After a several weeks of an author drought, The Daily Show ramps up its book coverage with two authors appearing this week: Jill Leovy, on Tuesday, and Sarah Chayes on Thursday.

As we reported last week, Leovy’s Ghettoside (RH/Spiegel & Grau; OverDrive Sample), a gripping journalistic investigation into the murder of a young black man in Los Angeles, is getting strong coverage in The New York Times and on NPR. The author’s appearance with Stewart should bring her to the attention of an even wider readership. Holdings and holds vary across the country with some libraries yet to buy, some with light holds, and others with holds as high as 11:1. Fair warning: Ghettoside seems destined to be an important book on an important conversation that will continue for years to come. As The New York Times put it in their Sunday cover, “Leovy’s relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insights — and it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that ‘black lives matter,’ showing how the ‘system’s failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap.’”

Sarah Chayes’s Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, (W. W. Norton) has gotten far less media attention although NPR’s All Things Considered did a story on Jan. 16^th and The Washington Post gave the book a generally favorable review on the same day. Holds are light in libraries we checked, but Stewart can be relied upon to create at least a short-term bump in demand. Certainly Chayes’s book, which identifies corruption as the link between a number of political hotspots spiraling out of control, provides Stewart with a wind-up pitch he can hit out of the park.

A headline from yesterday’s Slate, A Tiny Press Printed Only 15,000 Copies of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Autobiography. Big Mistake, has sent Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill, (South Dakota Historical Society Press) flying back up Amazon’s sales rankings.

Part of the appeal may be the comment that, now that the book is out of stock, “ ‘Used’ copies on Amazon (in this case meaning ‘existing’) started at $399 as of this writing,” (see our earlier stories on the book, from August and December).

Holds are also climbing in many libraries. Cross your fingers that circulating copies will be returned.

Book news is currently dominated by Guantánamo Diary  (Hachette/Little, Brown), a memoir by Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Larry Siems. The author, who is still being held at the prison, details the tortures he has endured there. Featured on yesterday’s Morning Edition, the host noted, “The Pentagon confirmed to NPR that for a brief period at Guantanamo in 2003, a ‘special interrogation plan’ was designed for Slahi, and it was outside the military’s own standard interrogation procedures.”

Excerpts are published in People magazine, it will be on the cover of the Feb. 15 NYT Book Review (online now, three weeks ahead of the print version, presumably to coincide with the publication), is featured in the L.A. Times, reviewed by The Washington Post. and the basis for a NYT Op-Ed piece.

The Guardian. which is serializing the book, features a documentary about it on their Web site:

In the U.K., celebrities, including Colin Firth, Jude Law, Benedict Cumberbatch and Nick Cave are supporting the “Free Slahi” campaign.

Check your orders. Most libraries have ordered conservatively and holds are light so far, but we expect them to surge as the story creates even more headlines.

UPDATE: coverage is expected on Friday’s PBS Newshour. ABC This Week is planning coverage, TBA, and the daily NYT is also planning a review. The book was embargoed, so no advance reviews. LJ noted it in Prepub Alert in July and  Kirkus  just posted their review online.

Guantánamo Diary
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, edited by Larry Siems,
Hachette/Little, Brown,  January 20, 2015
Hachette Audio and Blackstone Audio,  9781478986942
E-Book, 9780316328609

The new NPR Morning Edition book club wrapped up today with a discussion of the first selection, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free by Hector Tobar (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample; Oct), picked in December by bookstore owner and author Ann Patchett.

The book, which has hit the lower rungs of the NYT best seller list as a result of the selection, is also one of five finalists for the NBCC Nonfiction Award, announced yesterday and  has been made into a movie, titled The 33, starring Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche and Gabriel Byrne. Currently in post-production, the release date has not yet been announced.

The next title in the club will be announced soon; we will let you know when it is.

The Clint Eastwood movie American Sniper, based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography, was a big winner at the box office this weekend, giving the movie industry much-needed hope.The timing of the film’s wide release, immediately after the Oscar nominations were announced, is considered a big factor in its success.

Another is the film’s patriotic appeal, although that is being question by several who object to the movie making a hero of a man who said in his book, “The enemy are savages and despicably evil,” and his “only regret is that I didn’t kill more.”

The movie’s subject, the late Chris Kyle is getting renewed attention, including this story on NBC’s Nightly News:

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As a result, his book, which has been a long-running best seller, now occupies three spots on the Amazon top 10, with another editions is at #64:

#1 —   Mass market ed. with original cover, (Harper, 2013)
#5 —   Trade pbk tie-in (HarperCollins/Morrow Paperbacks, 2014)
#8 —   Hardcover memorial edition (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2013)
#64 — Mass market. tie-in, (Harper, 2014)

The second title in Mark Zuckerberg’s new Facebook book club, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, (Penguin/Viking, 2011; trade pbk, 2012; Brilliance Audio  OverDrive Sample), announced on Saturday, immediately moved up Amazon’s sales rankings, and is now at #307 from a lowly #7,514.

The selection may seem at odds with the times, but Zuckerberg insists, “Recent events might make it seem like violence and terrorism are more common than ever, so it’s worth understanding that all violence — even terrorism — is actually decreasing over time. If we understand how we are achieving this, we can continue our path towards peace.” He adds, “A few people I trust have told me this is the best book they’ve ever read.”

As to the length, it is 800 pages. Zuckerberg admits he will need a month to finish it, so he promises to pick a shorter book in two weeks so club members can read both at the same time.

One of those people is Bill Gates, who has called The Better Angels of Our Nature his “favorite book of the last decade” and “a long but profound look at the reduction in violence and discrimination over time.”

The rise in sales was not quite as great as for the first selection, Moisés Naím’s The End of Power, which climbed to #10 on Amazon’s rankings and also just debuted at #14 on the Jan. 25 New York Times combined nonfiction best seller list. Ironically, as The Washington Post reported, Facebook proved to not be a conducive platform for the book discussion.

The attention also generated holds in libraries. Given the brief two-week window for these selections, however, it will be a losing proposition for libraries to try to meet the demand. We can just hope Zuckerberg’s discovery that books can be “very intellectually fulfilling … in a deeper way than most media today” has resonance.

Never underestimated the importance of the Oscars to a movie’s bottom line.

Just a few months after the release of the first trailer for Ron Howard’s adaptation of  Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea and the announcement of a March 13 release, comes a change in date to, you guessed it, one that falls right in the awards season sweet spot, Dec. 11, 2015.

As a result, the tie-ins are likely to be moved to a later release date.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (Movie Tie-in)
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin, Trade Paperback Feb. 24, 2015
9780143126812, 0143126814

Audio: Feb. 24, 2015
Nathaniel Philbrick, Scott Brick
9781611763577, 1611763576

Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body by Martin Pistorius (Simon & Schuster, 2011; OverDrive Sample) is getting renewed attention after NPR featured it on its new program, Invisibilia, devoted to exploring the “intangible forces that shape human behavior.”

The show debuted on January 8^th and repeated on All Things Considered the next day. It sent Ghost Boy racing up Amazon’s sales rankings all the way to #2.

NPR may have created a new book bump vehicle. The story was picked up by The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor and the book is currently out of stock on Amazon. Few libraries bought Pistorius’s memoir at the time of publication. Those that did are showing heavy holds. One library we checked has 91 holds on 3 copies.

Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert is publishing a new book in September on creativity, which may be why she gave the exclusive announcement to the Etsy blog, which is written for craftspeople and craft buyers.

Titled Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, (Penguin/ Riverhead; 9781594634710), the announcement has been picked up by several news sources, including the New York Times (via the AP) and USA Today.

Talk about your moneyball. The film version of Michael Lewis’s best seller about the financial meltdown, The Big Short, (Norton, 2011).has attracted some big stars, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling, will star according to Variety. Pitt is producing.

Pitt, of course, starred in an adaptation of another title by Lewis, Moneyball, (Norton, 2003).

Before that, the movie based on his 2006 book,  The Blind Side, (Norton), was also a hit.

Aaron Sorkin, who was wrote the screenplay for  Moneyball, bought the rights to Lewis most recent title, Flash Boys, (Norton, 2014) and it was reported to be on his “front burner” after his success with Newsroon, but hacked Sony emails indicate he has passed on the project.

The film adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s long-running best seller Unbroken has served to keep that book on the NYT Best Seller List in hardcover for 189 weeks. In addition, the tie-in is #1 on the paperback list after 23 weeks and YA version is #8 on that list after 8 weeks.

Now a new title joins the pack, Zamperini’s own, which he finished just before his death at 97 last year. Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life by Louis Zamperini, David Rensin, (HarperCollins/Dey Street Books; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) debuts on the new hardcover nonfiction list at #9.

Reviewing it when it came out in November, USA Today warned that other than shedding “more light on the reality of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), which afflicted Zamperini,” it doesn’t go much beyond Hillenbrand’s book. It does, however, exude “the nothing-to-lose honesty of a nonagenarian whose to-hell-and-back history results in a spiritual self-satisfaction.”

Holds are light in most libraries.

Unbroken isn’t the only movie causing a rise in sales for related books.

Debuting on this week’s NYT paperback nonfiction list at #10 is Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, (Princeton U.P.), the basis for The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing.

It joins Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (RH/Bantam), at #5 after six weeks, returning to the lists after its original publication in 1988 as a result of the movie, The Theory of Everything, which is actually based on the memoir by Hawking’s wife Jane from 2007, now re-eeleased as a tie-in, Travelling to Infinity: The True Story Behind The Theory of Everything by Jane Hawking, (Alma Books, November 7, 2014). NOTE: Thanks to Kate Hull for the update on the tie-in.

More attention is on the way for America’s Bitter Pill, (Random House; OverDrive Sample), Steven Brill’s investigation into the health care system, the high cost of drugs, and the corruption systemic in the business of staying well. Featured on the cover of this Sunday’s New York Time’s Book Review, the author is scheduled for an appearance on this week’s CBS 60 Minutes.

After Brill’s appearance on Monday’s Daily Show, the book broke into Amazon’s top 100.

Holds are high in libraries that have bought modest quantities and many have yet to place orders. Fair warning: this is a book on the rise, and it may be destined to become a core title on health care for some years to come. As the Times puts it in their fairly glowing review, Brill “has pulled off something extraordinary — a thriller about market structure, government organization and billing practices, by turns optimistic and pessimistic, by turns superficial and insightful, but always interesting, and deadly important.”

The novel that is shaping up to be the debut of the season The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, (Penguin/Riverhead, Jan. 13; BOT Audio Clip; OverDrive Sample) continues to rack up holds after Janet Maslin’s NYT review on Monday.

Holds are likely to continue. The novel is on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Must List” for the week at #9 (“a gripping down-the-rabbit-hole thriller”) and is a People pick (Gone Girl fans will devour this psychological thriller … ends with a twist that no one … will see coming.”)

Expect to see The Girl on the Train on best seller lists in a couple of weeks.

However, the book is not the top pick for either magazine. Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar RH/Ballantine; RH Large Print; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample; audio clip) is #3  on Entertainment Weekly‘s Must List. “Fiction and history merge seamlessly in this dazzling novel about an incredible circle of bohemian artists in early-20th-century London — particularly the rivalry between two famous sisters, writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell.” This coming Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, says “Parmar’s portrait brings Vanessa out of the shadows, into fully realized, shining visibility.” Both a LibraryReads and an IndieNext pick, it is showing holds, probably based on the author’s interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

People‘s Book of the Week is the weight-loss memoir by food blogger Andie Mitchell, It Was Me All Along, (RH/Clarkson Potter; BOT Audio Clip; OverDrive Sample; ). It is also covered by the New York Post and the Washington Post).

You may not have the resources that Mark Zuckerberg has, but now you can read like he does.

As a new year’s resolution, he has set himself a goal of reading a book every two weeks and has created a Facebook page, A Year of Books, that invites others to join in.

He says he will choose books that “emphasize learning about new cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies.”

We’re not sure how the first title fits that definition. By the former editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy, Moises Naim, it is The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used To Be, (Perseus/Basic Books, 2013).

The author, exuberantly interviewed on CNN (the host marvels that Zuckerberg will have to read 24 pages a day! to meet his goal), says the book may have special meaning for Zuckerberg, a member of the new power elite that disrupted the old, but at a time when power itself offers diminishing returns (see the Washington Post review for more on his Naim’s thesis). Zuckerberg says he’s interested in it because it “explores how the world is shifting to give individual people more power that was traditionally only held by large governments, militaries and other organizations. The trend towards giving people more power is one I believe in deeply.”

The End of Power sold out on Amazon within hours of the announcement, but the publisher was able to quickly resupply it. Good thing. The window for this is short. Zuckerberg is scheduled to announce his next book on January 16.

Libraries we checked are showing holds that outstrip modest inventories.