Fueled by Wayne Dyer’s appearances on PBS pledge drives since mid-May, Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits is back at #1 on Amazon, and has spent 17 days in the Top 100. Libraries we checked are catching up to heavy reserves, with copies on order. 

Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits Wayne W. Dyer Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Hay House – (2009-05-26) ISBN / EAN: 1401921736 / 9781401921736

However, none of the libraries we checked had copies of Dyer’s related children’s book, now up to #88 on Amazon: No Excuses!: How What You Say Can Get In Your Way, written with Kristina Tracy and illustrated by Stacy Heller Budnick.

No Excuses!: How What You Say Can Get In Your Way Wayne W. Dyer, Kristina Tracy Retail Price: $14.95 Hardcover: 32 pages Publisher: Hay House – (2009-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 1401925839 / 9781401925833

Dyer’s publisher, Hay House, is also promoting two related adult books to his readers on Amazon:Virus of the Mind and The Biology of Belief. Both have spent nine days in Amazon’s Top 100, probably helped by the discount Amazon offers for buying the books together with Dyer’s. We’re not sure if this activity will stimulate library demand, but just in case, read on for more info about the books. And please use our comments are to alert us to any related activity you find in your library! 

Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie, currently at #21 on Amazon, is a hardcover reissue of the book, which was first published in 1995 by Integral Press. One library has 32 holds on a single copy, but none of the others we checked had it. The book ”builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett,” according to the publisher, and describes how “mind viruses have already infected governments, educational systems, and inner cities, leading to some of the most pervasive and troublesome problems of society today.” It was featured on Oprah in the late 90’s, after its original publication.

Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme Richard Brodie Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Hay House – (2009-05-15) ISBN / EAN: 1401924689 / 9781401924683

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles by Bruce H. Lipton Ph.D. is currently # 19 on Amazon. Libraries have up to 39 holds on modest numbers of copies, in several cases the 2005 edition published by Mountain of Love/Elite Books. According to Hay House, the book “shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts.”

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles Bruce H. Lipton Ph.D. Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Hay House – (2008-09-15) ISBN / EAN: 1401923119 / 9781401923112

Audio available from Sounds True

• $24.95; 9781591795230 

Also available on Playaway

• $59.99; 978160812778

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

Librarians have been wondering about an untitled book from Little, Brown with a 150K print run that appeared on B&T’s Fast Facts last month, with the following blurb:

This is a scientific discovery that is currently embargoed until it is announced at a major press conference and a documentary on History channel that will air on 5/20. This discovery will change textbooks, science, and change how we understand the human race.

The promised press conference was held in New York City today, revealing that a 47-million-year-old fossil, that may be the missing link, has been discovered in Germany (thanks to Cindy Orr for pointing this out on The Readers Advisor Online Blog). Called “Ida,” the fossil was actually uncovered in 1984, but, according to the Daily Mail (UK),  ”the collector who put her on his wall had no idea of her significance.”

Objecting to the hype surrounding the unveiling, the Guardian tut-tutted about

…the desperate, unseemly scramble to grab some of the action. In a display that was utterly primatal, figures as varied as the mayor of New York and the higher education minister of Norway made sure they were front and centre stage.

The most sublime image was of Michael Bloomberg standing beside Ida’s glass box, his arm around the shoulders of a school girl who was wearing a T-shirt with the TV tie-in logo: “The Link. This changes everything”. 

The History Channel will air a documentary, called The Link, on Monday, Memorial Day, at 9 pm ET/PT. There is also a Web site on the find; www.revealingthelink.com

The mystery title from Little, Brown releases tomorrow:

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor Colin Tudge, Josh Young Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 262 pages Publisher: Little Brown and Company – (2009-05-20) ISBN-10: 0316070084 ISBN-13: 9780316070089

Are library buyers multitasking too much to keep track of Winifred Gallagher’s new book, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life? It’s jumped to #26 on Amazon.com after a New York Times “Science” section story by John Tierney on “The Science of Concentration,” and by critic Laura Miller in Salon. Yet the libraries we checked showed low ordering (in some cases, no copies; in others, a single copy against 35 or more requests).

Gallagher argues that how we focus our attention is not only the key to mood, productivity and relationships, it’s the sum of our very being. A journalist and author of two other psychology books, she came to recognize the importance of attention while fighting cancer, when she discovered that consciously focusing on meaningful, productive or energizing subjects transformed her experience of the world. On a practical level, she recommends starting the workday with 90 minutes of undistracted attention on your most important task—bearing in mind that the brain can take 20 minutes to reset after an interruption.

Both reviewers clearly found Gallagher’s ideas engaging, although Miller found her writing “frustratingly scattered, self-contradicting and platitudinous” and questioned if we really need “more hand-wringing about families who don’t have dinner together or reheated summaries of scientific studies demonstrating the power of positive thinking?” Yet the Amazon rankings make clear that this subject strikes struck a chord. At this rate, we can expect to see it on bestseller lists next week.

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life Winifred Gallagher Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2009-04-16) ISBN-10: 1594202109 ISBN-13: 9781594202100

Rapt is also available on audio from Brilliance:

• 7 audio CDs: 978-1-4233-9321-4
  $82.97 
• 1 MP3-CD: 978-1-4233-9323-8
  $39.97 

And a downloadable e-book is available from Overdrive:

• Adobe EPUB eBook ISBN:  9781101032596
  $25.95 

Theo Gray’s Mad Science has zoomed from #2,834 to #80 on Amazon (must be the ad that’s been running on EarlyWord this week!).

Reviews have not appeared yet, so here is the publisher’s description,

Popular Science columnist Theo Gray demonstrates fundamental scientific principles through wacky, daredevil experiments that will have readers exclaiming, “Holy !!*$#!!” 

For more on the book, click here.

Theo Gray’s Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home – But Probably Shouldn’t Theodore Gray Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers – (2009-03-25) ISBN-10: 1579127916 ISBN-13: 9781579127916

When Jon Stewart really likes a book, there’s a special sparkle to the author interview. This week, he gave the love to astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Stewart describes him as “the man who killed Pluto.” 

As a result, the book rose on Amazon sales rankings from #174 to #89. Some libraries are showing holds. It’s also available in audio, which few libraries own.

The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet
Tyson, Neil deGrasse

• Hardcover: $23.95; 224 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (January 26, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0393065200
• ISBN-13: 978-0393065206

• Unabridged Audio: Blackstone
• Read by: Mirron Willis
• Playaway: 1-4332-5643-1 $54.99 NA
• 1 MP3CD: 1-4332-4410-0 $19.95 NA
• 4 CD: 1-4332-4407-0 $50.00

If you haven’t seen it, take a look at the cover of the NYT “Dining & Wine” section, featuring a gorgeous blue cake, radiant with electric lights built into the frosting (the electrical circuit is edible; I’m guessing the light bulbs are not).

It’s from a new book The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies.

Fortunately, for those who want to replicate these projects, the book is a real manual, with line drawings and step-by-step instructions.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t feature the kind of pretty pictures that the NYT shows. To get the eye candy, you need to go to the hungryscientist,com, or to the sites of fellow mad food scientists, instructables.com, (currently featuring a truly gross Halloween spread) and evilmadscientist.com (love those edible googly eyes!).

The Hungry Scientist Handbook is owned in small quantities in all the libraries I checked, with comfortable holds to copy ratios.

The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies

• Paperback: $16.95; 224 pages
• Publisher: Collins Living (September 23, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0061238686
• ISBN-13: 978-0061238680

I admit it, I failed the “Presidential Physics Quiz.” Too bad, since I obviously need the contest’s prize, a copy of Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller.

The quiz, featured on the NYT science blog, TierneyLab, was created by Dr. Muller, author of the book and teacher of a popular course with the same title at the U. of Cal., Berkley. The book is described in the blog as,

a marvelously readable and level-headed explanation of basic science principles and how they relate to issues like terrorism, energy policy, global warming, nuclear weapons and the space program.

There’s a wide range of ordering for this book; some have it on order in relatively large quantities (one large midwest library has 26 copies on order), others in small quantities, with holds, while a few others haven’t ordered it.

Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines  

Richard A. Muller

• Hardcover: $26.95
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (August 4, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0393066274
• ISBN-13: 978-0393066272

The Sunday NYT BR reviewed Drunkard’s Walk and it shot to #12 on Amazon’s Best Seller list, (it’s also at #24 on the NYT extended nonfiction list).

The reviewer calls it “a readable crash course in randomness and statistics…[the author] writes in a breezy style, interspersing probabilistic mind-benders with portraits of theorists” and goes on to make it sound fascinating, even fun.

The libraries that bought did so lightly and holds to copy ratios are high.

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

by Leonard Mlodinow

• Hardcover: $25.00
• Publisher: Pantheon (May, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0375424040
• ISBN-13: 9780375424045

Today’s Salon features a fascinating interview with Elizabeth Hess, the author of Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. As Salon describes it, the book is about a chimp who was “raised like a son by a New York City family as part of a language experiment, [but] Nim Chimpsky was shipped away when funds ran out.”

The book was selected recently by USA Today in a roundup of animal titles. It was also reviewed in the Seattle Times (”a story every bit as stirring and elaborate as that of a famous person”) and the Christian Science Monitor (”about as poignant an animal story as you can get. The neglect Nim suffered… is heartbreaking. And yet in many ways reading about him remains a joyous experience.”)

Significant holds are building in some areas.

• Hardcover: $23.00
• Publisher: Bantam (February 26, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0553803832
• ISBN-13: 978-0553803839

• Hardcover: $24.00
• Publisher: Pantheon (January 15, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0375424474
• ISBN-13: 978-0375424472

One of the most unusual titles currently on the Amazon Bestseller List (in the #60’s) is Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.

The major library pre-pub review media seem to be late on this one, so many libraries may not have it yet. It was just reviewed (scroll down, almost to the end) in the January 15th issue of Library Journal. It was also covered in Booklist on January 1st (right now, it’s the “review of the day” on the site) where it received a star.

The review in today’s New York Observer gives helpful background, “When the renowned paleontologist Neil Shubin announced in 2006 that he’d discovered an ancient fossil with an uncanny resemblance to a ‘missing link’ between fish and land-dwellers, creationists responded with all the fury of pissed off-apes.” So, of course, given the “pissed off apes” response, he has also received the Colbert Report treatment. If you ever wondered how it would feel to face Stephen Colbert, Neil Shubin writes about it on the science blog “Pharyngula.”

The book is also available in audio from Books on Tape.