When William Alexander first tasted a really good loaf of bread, he describes the experience as an eye-opener,

…the first bite into the crust, which managed to be both crispy and chewy at the same time and had a natural sweetness from the sugars that had developed during baking. And the crumb, which is the word that bakeries use to describe the interior of the bread, the crumb had some bite back when you bit into it.

Most of us would just make a note to return to the restaurant that served such heavenly bread. But the author of The $64 Tomato, subtitled, “How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden,” decided he had to learn to reproduce that achievement at home.

He documents his quest in the book 52 Loaves. Today’s Boston Globe says, “Alexander’s breathless, witty memoir is a joy to read.” The author appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday earlier this month (listen here).

Several libraries are showing more than ten holds per copy, on light ordering.

52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust William Alexander Retail Price: $23.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2010-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 1565125835 / 9781565125834

Lisa Ling, who is a contributor to the Oprah Show, appears today with a very personal story; the rescue of her sister from a Korean prison.

The sisters will also appear  tomorrow on the Today Show and NPR’s Fresh Air.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home Laura Ling, Lisa Ling Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 0062000675 / 9780062000675

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive.

Ling was imprisoned with fellow journalist Euna Lee, who has also written a memoir, which releases this fall.

The World Is Bigger Now: An American Journalist’s Rescue from Captivity in North Korea . . . A Remarkable Story of Faith, Family, and Forgiveness Euna Lee, Lisa Dickey Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Broadway – (2010-09-28) ISBN / EAN: 0307716139 / 9780307716132

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307749932; $35

Two notable women’s memoirs go on sale next week – both with modest holds in libraries we checked, though that’s likely to change as the media weighs in.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home by Lisa Ling Morrow is a reporter’s account of her 2009 capture and five month imprisonment in North Korea, after filming a documentary about women who defected from North Korea to China and were later forced into arranged marriages or sex slavery.

In a starred review, Booklist calls the memoir “a riveting story of captivity and the enduring faith, determination, and love of two sisters.”

The authors will be on Oprah on May 18th, and on the Today Show as well as CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on May 19th. For more details, see EarlyWord’s Harper Buzz titlle page.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home Laura Ling, Lisa Ling Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0062000675 / 9780062000675

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Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the author’s third memoir of her escape from an arranged marriage in Somalia to Holland, and most recently of building a new life in America.

PW was not impressed:

…many personal stories are repeated from her earlier accounts… Her wholesale condemnation of an entire religion and the multiple cultures it has engendered is so sweeping and comprehensive, and her faith in Western values (particularly her romantic view of Christianity) is so wide-eyed, that the book ultimately reads like a callow exercise in expressing the author’s own sense of aggrievement.

Hirsi Ali recently contributed an op-ed to the Wall St. Journal about a fatwa against the creators of the comedy show South Park for their portrayal of the prophet Muhammad.

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations Ayaan Hirsi Ali Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Free Press – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 1439157316 / 9781439157312

USA Today features a new book about three Manhattan friends who chucked everything to travel the world in an effort find themselves, and they did it before reading Eat, Pray, Love.

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The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World. Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, Amanda Pressner Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 560 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061689068 / 9780061689062

Adobe EPUB eBook avilable from OverDrive.

Continuing to climb on Amazon’s sales rankings, after the author’s appearance on The View yesterday, CBS Sunday Morning (see below) and on Oprah last week, is The Other Wes Moore, now at #80.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates Wes Moore Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385528191 / 9780385528191

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307877130; $35
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive

Former First Lady Laura Bush is making a bid for her memoir, Spoken from the Heart, to become a Mother’s Day gift of choice. Though the book goes on sale next week, scores of newspapers and national TV news shows have begun to cover it. Libraries we checked have mounting holds, and are catching up to the demand with more copies on order.

CBS News anchor Katie Couric sums up the revelations, starting with Bush’s account of how, at 17, she sailed through a stop sign and ran into another car, killing a close high school friend.

In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani praises Bush for capturing the her coming of age in Midland Texas in the 50s and 60s “with exacting emotional precision.” But Kakutani also calls the second part of the book “a thoroughly conventional autobiography by a politician’s wife… that sheds not the faintest new light on the presidency of the author’s husband, George W. Bush.”

The Washington Post parses Bush’s political statements in more detail.

Spoken from the Heart Laura Bush Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 1439155208 / 9781439155202

S&S Audio: ABR; 9781442305205; $29.99

The embargo on Laura Bush’s memoir, to be published next week, is broken today by the New York Times, which managed to find a copy at a bookstore.

The revelations the Times reports are a bit tepid; Laura Bush scolds people for criticizing her husband and justifies his actions (including the Katrina flyover). She does, however, address an issue she has not spoken about publicly before; as a teenager, she ran a stop sign and killed a fellow high school student. She says the incident caused her to lose her faith for many years.

She also implies that she and the president may have been poisoned at a G-8 Summit, but the reported evidence is pretty weak.

Spoken from the Heart Laura Bush Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 1439155208 / 9781439155202

S&S Audio; ABR; 7 CD’s; $29.99

Her husband’s book is set for release in November. Compare the two titles; further evidence that women are from Venus and men are from Mars?

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’s a clever approach that a librarian might have designed; to highlight books coming out next month, O, the Oprah Magazine pairs five older titles with new readalikes in a feature called “5 Books to Watch for This May.”

Some of the pairings are a bit odd — Girl in Translation, one of the titles that came up in our recent Galley Chat, is paired with Cinderella (yes, the tale by the Brothers Grimm). It was also featured in Entertainment Weekly‘s recent “18 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer” feature.

Girl in Translation Jean Kwok Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-04-29) ISBN / EAN: 1594487561 / 9781594487569

Also included is The Other Wes Moore (the author appears on the Oprah Show this week). It’s paired with The Women Who Raised Me, the 2007 memoir by Victoria Rowell

Coming to Oprah on Tuesday, is Wes Moore, the author of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, (Random House). Moore is an investment banker, Rhodes scholar, former aide to Condoleezza Rice and, some say, the next black president.

Moore discovered another Wes Moore, his same age and from the same area of Baltimore. The other Wes Moore’s life was quite different, however, he was wanted for killing a cop. PW calls it a “moving exploration of roads not taken.” Libraries are showing 1:1 holds on modest ordering.

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates Wes Moore Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385528191 / 9780385528191

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307877130; $35
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive

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Wednesday’s show features Todd Bridges, the former Diff’rent Strokes star. The featured guest is former Miss USA Tara Conner.

Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted Todd Bridges Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Touchstone – (2010-03-16) ISBN / EAN: 1439148988 / 9781439148983

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There’s no direct book tie-in (at least, none has been announced yet), but John Edwards’ former mistress, Rielle Hunter gives her first TV interview to Oprah on Thursday. Earlier this year, Oprah featured former Edwards’ aide, Andrew Young, who wrote about the affair in his book, The Politician. And, last year, Oprah interviewed Elizabeth Edwards about her book, Resilience., back when she was saying that the affair with “that woman” was a one-time thing.

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.”

Library holds are building for Orange is the New Black, Piper Kerman’s memoir of her 13 months incarcerated in the Danbury Federal Prison in Connecticut. A Smith college graduate with access to good lawyers, Kerman seemed an unlikely candidate for prison, but she was convicted on ten-year-old drug trafficking charges.

The book received considerable prepub attention, with an excerpt in The New York Times Magazine, another one in Marie Claire, and a profile hearalding her “…Hot New Memoir…” in New York magazine.

USA Today reviews it, warning readers to,

Resist the impulse to dismiss Kerman’s book as The Preppy Handbook for the Club Fed crowd. Orange transcends the memoir genre’s usual self-centeredness to explore how human beings can always surprise you. You’d expect bad behavior in prison. But it’s the moments of joy, friendship and kindness that the author experienced that make Orange so moving and lovely.

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison Piper Kerman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0385523386 / 9780385523387

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive.

The media is lining up to interview comic Sarah Silverman about her first book of essays, Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee. Often compared to Lenny Bruce, the 39 year-old trash-talking comic who performs in pigtails and football shirts will appear on ABC’s Nightline on April 19, CBS’s The Early Show on April 20, and on NPR’s Fresh Air (date to be determined), among many other TV and print outlets.

Some libraries may be a step behind the demand – several we checked had only one copy of the book, with demand likely to grow.

PW gave it a starred review:

“Best known for sexually explicit jokes, Silverman is able to address more serious subjects in the book without losing her edge, particularly her teenage struggle with depression and that her often abrasive public persona allowed her to “say what I didn’t mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed…. It was a funny way of being sincere.”

According to New York magazine, the book has “a tenderness that is disarming… But while it can be revealing, it is curiously unreflective, much like Silverman’s stand-up.”

The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee Sarah Silverman Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061856436 / 9780061856433

For his new book, Bruce Feiler turns from Biblical history (Walking the Bible, etc.) to a much more personal story; his “lost year” dealing with aggressive cancer treatments. Worrying about his daughter’s lives without him, he formed the “Council of Dads,” six men he asked to be there for his girls at key moments in their lives. Even Kirkus was moved.

The book will be getting heavy promotion leading up to its May 1 publication, beginning with the cover of USA Weekend this Sunday. Other major media hits will include a profile in People (4/23), interview on the Today Show (4/28) and Fox’s Glenn Beck Show (week of May 3) and a one-hour documentary on CNN on Father’s Day weekend.

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
Will be available as an Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive.

Former skinhead Frank Meeink was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (listen here).

Meeink once recruited kids to be skinheads and even had a cable access talk show called The Reich. Imprisoned at 18, his exposure to people with other backgrounds caused him to begin questioning his beliefs. He now lectures on racial acceptance for the Anti-Defamation League. Working with the Philadelphia Flyers (Meeink grew up in South Philadelphia), he created a hate prevention program called “Harmony Through Hockey.” His memoir, Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead was published recently.

The book rose to #112 (from #14,721) on Amazon.

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead: The Frank Meeink Story as Told to Jody M. Roy, Ph.D. Frank Meeink, Jody M. Roy Retail Price: $15.95 Paperback: 316 pages Publisher: Hawthorne Books – (2010-03-16) ISBN / EAN: 097901882X / 9780979018824

As part of his high-profile media tour, Richard Phillips, the captain of the boat that was held hostage by Somali pirates last year, was interviewed last night by obvious fan, Jon Stewart. Phillips’ book, A Captains Duty, was released yesterday.

The Captain was also interviewed  on NPR’s Fresh Air (listen here) last night.

The book rose to #135 on Amazon.

A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea Richard Phillips, Stephan Talty Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 1401323804 / 9781401323806

Tantor Audio; UNABR

On Sale Date: 04/26/2010
Trade 9781400116867 8 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400146864 8 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400166862 1 MP3-CD $19.99

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive