s now at #11) after having been on the NYT Extended Nonfiction list two weeks ago.

Sharp-eyed Raine Sedore at Timberland Regional Library explains the renewed interest; author T.J. English appeared on the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Wednesday (the segment appears 13:34 minutes into the show). Stewart began the interview by declaring, “I love this book” and said the real Cuba as portrayed in the book is more colorful than the Cuba in Godfather II. Stewart described the books appeal,

Here’s how you know this is a fascinating book; JFK being set up for a three-girl orgy by a mobster is a throw-away line…you could have an entire book about that night. And there’s a two-way mirror and the two mobsters are watching and later on, they think, “Hey, we should have filmed that.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is recognized by publishers as being effective at promoting books. Not only is it clear that Stewart has read the books he talks about, but In the brief time that he can give to an author (in this case, over seven minutes, which is actually an eternity in television time), he manages to convey his own enthusiasm. And, although it may sound silly but it is nearly as important, he shows the book’s cover and repeatedly mentions its title.

By contrast, have you noticed how different he is with actors? With all the kibitzing around, they hardly get a chance to mention their new movies.

Thanks for the tip, Raine.

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution

T. J. English

• Hardcover: $27.95
• Publisher: William Morrow (June 3, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0061147710
• ISBN-13: 978-0061147715

• Audio CD: Unabridged, $37.95
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged edition (July 28, 2008)
• Reader: Mel Foster
• ISBN-10: 1400107695
• ISBN-13: 978-1400107698

Often, publishers feel reviews have limited effect on sales. But it seems that Empires of the Sea, by Roger Crowley, is the exception to the rule. The Wall Street Journal ran a strong review by eminent historian John Julius Norwich on Monday and the book shot from #4,045 to #12. It’s now at #22.

The only other consumer review it’s received thus far is in the Christian Science Monitor (”A dramatic retelling of the 16th-century clash of Christian and Muslim armies”) on July 14.

Half of the libraries I checked have not ordered it. Those that own it, have small quantities, with reserves building. None have the audio

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World

Roger Crowley

• Hardcover: $30.00
• Publisher: Random House (July 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1400066247
• ISBN-13: 978-1400066247

• Audio CD: Unabridged, $34.99
• Publisher: Tantor Media; (July 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1400107229
• ISBN-13: 978-1400107223

As a result of an appearance on Bill Moyers Journal on Friday, Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Anther Name rose to #14 on the Amazon list. It’s currently at #17 on the general list and at at #5 on the nonfiction list.

The book, reviewed in April in the New York Times, was also reviewed yesterday in the Boston Globe.

Libraries own it in small quantities, with reserves building.

Slavery by Anther Name

Douglas A. Blackmon

• Hardcover: $29.95
• Publisher: Doubleday (March 25, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0385506252
• ISBN-13: 978-0385506250

Friday is “Guilty Pleasure Day” (reading something fun while pretending to work). So, take a little time to check out Tony Horwitz’s blog about his book tour for the just-released A Voyage Long and Strange, on the USA Today site. What a brilliant pairing; a great road trip writer blogging his own book tour. If you really can’t spare the time to look at the whole thing, just read the post about his appearance on a D.C. TV station (but it’s like potato chips, you can’t eat just one).

The book has received a spate of reviews this week. Horwitz, unlike those lying authors who claim they don’t read their reviews, has read them all closely. He notes that while they have all been positive, they are also contradictory. Does this sound like a selection committee meeting?

One reviewer judges me to be politically correct, another insufficiently so. My book is “a romp,” fit for the summer beach bag; or it’s a “disturbing” expose of early America. It’s so readable that “the pace never flags,” unless you believe another reviewer, who thinks “only a true history buff will devote the effort needed to see it through.” Go figure.

Whatever their “quibbles” (as Horwitz says, “I review books, too; you can’t just slobber all over them”), every review makes it clear that the book is fun to read. But it was today’s Salon review that made me put a reserve on the book. Oddly, given all the attention, it’s slipping a bit on the Amazon list, but is still at a very respectable #75 (after debuting at #37 on May 1). Most libraries have just received their copies. Holds are building in some areas.

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

by Tony Horwitz

• Hardcover: $27.50
• Publisher: Henry Holt (April 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0805076034
• ISBN-13: 978-0805076035

• Audio CD: Abridged, $31.95
• Publisher: Random House (April 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0739317237
• ISBN-13: 978-0739317235

• Large Type: $32.95
  
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (June 4, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1410405583
• ISBN-13: 978-1410405586

Tony Horwitz scores three interviews this week for his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange:

NPR “All Things Considered”

USA Today, “Life Section” Cover — USA Today also features Tony as a Guest Blogger, with live reports from his book tour.

The New York Times

The book is now on Amazon’s bestseller list at #52. It is on order in all libraries I checked with comfortable holds to copy ratios.

The Times describes it this way:

The book starts with the Viking discovery of North America, dispels a number of myths about Columbus (a much lousier navigator than we were taught) and then traces the various Spanish and French explorations of America before turning to the English settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth.

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

by Tony Horwitz

• Hardcover: $27.50
• Publisher: Henry Holt (April 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0805076034
• ISBN-13: 978-0805076035

• Audio CD: Abridged, $31.95
• Publisher: Random House (April 29, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0739317237
• ISBN-13: 978-0739317235

• Large Type: $32.95
  
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (June 4, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1410405583
• ISBN-13: 978-1410405586