Drumbeat for Junger’s WAR
Among the nonfiction titles going on sale next week, War by Sebastian Junger is poised to get the lion’s share of media attention. Holds are mounting at libraries we checked, undoubtedly helped by the advance publicity for this account of a platoon fighting in Afghanistan, which includes a New York Times op-ed by Junger and an excerpt from the book in Newsweek.
Junger will kick off his media tour with an interview on Good Morning America next Tuesday, May 11.
PW says that “Junger mixes visceral combat scenes raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.”
Kirkus finds the book “often harrowing, though mostly conventional.”
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Large Print; Hachette; hardcover; ISBN 9780446566971; $28.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR CD; ISBN 9781607881988; $29.98
BBC Audio; UNABR; 9781607885344; 10 CD’s; $74.99
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive
Other Major Titles on Sale Next Week
Storm Warning: Whether Global Recession, Terrorist Threats, or Devastating Natural Disasters, These Ominous Shadows Must Bring Us Back to the Gospel by Billy Graham is the Christian evangelist’s latest examination of America’s problems. Though it’s the top pick on B&N.com’s “Coming Soon” list for next week, three out of four libraries we checked do not have it.
Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together by the Dalai Lama (Doubleday) advocates peaceful coexistence based on shared human experience. Not all libraries we checked had this one either.
The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies and a Company Called DreamWorks by Nicole LaPorte (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is a behind-the-scenes look at the Hollywood studio formed in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B-, saying that “LaPorte offers sharp critiques of business blunders made by DreamWorks’ founders… but with her blow-by-blow tale running well over 400 pages, it’s clear that she could learn a thing or two from the man about storytelling.”
Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm (Penguin) gets a positive review from hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times: “Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, uses his gifts as a teacher to give the lay reader a succinct, lucid and compelling account of the causes and consequences of the great meltdown of 2008.”
Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball by Bill Madden (Harper) gets thumbs up from Kirkus: “Having covered the Yankees for 30 years, and with access to previously unavailable material, Madden provides a definitive and captivating biography of ‘The Boss.’ “