It’s no surprise that there’s plenty of media attention for Daniel Okrent’s history of prohibition and drinking in America, The Last Call (attention, Glenn Beck, the founding fathers may have been men of faith, but they were also generally three sheets to the wind). Okrent, who was the first public editor of the NYT, is well-connected in the media and his book Great Fortune about Rockefeller Center was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. By the way, he also invented Rotisserie League Baseball. And, who could resist a book about American’s fraught relationship with alcohol?

Time magazine, says that the book about much more than Prohibition,

If you’re looking for a lasting legacy of Prohibition, it’s the Washington lobbyists who use Wheeler’s tactics [Wheeler was the “mastermind who transformed the temperance movement into a political shock wave”] to bend government to their agendas.

It gets an A from Entertainment Weekly review editor Tina Jordan,

Okrent is a born storyteller. In his hands, the prodigiously researched narrative, rife with tales of corruption, adventure, and backstabbing, flies like fiction.

People gave the book its highest rating and Business Week calls it “one of the year’s best history books.”  It was also featured on NPR’s  Fresh Air.

Libraries we checked are showing heavy holds on light ordering.

Okrent himself describes the book in the following video.

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Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Daniel Okrent Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 468 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-05-11) ISBN / EAN: 0743277023 / 9780743277020

S&S Audio; 9780743599214, CD, $39.99

Today’s NY Times previews an NPR’s Radio Diaries documentary, Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair, airing tomorrow.

McGee, an African-American handyman, was accused of raping a white woman in Mississippi in 1945 and convicted by all-white juries in three separate trials. Despite protests from many well-known people, his appeal was finally rejected by the Supreme Court and he was executed. The execution was covered live on the radio.

The article also covers a new book The Eyes of Willie McGee, coming next week. The author, Alex Heard, first heard a tape of the radio coverage in college. He went on to become a reporter and a Civil Rights activist. Haunted for years by what he heard in the recording, he began looking into the story and discovered that it had never been covered in depth.

The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South Alex Heard Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061284157 / 9780061284151

Books on Tape; UNABR; 11 CD’s; 9780307737083; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

There’s a common theme among big titles arriving next week; many are aimed at Father’s Day gift giving (don’t panic, fellow procrastinators, it’s not until June 20th).

Media is lined up for The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me by Bruce Feiler. It was already in USA Weekend, featuring interviews with the men Feiler chose to take on a parenting role to his two girls, in the event he succumbed to the cancer that was successfully removed from his body in 2008. Upcoming coverage includes a profile in People (May 10; on newsstands next week), an appearance on the Today Show and The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News.

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me Bruce Feiler Retail Price: $22.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061778761 / 9780061778766

HarperAudio; UNABR; 9780061988493; $29.99
Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive.
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The leadup to Father’s Day is also considered good timing for history titles. Heading that group is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by historian Hampton Sides. Libraries we checked have ordered solid quantities.

In Salon, critic Laura Miller praises the book as “a genuine corker”:

Sides’ meticulous yet driving account of James Earl Ray’s plot to murder King and the 68-day international manhunt that followed is in essence a true-crime story and a splendid specimen of the genre.

The Los Angeles Times adds that this “taut, vibrant account. . . shows the synchronicity of movements as King and his colleagues plot political strategy and follow his speaking itinerary, while Ray draws ever closer.”

Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin Hampton Sides Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385523920 / 9780385523929

Random House Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7393-5892-4; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

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Other Major Titles on Sale Next Week

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson (Bloomsbury) is an anthology of previously published essays that, according to PW, are “well written, sometimes elegantly so, and closely reasoned. They address familiar material from original and stimulating perspectives. Hanson’s arguments may not convince everyone, but cannot be dismissed.”

Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq by Dave Hnida (Simon & Schuster) is a physician’s account of serving in Iraq that’s “realistic, gritty and full of black humor,” according to Kirkus, but “surrenders to mawkishness and, worst of all, bad puns, seemingly in an effort to be the Patch Adams of Baghdad.”

Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max Hastings (Random House) is “a joy to read,” says Library Journal. “Despite other works examining this subject, libraries and readers of many persuasions will want this massive and detailed examination of the prime minister and his personal war.”

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore (Random House) is the account of an investment banker, Rhodes scholar and former aide to Condoleezza Rice who investigates the life of another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, who was wanted for killing a cop. In a starred review, PW says:

“Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures… that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.”

More national press is arriving for Letters to Jackie (see our earlier story).

The AP ran a story that was picked up by many news outlets today. Author Ellen Fitzpatrick and two of the letter writers in the book will appear on CBS Evening News tonight and the New York Times is running a story in the “National” section tomorrow. The book rose to #195 on Amazon today.

Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.

A book described as “the first definitive history” of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal won’t be released until mid-February, but news sources are already leaking tidbits.

According to the New York Times, The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, by Ken Gormley, a law professor at Duquesne University and author of Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation (1997),  “adds new details…Mr. Gormley secured unusual cooperation from nearly all of the main players, including Mr. Clinton, Mr. Starr and Ms. Lewinsky.”

The first news story about the book came from Politico, under the headline “Monica’s back – says Clinton lied.” It details the book’s revelations, including Gormley’s assertion that Clinton had an affair with Susan McDougal, who went to jail rather than testify against him about Whitewater.

The AP also reports on the story, saying they “obtained a copy” of the book. That probably wasn’t difficult, since the publisher sent out galleys; both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus reviewed it.

Kirkus warned that most American might find it too soon to revisit events from ten years ago, but “for those wishing to understand exactly what happened during this confusing, dismal time, Gormley’s informed reporting and evenhanded analysis is the place to start.”

Libraries we checked have not ordered copies yet.

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr Ken Gormley Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 800 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-02-16) ISBN / EAN: 0307409449 / 9780307409447

Before the Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall was published here, many felt that Americans would not be able to follow its story of Tudor palace intrigue.

A bit of help is on its way. Anne Weir’s forthcoming The Lady in the Tower serves as a “useful companion piece,” says Janet Maslin in the NYT, to Mantel’s “delectably arch portrait of Anne [Boleyn].”

The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn Alison Weir Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 0345453212 / 9780345453211

Audio; Recorded Books; Anticipated Release: Feb 13, 2010

• Unabridged CD; $123.75
• Unabridged Cassette; $113.75

Featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, a book about the Smother’s Brothers that is not owned by most of the libraries we checked, despite strong pre-pub reviews.

The book rose from #4,970 on Amazon to #134.

Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” David Bianculli Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Touchstone – (2009-12-01) ISBN / EAN: 1439101167 / 9781439101162

On NYT reviewer Janet Maslin’s list of the top ten books of 2009 is The Imperial Cruise, a title about Theodore Roosevelt that PW called “stridently disapproving.” In her review, Maslin calls it an “incendiary new book” that “may at times be overly eager to connect historical dots, but … also produces graphic, shocking evidence of the attitudes that [it] describes.”

The incendiary part is borne out by USA Today‘s review which takes issue with most of the book’s assertions.

Bradley, author of the bestselling Flags of Our Fathers, looked into what led  the US to the war in the Pacific. His research brought him to Roosevelt and a secret treaty with Japan. The book, titled The Imperial Cruise is about a secret diplomatic mission that resulted in that agreement.

The book is rising on Amazon, now at #102. Libraries, however, are showing modest holds.

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War James Bradley Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2009-11-24) ISBN / EAN: 0316008958 / 9780316008952

Hachette Audio; 9781600243950; $39.98
Large Print; Little, Brown; 9780316024617; Hdbk; $31.99