Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times and author of the best selling The Power of Habit, follows up with a new book, this time with a focus on productivity, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business (Random House; BOT).

Using the approach that made his previous book accessible, Duhigg incorporates management science and personal stories designed to teach readers how to re-think their approach to being busy.

His book is soaring up the Amazon sales charts after a feature on the Today show, part of a planned series.

Even after the great success of The Power of Habit and the Today show push, holds are still modest on moderate orders for Duhigg’s newest. Like his previous book, we’re betting this one will be a slow build.

The headline of this post may seem odd, but it refers to the title of a book featured on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, an historical account of what author Adam Cohen considers “one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history,” Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (PRH/Penguin; OverDrive Sample).

It recounts the 1927 case in which the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a citizen deemed “unfit” to procreate. The case grew out of the eugenics movement, which Cohen details as well.

Holds are light thus far but the title zoomed up the Amazon sales rankings to #72 after Fresh Air, making it a candidate to hit best seller lists next week.

If so, it won’t be Cohen’s first best seller. He is the author of Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America which hit the NYT‘s Nonfiction Hardcover list in 2009.

On Fresh Air yesterday, Nancy Jo Sales talked about her new book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, (PRH/Knopf; BOT and RH Audio; OverDrive Sample).

The book has received earlier media attention, including a Katie Couric special on ABC’s Nightline. As a result, was already fairly high on Amazon’s sales rankings, but Fresh Air kicked it up to #5.

Holds are strong on modest ordering. As we wrote earlier, this was a drop-in title and therefore was released too late for review coverage from the prepub media.

The political clout of a large and growing segment of women voters is analyzed by Rebecca Traister in All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation (Simon & Schuster).

A writer at large for New York Magazine and a noted figure in journalism and historical/political research related to women, Traiter’s newest book is getting a wide coverage. The author appears today on CBS This Morning:

This book has been heavily anticipated. In 2014, Traister appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition, when it was still  in progress, giving an overview of her findings.

Thus far, library orders are very light but media attention may fuel demand .

On Late Night Wednesday, Seth Meyers delved into the science of health with Dr. David Agus

Angus’s latest book is
The Lucky Years : How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health, (S&S; S&S Audio)

Head of the National Security Agency and the CIA during some of the most tense and controversial years of American history, Michael V. Hayden surveys his tenure in the Bush administration, detailing what occurred and why from his point of view, in Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample – embargoed until yesterday’s pub date).

The book is currently #10 on Amazon’s Top Sellers. Library holds thus far are in keeping with fairly low level of ordering. Holds may still grow, as word about this embargoed title spreads.

Author Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) reviewing the book for The New York Times is not impressed:

“Mr. Hayden seems oblivious … He has written an occasionally engaging book about matters — moral, legal and technological — that are very complex, but he shows little interest in examining them. Throughout he is breezy and unapologetic. And why not? At the same time his efforts were being met by public criticism, they led to steady praise and promotion. He ended his Air Force career a four-star general.”

While not passing judgment on the book itself, NPR’s Robert Siegel conducted a probing interview with Hayden for All Things Considered earlier this week. In one key moment Siegel asks: “What did you tell Leon Panetta, your successor as CIA director, to say about waterboarding?”

Hayden replies:

“Do not use the word ‘torture’ and ‘CIA’ in the same sentence ever again. You can object to some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. You can, in your heart of hearts, believe they meet some legal definition of torture. But Leon, you’re taking over a workforce that did these things in good faith. They did these things with the assurance of the attorney general that they indeed were not torture. Do not accuse them of felonies.”

He also says that it was the US intelligence agencies that got the facts about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction wrong, not the Bush administration. “We were wrong. It was a clean swing and a miss. It was our fault.”

MSNBC’s Morning Joe featured Hayden in a long segment yesterday.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon (Princeton University Press) is shaping up to be this year’s Capital in the 21st Century, anointed as such by both The New York Times Magazine and Fortune.

The book has become a prime topic of discussion among economists and business leaders. We reported earlier on Paul Krugman’s cover review for The New York Times Sunday Book Review, which helped push holds over orders in many libraries.

Krugman’s review came after several other notable attention. An earlier review in The Economist called the book “magnificent” and “brilliant.” The WSJ early review ended by proclaiming:

“Every presidential candidate should be asked what policies he or she would offer to increase the pace of U.S. productivity growth and to narrow the widening gap between winners and losers in the economy. Bob Gordon’s list is a good place to start.”

Several reviews, including the one in The Economist, also find fault with the book, not agreeing with Gordon’s asserting that IT revolution has played less of a role in re-shaping society than did indoor plumbing or the wide availability of cars.

More on this hot topic of a title can be found in Gordon’s 2013  TED Talk and a TED Talk debate, in which economists dug into Gordon’s arguments.

The NYT posted their online review (to run in print in the Feb. 28 Sunday Book Review) of A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy. Sue Klebold, Andrew Solomon, (PRH/Crown) on Feb. 15.

Just a few days later the paper felt the need to post a follow-up piece to summarize some of the over 900 comments the review prompted.

That level of engagement with the book is reflected in libraries across the country. Holds are growing and libraries haven’t caught up with them.

We reported in “Titles to Know and Recommend” last week that ABC News was covering the book in a big push, with an ABC Prime Time Special with Diane Sawyer, promoted on Good Morning America. The author also appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air on Tuesday.

The book clearly touches nerves, as indicated by the remarkable number of personal reactions to it from reviewers.

Entertainment Weekly gave the book an A grade, saying:

“This book, which can be tough to read in places, is an important one. It helps us arrive at a new understanding of how Columbine happened—and, in the process, may help avert other tragedies.”

The LA Times‘s reviewer, responding both to the book and to the ABC coverage, writes:

“I believe Sue Klebold … I feel so sorry for her — I really do. Did you watch 20/20? Her pain is so raw, her vulnerability so extreme. I want to reassure her: One way or another this book will change lives. What it won’t do is bring Dylan back … And what it also won’t do, is my guess, never mind what I believe, is allow Sue Klebold to forgive herself.”

The Washington Post reviewer says:

“Reading this book as a critic is hard; reading it as a parent is devastating. I imagine snippets of my own young children in Dylan Klebold, shades of my parenting in Sue and Tom. I suspect that many families will find their own parallels. This book’s insights are painful and necessary, and its contradictions inevitable.”

The book is currently #31 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Beset by a slew of delays, including wildfires on location and the departures of both the director and director of photography over creative differences, the HBO series, Lewis And Clark, based on the book Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, (S&S, 1996), may be shut down entirely.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “it’s unclear whether production will ever start up again. Sources say that the series’ props and costumes are being held in storage in Canada, where the first iteration was shot.”

In 1977, the TV series Roots, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alex Haley was a sensation, opening the eyes of many white American to the horrors of slavery and encouraging African Americans to research their family histories.

The series has been remade, starring Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In the lead role of Kunte Kinte is the “up-and-coming British actor” Malachi Kirby.

Set to premiere on the History Channel on Memorial Day, May 30, the first trailer was recently released.

Tie-in edition: Roots [miniseries tie-in]: The Saga of an American Family, Alex Haley, (Perseus/Da Capo Press, May 3)

The recent biography, Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation by Robert J. Norrell was picked by Essence magazine as one of “6 Must-Read Books for Black History Month.”

Kirby is known in the U.K. for his role in the TV series East Enders. He also starred as the younger brother in the 2013 British film Gone Too Far. As we noted in an earlier story, and can’t resist mentioning agin, the trailer, below, includes an eerie foreshadowing of his future role.

Michael Pollan’s fame is about to spread to Netflix with the series Cooked set to debut this coming Friday, Jan 19.

Directed by Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief), it explores how human developed their relationship to food, a subject Pollan wrote about in his 2013 book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (Penguin; OverDrive Sample). The four-episode YV series will be a mix of culinary travelogue, anthropology lessons, and sessions in Pollan’s home kitchen.

No tie-in is planned but the book is available in various print editions and in eBook.

The stirring trailer was released recently and showcases Pollan’s approach to the powerful emotions surrounding food, the connections food has to tradition and family, and the ways the modern food industry has separated us from the real heart of cooking, which, says Pollan works to “undermine cooking as an everyday practice.”

Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities by Claudia Kalb (PRH/National Geographic; OverDrive Sample) got a big boost after the author appeared on CBS This Morning, shooting the book to #35 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Kalb investigates the mental health issues of celebrities and national figures including Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, and Princess Diana, exploring such conditions as borderline personality disorder, hoarding, and depression. Using historical records and primary sources, and through discussions with experts, Kalb illustrates the symptoms of some common conditions in the hopes that the less famous will not feel so alone in their own diagnosis.

She goes into fascinating detail about Warhol in an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, which aired a few weeks ago.

Several libraries show copies still on order, even though it was published nearly two weeks ago and holds are rising.

After yesterday’s announcement that the Boss will publish a memoir in September, the book instantly rose to #1 on Amazon sales rankings, indicating it may be worth the reported $10 million advance.

Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen
S&S, September 27, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1501141515

“Meanness peaks in the 7th grade,” says psychologist Lisa Damour, interviewed yesterday on CBS This Morning about her new book, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood, (PRH/Ballantine; BOT/RH Audio; OverDrive Sample).

As a result of the interview, the book shot up Amazon’s sales rankings and is now at #8. Holds are rising in many libraries.

The Washington Post‘s reviewer calls it, “the most down-to-earth, readable parenting book I’ve come across in a long time.”

This month the Slate Audio Book Club discusses Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women (Macmillan/FSG; OverDrive Sample), a book that got a lot of attention very quickly last fall and landed on a majority of the best books lists.

As we reported Entertainment Weekly, O magazine, and The New Yorker we all on board the bandwagon celebrating this under appreciated author’s 400+ page short story collection.

Now Slate critics Christina Cauterucci, Mark Harris, and Katy Waldman take on both the stories and the concept of short story collections themselves.

The most interesting parts of their conversation center on various ways to read short stories. They suggest reading this collection from beginning to end and not skipping around.

Another high note is the way they discuss Berlin ability to put readers right into the heart of the moment. At one point the panelists note that all the stories drop readers directly into the middle of the tale, without the least bit of warmup. At another they discuss Berlin’s economy as a writer, saying that she excels at implication and is masterful about noting what is just outside the reader’s line of sight.

All three enjoyed the collection and recommend it to readers.

Next month the club will discuss Better Living Through Criticism. (PRH/Penguin, Feb. 9), by the NYT‘s film critic A.O. Scott, a book currently receiving wide-spread attention, including reviews in the Atlantic, Slate, and, of course, the New York Times.