Today’s news is all over the release of Tony Blair’s book; interviews with him were aired on NPR’s Morning Edition as well as Good Morning America.

The L.A. Times reviewer finds Blair unusually frank. He gets kudos for writing the book himself, because “…a professional collaborator almost certainly would have manicured [that frankness] away, along with anecdotes that are unintentionally self-revealing.” The book’s simultaneous publication in the U.S. and the U.K. indicates Blair’s “…desire to be regarded as a transatlantic figure,” but, since the memoir is “…first and foremost a political biography, long stretches of it are likely to be terra incognita to most American readers.”

For a British take on the book, see the analysis by several writers for the Guardian (sex “throbs throughout many chapters of the book”).

As the AP reports in the story below, the book is causing a sensation in Britain and was #1 on Amazon UK, at the time the story aired, but it hadn’t cracked the top 100 on Amazon U.S. It has moved up since and is now at #12. Holds in libraries are still light.

A memoir by someone who actually likes his family? As Carolyn See points out in The Washington Post, this is so rare that it’s “…close to miraculous. If a person wants to write about his youth and his parents, it’s usually because he has scores to settle.” which is just one of the reasons why she calls Growing Up Jung by Micah Toub “… a gem.” The book’s title refers to the fact that his parents, both Jungian therapists, applied their work to child rearing.

See gives it the ultimate compliment, “I hated to see this book end. I loved every person in it, from the wistful dad with his ‘fluffy-edged’ voice, to Toub’s kind and darling mom, his tolerant and loving ex-wife, even that volcanic teenaged sister…”

Give this to anyone in need of an Augusten Burroughs’ antidote.

By the way, Burroughs’ mother, Margaret Robison, will tell her own side of that story in The Long Journey Home, Spiegel & Grau (March 1, 2011).

Growing Up Jung: Coming of Age as the Son of Two Shrinks Micah Toub Retail Price: $23.95 Hardcover: 261 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-08-16) ISBN / EAN: 0393067556 / 9780393067552

HBO’s biopic about Temple Grandin, which starred Clare Danes, won five Emmies last night, causing several news outlets to wonder, ‘Temple Grandin’ wins big at Emmys. But who is she? (Entertainment Weekly). Grandin made an impression at the event, according to the L.A. Times,

Attired in red and black rodeo gear, Grandin herself became a palpable presence at the ceremony, at one point, rising and excitedly swinging her hand lasso style from the audience. And while standing on stage after the movie had won its top award, she warmly embraced a sobbing executive producer Emily Gerson Saines, who said she found inspiration in Grandin’s life story as her own child had been diagnosed with autism.

Evidently she also made an impression on those who saw the event on TV; the tie-in book rose to #257 today, from #2175 yesterday.

Thinking in Pictures (Expanded, Tie-in Edition): My Life with Autism (Vintage) Temple Grandin Ph.D. Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 0307739589 / 9780307739582

A librarian’s BEA Shout & Share pick and also a September Indie Next selection, the intriguingly titled, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. Author Elisabeth Tova Bailey spoke to Scott Simon about how the unlikely gift of a snail in a pot of flowers helped her deal with a year of being bedridden by a neurological disease. She described how calming it was to watch a creature that moved only slightly faster than she could.

Indie Next says the book is “…one sweet story of the importance of taking time to notice our connection to nature.”

Some libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating Elisabeth Tova Bailey Retail Price: $18.95 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2010-08-24) ISBN / EAN: 1565126068 / 9781565126060

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair‘s memoir, A Journey: My Political Life, goes on sale next week. Excitement is high in the UK, as expressed by The Independent yesterday,

The mere prospect of Blair’s memoirs is already generating a response that borders on the hysterical. Labour’s leadership candidates speculate nervously in private about what might be in it. The BBC will broadcast an hour-long interview. Newspapers plan extensive coverage. The financial arrangements for the narrative are a source of raging controversy [After much criticism, Blair announced that he will donate his £4.6m advance and royalties to a sports center for badly injured soldiers].

But will Americans care? Holds are negligible in the libraries we checked.

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

Jessica Stern is an expert on terror, not only because she’s studied it, but because she’s lived it. When she and her sister were children, a man broke into their home and raped both of them at gun point. She now teaches at the Kennedy School at Harvard and has written two respected books on terrorism.

But her new book, Denial, is much more personal; in it, she explores how her own experience has affected her life. In the Washington Post, Marie Arana calls it an “incandescently honest book” and “a powerfully constructed memoir.”

Denial: A Memoir of Terror Jessica Stern Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-07-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061626651 / 9780061626654

Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive

Rosanne Cash talked to George Stephanopoulos about how difficult it was to write her memoir, Composed,  She also appears today on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show.

The NYT reviewed it this week, saying that, although the book lacks “narrative tension,” it tells some great stories.

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

Large Print; Thorndike;  $32.99
ISBN 13: 9781410431905
ISBN 10: 1410431908
Published/Released: November 2010

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.

I have a problem with Gail Caldwell’s wonderful memoir, Let’s Take The Long Way Home, coming next week. I love it, but how do you recommend a book about a friendship that ends with one of the friends dying (as well as the author’s beloved dog)?

Laura Miller at Salon has found the key;

The losing isn’t the exceptional part of this story; everyone loses something, sooner or later. The wonder lies in finding it in the first place.

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

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Joyce Bean; Simultaneous

Trade 9781400115600 6 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400145607 6 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400165605 1 MP3-CD $19.99

I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about Gail Caldwell’s wonderful memoir, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, about her friendship with Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story), coming in August. How do you recommend a book in which the author’s two best friends, one human and the other canine, both die?

Perhaps the best way is to simply read from it, as Caldwell does here (via Shelf Awareness):

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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

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Joyce Bean; Simultaneous

Trade 9781400115600 6 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400145607 6 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400165605 1 MP3-CD $19.99

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man has received an enviable amount of press, but it took an appearance on the Today Show yesterday to move the sales needle on Amazon (to #84 from #446 yesterday).

Some libraries show growing holds.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir Bill Clegg Retail Price: $23.99 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-06-07) ISBN / EAN: 0316054674 / 9780316054676

When Elizabeth Edward’s book Resilience came out last year, she still believed that her husband’s affair with Rielle Hunter had been a one-night stand. Of course, she later learned that was not true in a very public way, when news broke that John Edwards is the father of Hunter’s baby.

The paperback version of Resilience was released on Tuesday; it contains a new chapter, in which Edwards writes about her reaction to the news.

She is also making the rounds of the media to talk about the chapter; she’s interviewed in the new issue of People, on newsstands tomorrow, on the Today Show yesterday and on Larry King Live last night.

The book is currently at #34 on Amazon sales rankings. Most libraries are not showing the paperback edition on their catalogs.

In the Today Show interview, Matt Lauer asked her about two books that became best sellers, both of which detailed the affair and were critical of her; The Politician by Edwards’s aide Andrew Young and Game Change by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

She says that The Politician is “full of lies,” but that Game Change concerned her more because it quoted people close to the campaign. She says it was “useful” to see how she was perceived; that she made the mistake of forgetting that her words carried extra weight because she was married to the candidate.

She says she still feels she married a “marvelous man” but that he changed.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities Elizabeth Edwards Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Broadway – (2010-06-29) ISBN / EAN: 0767931564 / 9780767931564

George Bush’s memoir Decision Points isn’t coming out until November and the drums are already beating.

(Note: despite the date shown below, the following is from yesterday’s Today Show)

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Decision Points George W. Bush Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-11-09) ISBN / EAN: 0307590615 / 9780307590619

Large Print; Trade Pbk; Random House; 9780739377826; $35
Audio; ABR; 9780307748645; $35

It was heavily reported last week that Demi Moore is shopping a memoir.

The following should be required viewing for all potential buyers (short ad in the beginning):

Watch CBS News Videos Online

USA Today rounds up new memoirs, giving the nod to the following three:

Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas & Found Happiness Dominique Browning Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 250 pages Publisher: Atlas – (2010-05-09) ISBN / EAN: 1934633313 / 9781934633311

Sample chapter here, which opens with a great bit about what it was like to work at the famed Conde Nast.

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One More Theory About Happiness: A Memoir Paul Guest Retail Price: $21.99 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061685178 / 9780061685170

Adobe EPUB eBook downloadable from OverDrive

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Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture Thomas Chatterton Williams Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-04-29) ISBN / EAN: 159420263X / 9781594202636