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.”

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.

Isabel Wilkerson’s book about the migration of African-Americans to the North from 1915 to 1970 was in the media spotlight early last month, including a cover review in the NYT BR to an A from Entertainment Weekly. Few books get a second round, but The Warmth of Other Suns is receiving even more attention this month.

The Warmth of Other Suns sheds light on America’s Great Migration — USA Today, 10/3

The Great Migration: Journey That Reshaped America — NPR, All Things Considered,  10/2

Isabel Wilkerson on Black America’s Immigration Story — Time, 10/2

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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration Isabel Wilkerson Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 640 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0679444327 / 9780679444329

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.

HBO’s heavily-promoted addition to the New Jersey canon, Boardwalk Empire, began last night, sending the tie-in to #166 on Amazon sales rankings, from #366 the day before. The series continues for 12 more episodes, ending Dec. 12.

The book is an academic history, written by a NJ judge; the movie is “inspired by the book,” but is definitely fiction, even changing the name of the main character. Those who turn to the book, expecting the blood fest of the TV series will be disappointed.

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City Nelson Johnson Retail Price: $16.95 Paperback: 312 pages Publisher: Plexus Publishing, Inc. – (2010-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0966674863 / 9780966674866

Brilliance Audio; Read by Joe Mantegna; audio sample

Isabel Wilkerson made quite an impression when she spoke on the First Author/First Book panel at ALA Annual this year. Her book, which arrives next week, is also making an impression.

About the migration of African Americans to the North between 1915 and 1970, it’s on the cover of the 9/12 NYT Book Review, after already receiving attention in the daily NYT (the  daily newspaper’s book reviews and the Sunday Book Review are separate entities, with separate staffs and reporting structures; something people forget when they complain about the NYT covering the same title twice) and many other sources.

Wilkerson won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing at the NYT; this is her first book. The NYT BR says,

…written in broad imaginative strokes, this book, at 622 pages, is something of an anomaly in today’s shrinking world of nonfiction publishing: a narrative epic rigorous enough to impress all but the crankiest of scholars, yet so immensely readable as to land the author a future place on Oprah’s couch.

Wilkerson is aso interviewed in a podcast by NYT BR Editor Sam Tanenhaus.

The book is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings; it is now at #37.

NYT Daily — Janet Maslin

Entertainment Weekly gives it an unequivocal  A

The Economist, Black migration in America: From hominy grits to cold shoulder

New Yorker, Chronicling the Great Migration

The Wall Street Journal, The Great Northern Migration

Last night, Stephen Colbert used his stunned-conservative persona to good effect to discuss the issues raised by John Krakauer in his book Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.

The trade paperback is out now. A documentary, The Tillman Story (not based on Krakauer’s book) releases on 8/20.

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Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman Jon Krakauer Retail Price: $15.95 Paperback: 480 pages Publisher: Anchor – (2010-07-27) ISBN / EAN: 030738604X / 9780307386045

Yunte Huang’s examination of Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective that was featured in 40 movies beginning in 1934, has caught the attention of many reviewers. On NPR’s Fresh Air, critic Maureen Corrigan says Huang reveals that Chan was not always considered an outrageous stereotype. In his time, he was celebrated in China as the only positive portrayal of a Chinese character in American film.

The book is also featured in the current issue of Time magazine (Watching the Detective), was reviewed by Charles McGrath in the NY Times (Charlie Chan: A Stereotype and a Hero) and in today’s B&N Review (The Legacy of Charlie Chan).

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History Yunte Huang Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 354 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-08-23) ISBN / EAN: 0393069621 / 9780393069624

On NPR’s Morning Edition today, the fascinating story of a man who lived in NYC in the 1880’s as a light-skinned African American, when he was actually white. As the story says, this was “highly unusual.”

Also highly unusual is NPR featuring a book that came out in hardcover over a year ago; the story is part of a special series Morning Edition is doing this week on how race is woven into American lives.

The book came out in trade paperback in January.

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line Martha A. Sandweiss Retail Price: $17.00 Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 014311686X / 9780143116868

OverDrive WMA and MP3 Audiobook
Tantor Audio

12 Audio CDs (Retail Unikeep Pkg); 9781400111510; $26.24
12 Audio CDs (Library Binder Pkg); 9781400141517; $52.49
2 Mp3-CDs (Retail SlimlineL Pkg); 9781400161515; $18.74

Critics have gotten a look the first episodes of HBO’s new series, Boardwalk Empire, based on the book by Nelson Johnson about Atlantic City during Prohibition (and, appropriately, published by a  New Jersey publisher, Plexus Publishing). The reaction, according to the Washington Post, is a “love fest.”

The series begins September 19, with a season of twelve episodes.

Based on this trailer, there may be a new catch phrase in the making.

Official Web site: HBO.com/Boardwalk-Empire

Based on: Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, Nelson Johnson

Tie-in:

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City Nelson Johnson Retail Price: $17.95 Paperback: 296 pages Publisher: Plexus Publishing, Inc. – (2009-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0966674855 / 9780966674859

Does it have something to do with the new goatee that Jon Stewart is sporting? On the Daily Show this week, he featured two historians, sending both of their books up Amazon’s sales ranking.

Last night, it was Robert O’Connell on Hanniblal’s victory at the battle of Cannae. Sewart told him, “You bring this story to such great effective life. It’s really fascinating and, boy, is it sad to see all the paralells of modern warfare and society.”

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The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic Robert L. O’Connell Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-07-13) ISBN / EAN: 1400067022 / 9781400067022

On Monday,  Stewart told William Rosen, “You’ve written a barn burner about the steam engine; I didn’t think it could be done.”

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The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention William Rosen Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 1400067057 / 9781400067053

Reviewers are fascinated by a new book that reveals immigrant life through five families and what they ate in their Lower East Side, NYC tenement home, 97 Orchard St, now the Tenement Museum.

The Barnes and Noble Review is the latest, calling 97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman, an “illuminating, rangy, and wonderfully atmospheric book.”

97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement Jane Ziegelman Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Smithsonian – (2010-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061288500 / 9780061288500

OverDrive; Adobe EPUB eBook

Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl, part of her Tudor series, reviews G.W. Bernard’s Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions in the L.A. Times, saying it is a fresh look at Henry VIII’s most controversial wife,

This is a disturbing book for the reader of Tudor history, as it carefully analyzes and then demolishes many of the statements that we are accustomed to taking as facts about the life of Anne Boleyn. Indeed, any student of any history will feel the earth shake slightly as G.W. Bernard boldly states the open secret: that most of the written record is hopelessly biased, based on gossip and speculation, that witnesses lie and that historians seek their own version of events.

Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions G.W. Bernard Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Yale University Press – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 0300162456 / 9780300162455

Graham Robb was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday about his book, Parisians, An Adventure History of Paris. Host Jacki Lyden says, “None of the book is fiction, but it reads like the most thrilling of novels.”

The book has enchanted several reviewers;

Huffington Post, Christopher Lydon: Graham Robb’s Paris: 18 Arrested Explosions

NYT Book Review, Parisians – An Adventure History of Paris – By …

New York Times, A Pointillist Tour, Revolution to Riots

It appeared on the extended NYT best seller list for two weeks and is still on IndieBound Hardcover Non-fiction list.

Several libraries show holds ratios of more than ten to one.

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris Graham Robb Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-04-26) ISBN / EAN: 0393067246 / 9780393067248

Tantor Audio, UNABR; Simon Vance (Narrator)

11 Audio CDs (Retail Pkg); 9781400117109; $26.24
11 Audio CDs (Library Binder Pkg); 9781400147106;  $52.49
2 Mp3-CDs (Retail Pkg); 9781400167104; $18.74

Rising on Amazon as a result of an interview (listen here) on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is Empire of the Summer Moon, a book about the life of the last chief of the Comanches, Quanah. It also tells the fascinating story of Quanah’s mother, a white woman, who was captured by the Comanches and became famous for not wanting to return to her former life. The book is now at #10 on Amazon.

It was also recently reviewed in the NYT Book Review, along with Nathaniel Philbrick’s book about Custer and Sitting Bull, The Last Stand.

While Summer Moon currently outranks The Last Stand on Amazon, libraries are showing many more holds, and on more copies, of the Philbrick title.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History S. C. Gwynne Retail Price: $27.50 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 1416591052 / 9781416591054

Tantor Audio; Read by David Drummond; Unabridged

Trade; 9781400116553; 12 CD’s; $39.99
Library; 9781400146550; 12 CD’s; $79.99
MP3; 9781400166558; 2 MP3-CD; $29.99