Stacy Schiff makes a telling observation about the biographies she read growing up,

I notice in retrospect that biographies for kids seemed to be about women who are famous for their disabilities, delusions or sensational deaths. The big three were Helen Keller, Joan of Arc and Isadora Duncan.

Schiff is interviewed in the New York Times Magazine about her biography of a fabled woman, Cleopatra. The book will be released on Nov. 1.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; 34.98

Deadline reports that James Cameron who is in talks to direct a movie based on the book, starring Angelina Jolie, is considering doing it in 3-D (yes, you read that correctly). Currently, he is at work on a sequel to Avatar and is also producing a 3-D remake of the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage and At the Mountains of Madness, based on the HP Lovecraft novella, which Guillermo del Toro plans to direct, also in 3-D. It seems Cameron is 3-D mad.

A recent Earlyword Galley Chat favorite goes on sale next week: Running the Books, Avi Steinberg‘s memoir of his adventures as a prison librarian and writing instructor in Boston, after graduating from Harvard.  As we’ve mentioned, he published an amusing essay in the New York Times magazine last week, which should help the book get more attention in other media.

PW called the memoir “captivating…. Steinberg writes a stylish prose that blends deadpan wit with an acute moral seriousness. The result is a fine portrait of prison life and the thwarted humanity that courses through it.”

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian Avi Steinberg Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2010-10-19) ISBN / EAN: 0385529090 / 9780385529099

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook: Crazy Delicious Recipes that Are Good to the Earth and Great for Your Bod by Kim Barnouin (Running Press), more vegan dishes.

Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case by Walter Schneir (Melville House) contends that Ethel Rosenberg was not a Soviet spy and challenges enduring myths surrounding the case. The New York Times Book Review compares it favorably to another recent book on the Rosenberg case by Allen M. Hornblum.

My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy by Nora Titone (S&S) hinges on its portrait of the Booth family. Kirkus declares that “though some historical detail seems more tangential than pertinent, the multiple portraits display hidden facets of all the Booths.”

The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer by Jane Smiley is a biography of the brilliant but mostly forgotten physicist who created a protype for the computer. Kirkus raves, “As in her novels, the author displays a talent for keeping a dozen fully realized characters on stage…. Smiley takes science history and injects it with a touch of noir and an exciting clash of vanities.”

Children’s

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson, about a runaway slave who joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78, is the second installment in the author’s American Revolutionary trilogy, following the National Book Award finalist Chains. Kirkus praises its “vivid setting, believable characters both good and despicable and a clear portrayal of the moral ambiguity of the Revolutionary age. Not only can this sequel stand alone, for many readers it will be one of the best novels they have ever read.”

The NYT Baseball section features a profile of Jane Leavy, author of the new bio of Mickey Mantle, The Last Boy, released on Tuesday with a 200,000 copy printing.

Entertainment Weekly‘s review dismissed the book as having “little new” and recycling information that already appeared in Jim Bouton’s 1970 classic Ball Four. The New York Daily News begs to differ; headlining their excerpt, “Mickey Mantle finally opens up about childhood sexual abuse.” The NYT says Leavy, “delves further than other biographers have into Mantle’s alcoholism; the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and the sexual relationship with a teacher when he was a teenager; his philandering; the extent of his osteomyelitis; and the history of cancer in his family.”

Leavy tells the NYT that she was wanted to figure out “why men in their 50s and beyond still revere Mantle,” and finally decided that his is the “ultimate boomer entitlement.”

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood Jane Leavy Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060883529 / 9780060883522

Larger Print; HarperLuxe, 9780060883522, $27.99

Audio; HarperAudio, 9780061767685, $49.99

Judging a book by its editor is more productive than going by the famously unreliable cover. That’s why we’re pleased that HarperCollins has added a new feature to their Buzz section on EarlyWord, The Editor’s Buzz.

First up is David Highfill, who edited one of our favorites of the season, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.

We are not the only fans of Crooked Letter; one of our favorite reviewers, Sarah Weinman, says this about it in the L.A. Times last week,

There is no greater joy than when an author whom you’ve long admired produces his or her best work to date…. I’ve sung the praises of Don Winslow for Savages, his literary approximation of a narcotic jolt, and of Emily St. John Mandel for training an astute eye on contemporary anxiety among emerging adults with The Singer’s Gun. Now I’m back in that state of wondrous reading pleasure thanks to a new, years-in-the-making novel by Tom Franklin.

Even if you’ve read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, you will gain new insight from Highfill. Based on a shared love of that book, we’re willing to follow him to his next obsession, the bio he recently edited about Joan Crawford (clearly, he’s a man of range).

More interviews with editors will be coming up throughout the fall, so keep your eyes on the HarperCollins Editor’s Buzz page.

Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford Donald Spoto Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061856002 / 9780061856006

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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Tom Franklin Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060594667 / 9780060594664

What more can be said about baseball great Mickey Mantle?

Apparently, quite a bit. Jane Leavy bases her biography The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a measly C+:

Leavy does little more than recount Mantle’s feats on the diamond and recycle the crude off-the-field behavior exposed in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. There’s little new info; the Mick seen here is familiar, a brittle demigod who never saw himself as the golden boy his public demanded.

But lots more media is coming: the New York Times will feature the book in the sports section on October 12, the Wall St. Journal has a review scheduled for October 15, and Leavy will be interviewed on CBS-TV’s The Early Show on October 19 – with more to follow.

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood Jane Leavy Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060883529 / 9780060883522

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) makes many of the South African leader’s personal letters and diaries available for the first time, including journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s and diaries written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his 27 years of incarceration.

Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me by Condoleezza Rice (Delacorte) is a book for young readers about the childhood of the Secretary of State under George W. Bush. Lots of media coming on this one: On October 12, Rice will appear on NPR’s Morning Edition, the Today show and Larry King Live, while USA Today runs an interview. On October 13, she’ll be on the Early Show and Tavis Smiley’s radio show on PRI.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) chronicles a series of adventures in Russia’s most desolate areas. It’s an Amazon Book of the Month, and was serialized in New Yorker this summer.

Dewey’s Nine Lives: The Legacy of the Small-Town Library Cat Who Inspired Millions by Vicki Myron (Dutton) includes nine stories about loving cats who improved their owner’s lives.

Great Migrations: Epic Animal Journeys by Karen Kostyal (National Georgraphic) arrives next week in anticipation of National Geographic’s seven-part TV series airing in November, narrated by Alec Baldwin. Half the librararies we checked had reserves in line with their modest orders, and the rest have not yet ordered it.

The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today by Paul David Pope (Philip Turner/Rowman & Littlefield) is about the family that made the National Enquirer into a tabloid giant.

Buzz is building for Where Good Ideas Come From by science writer Steven Johnson. The New York Times ran an early review in the Business section, praising Johnson’s storytelling ability in this exploration of innovative environments like the city and the Internet, and how a “series of shared properties and patterns… recur again and again in unusually fertile environments.”

At libraries we checked, current orders are in line with reserves, but this looks like one to watch, since Johnson was also a featured speaker at TED, the elite technology, entertainment and design conference, this summer. And his cool video trailer for the book appears to be going viral.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Steven Johnson Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 1594487715 / 9781594487712

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Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow gets a respectful review from critic Janet Maslin in the New York Times, who finds that this biography is justified by new material unearthed from Washington’s papers at the University of Virginia.

At 900-odd densely packed pages, Washington can be arid at times. But it’s also deeply rewarding as a whole…. [and] offers a fresh sense of what a groundbreaking role Washington played, not only in physically embodying his new nation’s leadership but also in interpreting how its newly articulated constitutional principles would be applied.

Entertainment Weekly gives the book an “A-,” adding that Chernow

…makes excellent use of Washington’s own voice — the man’s angry letters are like thunderbolts — and turns constitutional debates and bureaucratic infighting into riveting reading.

Washington: A Life Ron Chernow Retail Price: $40.00 Hardcover: 928 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 1594202664 / 9781594202667

Notable Nonfiction on Sale Next Week

A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (Random House) is “a wonderfully meandering journey through history, sociology, science, and more. The thread that connects it all is Bryson’s. . . home, a charming former church rectory in a small English village,” according to bookseller Christopher Rose in the October Indie Next Pick citation. NPR’s Morning Edition will feature the book on October 5, followed by  the New York Times Book Review on October 10. It is also the Amazon Spotlight Selection for the month of Oct.

Is It Just Me or Is It Nuts Out There? by Whoopi Goldberg (Hyperion) finds the actress and co-host of ABC’s The View sharing stories from her own life, when she’s been forced to deal with tough situations in family, marriage, friendship, and business.

Cesar’s Rules by Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier (Crown) is the bestselling dog trainer’s primer on establishing the rules of the house.

The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Harper) considers the far-reaching consequences of the co-evolution of dogs and humans, drawing from recent scientific research.

You: Raising Your Child by Michael F. Roizen & Mehmet C. Oz (Free Press) explores the biology and psychology of raising a child from birth to school age.

Trickle Up Poverty by Michael Savage (Morrow) is the author and conservative talk show host’s attack on President Obama’s agenda and his political tactics.

I’m Not High: (But I’ve Got a Lot of Crazy Stories about Life as a Goat Boy, a Dad, and a Spiritual Warrior) by Jim Breuer (Gotham/Penguin) is a memoir by the comedian and Sirius radio show host best known as “Goat Boy” on Saturday Night Live. He was also featured on the ALTAFF Humor Panel at ALA Annual.

This week, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert feature just one author each; both are on tonight.

Colbert  talks with Sam Wilentz and his new book on Bob Dylan; it’s fared much better with the consumer press than it did with the prepub review sources.

Bob Dylan In America Sean Wilentz Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0385529880 / 9780385529884

Audio; Books on Tape; UNABR; 6 CD’s; 9780307714978; $40

While Stewart sits down with Britain’s former prime minister.

A Journey: My Political Life Tony Blair Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 720 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-09-02) ISBN / EAN: 0307269833 / 9780307269836

Next Friday, September 17, Oprah will select the 64th and final selection for her book club, in the final season of her talk show. The few clues are confusing. The blind ISBN has a St. Martin’s prefix and a $28 price. However, no title in St. Martin’s catalog matches that price. So, we have to assume that one of the two clues is a red herring.

Our hunch is that it’s St. Martin’s Some Sing, Some Cry, a novel of seven generations of African American life by sisters and playwrights Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza that goes on sale next week. A Shout & Share pick at ALA, it got a starred review from Booklist, which called it “glorious in its scope, lyricism, and spectrum of yearnings, convictions, and triumphs.” Ntozake Shane’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, is coming out as a movie in November, directed by Oprah’s close friend and producing partner for Precious, Tyler Perry. However, the price does not fit.

Some Sing, Some Cry: A Novel Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 031219899X / 9780312198992

There’s also a possibility it might be another one of next week’s releases, the international bestseller Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay (St. Martin’s), a psychological thriller set in Paris that plumbs the power of family secrets. PW said “this perceptive portrait of a middle-aged man’s delayed coming-of-age rates as a seductive, suspenseful, and trés formidable keeper.” And Booklist adds, “Expect demand among fans of both literary mystery and high-end romance.” Again, however, the price is not the same as that for the Oprah pick.

A Secret Kept Tatiana de Rosnay Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 0312593317 / 9780312593315

Others have suggested it might be Nelson Mandela’s Conversations with Myself, a collection of the South African leader’s personal papers, including journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s and diaries written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his 27 years of incarceration. But here, the book’s ISBN prefix doesn’t match (it’s from St. Martin’s sister Macmillan imprint, FSG) and it’s currently scheduled to release on October 11. However, the one thing that does match is the $28 price (also true for Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom , but, given Oprah’s history with the author, that one seems a real long shot).

Conversations with Myself Nelson Mandela Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-10-11) ISBN / EAN: 0374128952 / 9780374128951

Prior to its publication on Tuesday, Sean Wilentz’s book Bob Dylan in America has already received an enviable amount of advance attention. New York magazine featured it as the lead title in their fall books preview and it was reviewed in the major Sunday review sections.

Wilentz, a Princeton historian, has published several books on U.S. history and politics, also received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes for the Bob Dylan Live 1964 CD set and is the “historian in residence” on the Dylan web site. Wilentz explains his personal connection to Dylan in this clip from the BOT audio:

The book rose to #250 on Sunday from #461 the day before on Amazon sales rankings; library holds are light, as are orders.

Kirkus was the only library review source to cover it, with this severe warning,

The author is capable of sometimes striking and unexpected insights linking Dylan to American precursors ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Bing Crosby, but his frequently misguided ideas and oft-leaden style weigh down the proceedings.

One for the practicing Dylanologist—general readers should approach with caution.

The Sunday review sections were much more enthusiastic:

L.A. Times — “appropriate for a historian, the book is a vision of how the past becomes part of our living present.”

NYTBR; Bringing It All Back Home — “Among those who write regularly about Dylan, Wilentz possesses the rare virtues of modesty, nuance and lucidity, and for that he should be celebrated and treasured.”

Washington Post — “a book at once deeply felt and historically layered that shows how Dylan’s artistic practice is embedded in and responsive to powerful but subtle currents of American culture.”

Bob Dylan In America Sean Wilentz Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0385529880 / 9780385529884

Audio; Books on Tape; UNABR; 6 CD’s; 9780307714978; $40

Two women’s memoirs are likely to get significant media attention next week.

Rosanne Cash‘s Composed, about her music career and life as Johnny Cash’s daughter, is already getting admiring attention, though holds are modest on light ordering at libraries we checked.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read. Yes, Cash comes from a well-known family and makes her living in the entertainment business, but ‘Composed’ is really about her spiritual growth as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife and an artist.”

New York Magazine profiles Cash and O, the Oprah Magazine selects it as one of 10 Books to Pick Up in August 2010.

Composed: A Memoir Rosanne Cash Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

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Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the Boston Globe book critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s account of her deep friendship with writer Caroline Knapp. Like Caldwell, Knapp was single by choice, dedicated to her writing and recovering from alcoholism, before she died of cancer in 2002.

Laura Miller in Salon calls it

…a slender and beautiful book… [Caldwell] never stoops to tear-jerking or sentiment. Which is not to say she won’t make you cry. It might be something as simple as her first-page description of love’s tempo that does it: “For years,” she writes, “we had played the easy daily game of catch that intimate connection implies. One ball, two gloves, equal joy in the throw and return.”

It was also a LA Times summer reading pick, and the #3 Indie Next pick for August .

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship Gail Caldwell Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is a new series of reminiscences from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter. Booklist says the chapters are “disconnected,” and “his descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.”

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others by Mother Teresa (Doubleday) offers more wisdom from Mother Teresa culled from private lessons she gave to fellow nuns.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham) is about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group.  USA Today has a Q&A with the author. This one’s also an August Indie Next pick.

Niall Ferguson is known for his 2008 best seller, The Ascent of Money. His new book High Financier, a bio of Siegmund Warburg and how his economic principles could have prevented the current global economic crises, releases tomorrow.

High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg Niall Ferguson Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-06-24) ISBN / EAN: 159420246X / 9781594202469

Tantor Audio:

On Sale Date: 06/24/2010
Trade; 9781400114986; 14 Audio CDs; $34.99
Librar;y 9781400144983; 14 Audio CDs; $69.99
MP3; 9781400164981; 2 MP3-CD; $24.99

Ferguson has emerged as a major critic of economist Paul Krugman, who supports economic stimulus. He discussed his views yesterday with Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s On Point.

He also stepped out of his role as an economist to comment on General McChrystal’s critism of the President’s handling of the war in Afghanistan in Rolling Stone article on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

As a result, his book, which was regarded by PW as a weak bio of a largely-forgotten figure in British banking, rose to # 126, from #7,111 on Amazon’s sales rankings yesterday. Libraries we checked are showing holds of 1:1 on light ordering.

The On Point with Tom Ashbrook web site features the following rap about the schism between two schools of economic thought; John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek (whose 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom rose  to #1 on Amazon last week and continues at #7 today, because of a passionate endorsement by Glenn Beck).

The bio of Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff coming in November caught the attention of several librarians at BEA’s Shout & Share program. It’s also caught the attention of film producer Scott Rudin, who has bought the rights to the book, reports USA Today‘s Book Buzz column.

Who will play the lead?

Rudin says he is developing it “for and with” Angelina Jolie.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; 34.98

Political commentator and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, reviews Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One by Zev Chafets in today’s Washington Post. Since the book is a longer form of a profile already published in The New York Times Magazine, Frum wonders what if anything new can be discovered in the book and discovers,

…some disconnects between Limbaugh’s private life and public presence…some distinctly grandiose tastes in this self-imagined tribune of Middle America…Limbaugh has skillfully conjured for his listeners a world in which they are disdained and despised by mysterious elites — a world in which Limbaugh’s $4,000 bottles of wine do not exclude him from the life of the common man.

Summing up, Frum says,

It might seem ominous for an intellectual movement to be led by a man who does not think creatively, who does not respect the other side of the argument and who frequently says things that are not intended as truth. But neither Limbaugh nor Chafets is troubled.

The book is currently at #276 on Amazon.

Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One Zev Chafets Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Sentinel/Penguin – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 1595230637 / 9781595230638

Jonathan Alter’s book evaluating Obama’s first year in office lands next week. Alter, who writes for Newsweek and is a contributor to NBC News, has a strong media lineup, beginning with The Today Show this morning, The Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight and Meet the Press on Sunday. He’s even going to be on Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

The book has already been reviewed in the NYT. The Wall Street Journal‘s “Washington Wire” blog offers a “handy guide” to the book. According to Time magazine’s political blog, “Swampland,” members of Congress are upset by Alter’s take on how they handled health care legislation.

The Promise: President Obama, Year One Jonathan Alter Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 1439101191 / 9781439101193

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442334458; $49.99

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.”

WAR Sebastian Junger Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Twelve – (2010-05-11) ISBN / EAN: 0446556246 / 9780446556248

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.’ “