A book aimed at graduates landed at #1 on the  newest NYT Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous Best Sellers list, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World by William H. McRaven (Hachette/Grand Central; Grand Central Audio; OverDrive Sample).

In it, McRaven, a four star admiral who is credited with overseeing the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, offers surprisingly simple advice, based on his training as a Navy SEAL, such as make your bed, never give up, stand up to bullies, and offer hope to others. The author also includes stories of his time in the SEALs and in Special Operations leadership.

Although it’s a best seller, few libraries are showing heavy holds ratios, indicating most copies are being bought as graduation gifts.

A media draw, the book was a topic on FOX & Friends, USA Today calls it a “powerful book,” The Washington Post says it “is ostensibly about leadership, but it’s full of captivating personal anecdotes from inside the national security vault,” and The Wall Street Journal has featured it several times, including in a video interview.

The entire speech is on YouTube:

Fresh off his role as Doctor Strange for Marvel, Benedict Cumberbatch may soon don a different suit, reports Deadline Hollywood.

He is in negotiations to star as the real-life con man Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, the subject of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal (PRH/Plume, 2012). Kirkus said of the true crime story, “Patricia Highsmith couldn’t have written a more compelling thriller.”

Gerhartsreiter, who went by the name of Clark Rockefeller, tricked people into believing he was a member of that famous family, helping him to land prestigious jobs on Wall Street and marry rich. He was sentenced to jail after kidnapping his own daughter and was subsequently sentenced to prison for the first-degree murder of his landlady’s son.

A long simmering project, the film first got under way in 2011, but the recent interest in true crime may have given it a fresh push.

NPR’s All Things Considered featured the book in 2011, explaining the case.

In the 1970s over 900 people died because they followed the religious figure turned cult leader, Jim Jones, to the jungles of Guyana where they, voluntarily or not, drank poison in a final act of devotion.

Jeff Guinn, known for his true crime bestsellers, investigates the history of Jones and his doomed followers in The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple (S&S; S&S Audio).

It has been covered by two high-profile outlets. Terry Gross interviews Guinn today on NPR’s Fresh Air and the Today show used the story last week to launch a “series examining some of the biggest crimes and cults of the 20th century.”

Guinn tells Gross that Jones was a “tremendous performer” who displayed “the classic tendencies of the demagogue … [he] would take current events and exaggerate them to create a sense of fear and urgency. He drew his followers to Guyana by convincing them that America was facing imminent threats of martial law, concentration camps and nuclear war … [he] epitomizes the worst that can happen when we let one person dictate what we hear [and] what we believe.”

The aftermath was so horrifying that the Guyanese army, coming to confront Jones, start screaming as they arrive on site, “because there are bodies everywhere, almost more than they can count, and they’re so horrified.”

Today details the event that triggered the final mass suicide, Jones’s order to open fire on a Congressman there to investigate, a trip filmed by NBC news in which three NBC staff were also murdered.

Newspapers such as The San Francisco Chronicle, the Star-Telegram (Texas), and The Dallas Morning News review it. USA Today names it one of their “New and noteworthy” titles. Salon headlines their coverage with “Jim Jones was who Charlie Manson wanted to be.” Men’s Journal names it one of “The 7 Best Books of April.” Vice offers an interview with Guinn.

Library holds are light at this point, but keep your eye on it.

Check your holds for Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste, Bianca Bosker (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample), which is being compared to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and Bill Buford’s Heat.

It debuted this week on the NYT Paperback Nonfiction list at #5 and is getting media attention, causing holds to spike at several libraries we checked, as high as 11:1.

The NYT reviews it, writing “Bosker’s journey … is thrilling, and she tells her story with gonzo élan.” The Washington Post says it is “a funny, thought-provoking and at times frightening look at the sublime tastes, enormous egos and curious rules of a profession that is both insanely rigorous and occasionally ridiculous.”

NPR’s The Salt features it as well, mixing descriptions of the book with descriptions of wine. Eater‘s editor-in-chief calls it “incredibly well written, intelligent, witty, and highly entertaining, and if I’m being frank, it’s the first book I’ve been excited to come home to in the last 12 months.”

WineEnthusiast offers an interview while both Slate and The Atlantic feature Bosker in their podcasts.

A feature story on Good Morning America has given a sales boost to Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat (S&S/North Star Way; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).

The mix of memoir and self-help by the Chief Business Officer for Google’s innovation department, Project X. jumped onto Amazon’s Top 100 list and is currently at #27.

Gawdat wrote the book after a major set back to his own happiness, the death of his son. He details his 12-year experience of decoding happiness, treating that quest as an engineer would, looking for an equation.

As Parade puts it in an interview, the happiness formula he found is “’You’re happy when life behaves the way you want it to.‘ Or more precisely, when your perception of events is equal to your expectations.”

Google features him in their talk series. The whole interview runs over an hour, but the first few minutes is enough to give a sense of his story and approach.

The “gleefully gruesome” And Then You’re Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara by Cody Cassidy and Paul Doherty (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) outlines the most outlandish ways of dying. Naturally, it’s getting attention.

A reddit discussion yesterday drew thousands of participants. Fun fact: apparently eating too many pickles in one session can make your stomach explode (and then you ARE dead).

Popular Science ran a story yesterday as well, pointing out the grisly appeal of learning about “someone else’s totally hypothetical, totally bizarre death … You know you want all the details.”

The book was featured on the popular NPR show, Science Friday, and on April Fool’s Day in the New York Post.

Prepub reviews are scant. Only Booklist covered it, giving it a star and calling the book an “arch, brainy volume … With bite-size morsels of astonishing science and the perfect combination of smart-alecky writing and black humor, this page-turner will surely debunk any misapprehension that science is dull.”

Libraries we checked have either not purchased or bought lightly. Where purchased, holds ratios are topping 7:1.

“When you see an owl … you feel that you’ve seen something special, almost secret.”

Mike Unwin tells the NYT that part of their allure is that they look more human than most birds and are hidden from our sight by their nocturnal habits. It is a rare and special moment for many to see one.

Unwin is the author of a new lavishly photographed guide: The Enigma of the Owl: An Illustrated Natural History (Yale UP).

The NYT says it “explores the diversity, beauty and ecological importance [of owls and] introduces readers to 53 of the world’s 200 to 250 species … organizing the birds by continent and including well-known … as well as rare, more enigmatic ones.”

The StarTribune also reviews it, writing the text has “the right measure of starchy erudition: the springy, high camp of Jeeves, with a faithfulness to scientific inquiry” and that “not one of the 200 photographs is unworthy of a museum home.”

LJ gave the book a star, calling it a “most worthy addition” to the collection and an “authoritative, beautiful title.”

This follows an earlier high-profile book on owls, Tony Angell’s 2015 The House of Owls. Angell provides an introduction to Unwin’s work.

The wildly popular storytelling site,The Moth, distributed through a podcast, YouTube, and the Peabody Award-winning Moth Radio Hour, is also available in print form, The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown, Catherine Burns (PRH/Crown; OverDrive Sample).

Attesting to The Moth’s power in the literary world, Neil Gaiman provides a forward for the book and Louis C.K., Tig Notaro, John Turturro, and Meg Wolitzer contribute stories. It also has pop culture cred, having been featured on an episode of HBO’s The Girls.

The site’s fan are propelling this 20th anniversary collection of 45 stories up Amazon’s sales rankings, where it is currently in the top 100, at #75.

The NYT‘s chief critic Michiko Kakutani, is a fan, calling it a collection of “remarkable emotional depth and sincerity … by turns, raw, wry, rueful, comic, elliptical and confiding.” The Moth is playing that up on social media, highlighting it on both Twitter and Facebook for their 100,000+ followers.

This is the second collection, following The Moth, ed. by Catherine Burns (Hachette, 2013).

Fashion entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso received media attention in 2014 for her book #GirlBoss (PRH/Portfolio; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

She is set to get more from a Netflix series “inspired” by the book, which begins airing on April 21. The just released trailer already has people talking. Jezebel says “if the first trailer is any indication, it’s going to be quick-witted, irreverent, and wildly multi-chromatic.” Elle writes “it looks good.”

Kay Cannon (Pitch Perfect 2, New Girl, 30 Rock) created the series and serves as showrunner. Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland) plays Sophia. Amoruso is an executive producer alongside fellow EP, Charlize Theron.

The Washington Post called #GIRLBOSS, a mix of memoir and business advice, “Lean In for misfits, it offers young women a candid guide to starting a business and going after what they want.” The NYT called fashion-powerhouse Amoruso the “Cinderella of tech” for the way she leveraged her interest in clothes and an eBay presence into a multi-million dollar business.

In recent years the shine has fallen off the company and it filed for bankruptcy. Vanity Fair writes “But from this fashionable mess, Netflix is hoping its new comedy series … will rise, like a Doc Marten-clad phoenix.”

There is no tie-in but a new spin off, non-library friendly, book comes out in October: The Girlboss Workbook: An Interactive Journal for Winning at Life, Sophia Amoruso (PRH/Portfolio).

The publisher describes it as “the attitude of #GIRLBOSS with the hands-on spirit of WRECK THIS JOURNAL … A graphic and whimsical guide filled with exercises, illustrations, and plenty of scribble room.”

Clearly, it’s not suitable for circulation.

After a wave of PR, including the author’s appearance on CBS This Morning, Sarah Robb O’Hagan’s Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat, (HC/HarperBusiness; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) jumped into the Top 100 on  Amazon’s sales rankings, currently at #37.

O’Hagan, who made a name for herself by rebranding companies such as Nike, Virgin Atlantic, and Equinox, writes that average people can succeed by creating the most extreme version of their best traits. She tells the hosts at CBS This Morning she’s experienced epic fails including getting fired and believes that perfection is overrated and successful people should share their failures to inspire others.

The book is getting attention from a number of other media outlets including Fox, Marie Claire, Shape, and Inc., which includes it on a list of “9 Business Books of 2017 That Will Change How America Does Business.”

O’Hagen gives a taste of the book in the following video:

Rising to #75 on Amazon’s sales rankings today is the book We Do Our Part: Toward a Fairer and More Equal America by Charles Peters (PRH/RH; OverDrive Sample),

On the PBS News Hour last night Peters, a life-long democrat, a founder of the Peace Corps, and the founding editor of the nonprofit political magazine, The Washington Monthly, tells Judy Woodruff the book grew out of his worry that snobbery and greed have split the country. He blames his own party for becoming too involved in making money and too interested in status.

The book has also gotten coverage in the NYT, which calls it “a desperate plea to his country and party to resist the temptations of greed, materialism and elitism — vices he believes have corroded the civic culture and led to the Democrats’ failure last year.” The Atlantic says “it fills in a missing part in our current political discussion.”

While the rush of big cookbooks comes every fall, spring is also a season marked by cooking guidance, before the surge of books on grilling. As we are tracking the Spring Reading Lists for novels and nonfiction, we are making note of the cookbook selections (see links at right, under Season Previews).

Eater offers a list of “Every Spring 2017 Cookbook That Matters.” Looking at coastal cookery from both sides, they highlight “a gorgeous new volume by San Francisco pastry chef Elisabeth Prueitt of Tartine fame” and “a definitive and entertaining history of Balthazar, one of Manhattan’s most treasured restaurants.”

Tartine All Day: Modern Recipes for the Home Cook, Elisabeth Prueitt (PRH/Lorena Jones Books)

At Balthazar: The New York Brasserie at the Center of the World, Reggie Nadelson (S&S/Gallery Books)

Bon Appétit limits their picks to the “11 Spring Cookbooks You’ll Actually Cook From.”

Among their choices are In My Kitchen: A Collection of New and Favorite Vegetarian Recipes by Deborah Madison (PRH/Ten Speed; OverDrive Sample), one of the grande dames of vegetarian cooking. “When she includes a recipe for brown rice porridge with nut butter and chia seeds, it’s because she’s been eating it since before the Instagram founders were born. #respect.”

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat with art by Wendy MacNaughton (S&S) is also included. “This is a new kind of book. Lots of words to live by before you get to her kitchen basics and, finally, recipes more than halfway through … Just reading [it] will make you a better cook, adept at seasoning, balancing, understanding what it really is you’re doing and why.”

A foodie haven, San Francisco produces a number of cookbooks. A fact recently covered by the city’s paper, San Francisco Chronicle, “10 spring cookbooks for your Bay Area food collection.”

The titles listed will appeal to regions beyond the Bay area, including  Nopalito: A Mexican Kitchen by Gonzalo Guzman with Stacy Adimando (PRH/Ten Speed; OverDrive Sample) “a worthy addition to your home library.” Picking up on the national trend of Asian cookery, the paper also features Burma Superstar: Addictive Recipes From the Crossroads of Southeast Asia by Desmond Tan and Kate Leahy (PRH/Ten Speed; OverDrive Sample), “A celebration of Burmese culture and foods.”

Publishers Weekly underscores the continuing interest in cookbooks through multiple lists (scroll to the end of the main article for the full range). Addressing the question of why cookbooks are still popular even though so much information is available for free online, Abrams cookbook editor Camaren Subhiyah says, “There are millions of recipes and video tutorials at our fingertips … but it’s not always the best format for learning and you’re not always getting quality information from a credible source.”

Titles range from books that address the fundamentals, such as Patricia Wells’ distillation of a life time of teaching in My Master Recipes (Harper/Morrow) to single focus titles such as The Book of Cheese: The Essential Guide to Discovering Cheeses You’ll Love by Liz Thorpe (Macmillan/Flatiron) and Perfect Plates in 5 Ingredients by John Whaite (Kyle), a winner of The Great British Bake Off  who offers “Pared-down recipes [that] aim for less-stressful home cooking.”

A three-part documentary based on the book Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, Mark Harris (PRH/Penguin; OverDrive Sample), premieres on Netflix tomorrow, March 31.

The book portrays how Hollywood fought a propaganda war agains fascism, through
the voluntary efforts of directors John Ford,
George Stevens, John Huston, William Wyler, and Frank Capra.

To tell the story in film, Harris has turned to five contemporary directors, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass, and Lawrence Kasdan, to provide context and insight and the entire series is supported with narration by Meryl Streep.

Netfilx will also air 13 of the films discussed in the series, reports Deadline Hollywood, “including Ford’s The Battle of Midway, Wyler’s The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, Huston’s Report from the Aleutians, Capra’s The Battle of Russia, Stevens’ Nazi Concentration Camps, and Stuart Heisler’s The Negro Soldier.”

Harris’s book got rave reviews when it was published. Slate calls it “one of the great works of film history of the decade.” The NYT says it is “a tough-minded, information-packed and irresistibly readable work of movie-minded cultural criticism.” The Guardian calls it “excellent” and The Washington Post says it “has all the elements of a good movie: fascinating characters, challenges, conflicts and intense action.”

The film version is also getting strong reviews. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, calling it “devastating and profound. And absorbing …well worth a binge.” Time says “The three episodes of Five Came Back run a little over three hours total, but the time goes by like a shot.” The Hollywood Reporter says it is “is intimately in tune with its subjects and the work they did.”

Katey Sagal, the actress famous for her roles on Married with Children and Sons of Anarchy, for which she won a Golden Globe, appeared today on Good Morning America to talk about her new memoir, Grace Notes: My Recollections (S&S/Gallery; OverDrive Sample).

Host Michael Strahan notes that Segal reveals personal details in the book, being frank about her past addictions and life in recovery. Sagal says she began the book as a way to share her life and past history with her children and saw the project as a love letter to her family.

She also talks about her time as a singer and song writer. Expressing surprised at this bit of her history, Strahan marvels that she “opened for Etta James, sang background for Bette Midler, and got fired by Bob Dylan.” She still has a band and says music is a big part of her life.

Sagal as been on a media blitz for the book, already appearing on Nightline and featured in the March 27 issue of People. She will be on The View tomorrow. The book made USA Today‘s list of “New and noteworthy” books. Page Six and the NY Daily News covered some of the book’s revelations. The book has moved up Amazon’s sales rankings as a result and is currently at #518.

The trailer for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power has been released:

As we posted earlier, the sequel to Gore’s Academy Award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival where it received a standing ovation. It is now gearing up for its wide release, beginning with the politically pointed trailer.

Variety says the film depicts the “dire consequences of a warming earth — from flooding in Miami and the Philippines, to the worst drought on record in Syria, bringing human suffering there that predated the ongoing civil war, to air pollution so bad in some parts of China that life expectancy has declined by six years.”

A companion book will be published in May, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Al Gore (Macmillan/Rodale Books).

The documentary will open in theaters on July 28, 2017.