A history about books, librarians, publishers, and war is making waves. Molly Guptill Manning’s When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; OverDrive Sample) tells the true story of how the book world helped boost morale by providing American soldiers with paperback editions of titles such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Great Gatsby.

Portable versions of these books allowed soldiers to read on their down time and reminded them of home and what they were fighting for.

Manning’s book is getting glowing coverage in an array of sources including USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and the Smithsonian. Such widespread attention triggers holds. Some libraries are showing a 5:1 ratio and on light ordering. The New York Times says that Manning’s book feels like “the bibliophile’s equivalent of It’s a Wonderful Life.” How can you beat that?

NPR’s Morning Edition reminded listeners of their new book club today (listen here), originally announced earlier this month, called appropriately, “Morning Reads.”

The first title, selected by Ann Patchett is Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories Of 33 Men Buried In A Chilean Mine And The Miracle That Set Them Free, (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample; Oct) by Hector Tobar. On several best books lists, it just cracked the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction list at #15. Many libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering.

Patchett says she chose Deep Down Dark because it’s a book that “benefits from other people’s insights.”

To become a member of the club, listeners are asked to read the book and send in questions via tweets, #MorningReads, or on Morning Edition’s Facebook page.  Tobar will answer selected question on the show on January 20.

CBS dedicated yesterday’s entire 60 Minutes show to Pope Francis and the Vatican (including a repeat of Morley Safer’s visit to the Vatican Library three years ago).

As a result, On Heaven and Earth by Pope Frances and Abraham Skorka (RH/Image, 2013)  rose to #214 from #43,488 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

For those people whose New Year’s resolutions are work-related, the Washington Post’s leadership columnist offers a dozen books to watch for next year, admitting that business self-help books tend to be “an overcrowded, underwhelming genre if there ever was one.”

One of the standouts is a book that offers lessons from The Second City Improv group (hey, if a bunch of fishmongers can become business gurus, the field is wide open), Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses “No, But” Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration, Kelly Leonard, Tom Yorton, (HarperBusiness, 2/3/15).

Move over Jaws, an even scarier sea creature is about to hit the screens.

The second trailer has just been released for Ron Howard’s  In the Heart of the Sea, scheduled to open in theaters on March 13. It is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 National Book Award winner of the same title, about the Essex, a Nantucket whaling ship that was stalked and eventually sunk by a sperm whale South Pacific in 1819, setting the crew adrift for 90 days.

This new trailer gives a sense of how frightening that whale will be on the big screen.

Tie ins (for tie-ins to all upcoming book adaptations, check our Edelweiss catalog):

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (Movie Tie-in)
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin, Trade Paperback January 27, 2015

Audio: January 27, 2015
Nathaniel Philbrick, Scott Brick

Related Titles

There’s several books about the incident, offering opportunities for display.

Foremost is the classic novel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, who appears in the movie, played by Ben Whishaw.  In turn, the novel was inspired by an eyewitness account, written by the Essex’s first mate Owen Chase, played by Chris Hemsworth, published in 1821 under the wonderful title, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex, of Nantucket Which Was Attacked and Finally Destroyed by A Large Spermaceti-whale, in the Pacific Ocean; With An Account of the Unparalleled Sufferings of the Captain and the Crew during a Space of Ninety-Three Days at Sea, in Open Boats, in the Years 1819 & 1820. It still available in several editions, but with much shorter titles, including The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale, (Penguin Classics, 2000) with an introduction by Philbrick.

In addition to his book for adults, Philbrick also published a version of the story for young readers, Revenge of the Whale, (Penguin/Puffin, 2004).

Ending the year with a laugh, the Washington Post offers “five highlights of the comedy book — broadly defined as funny books by funny people.”

Of course, Amy Poehler’s best seller, Yes Please, (HarperCollins/Dey Street Books; HarperAudio) tops the list, but the rest are not such obvious choices:

No Land’s Man, Aasif Mandvi (Chronicle); OverDrive Sample

It Won’t Always Be This Great, Peter Mehlman (Bancroft Press); OverDrive Sample

Science . . . for Her!, Megan Amram (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio); OverDrive Sample

Texts From Jane Eyre, Mallory Ortberg (Macmillan/Holt); OverDrive Sample

NPR’s Science Friday featured Jeff Potter and his ingenious “patent-violating” chocolate chip cookies last week, an event that might be responsible for his book Cooking For Geeks (O’Reilly Media; OverDrive Sample) topping today’s Amazon Movers & Shakers list. Holds are not yet rising, although many libraries bought lightly back in 2010 when the book first came out.

In the spirit of the holidays, we at EarlyWord offer not just Potter’s recipe (at the end of the Science Friday story) but also that of Alton Brown’s, which our highly unscientific (but yummy) tests have found to be the recipe to rule them all.

Actor John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air this Tuesday, which may have sparked demand for his new memoir, So, Anyway (Random House/Crown Archetype; OverDrive Sample). The interview includes several  clips of Cleese’s performances (Cleese judges an early one as “distinctly uninspired”). Unfortunately, the planned audio version of the book is now listed as “postponed indefinitely.”

Holds are up across the country with some libraries showing hold ratios over 10 to 1.

Advance attention to Cleese’s memoir might have been buried under the recent flurry of celebrity comedian accounts including:

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler (Harper Collins/Dey Street Books; Harper Audio, Oct. 28)

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography (Random House/Crown; RH Audio, Oct 14)

I Must Say by Martin Short (Harper Collins, Nov 4)

Even This I Get to Experience by Norman Lear (Penguin; Penguin Audio, Oct 14)

Brief Encounters by Dick Cavett (Macmillan/Holt; Macmillan Audio, Oct. 28)

The new biography of Bob Hope, Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin (Simon & Schuster; Brilliance Audio, Nov. 4th)

Calling her as “The Cover Girl For A New Kind Of Ballet,” CBS Sunday Morning featured African-American ballerina Misty Copeland.

Her autobiography, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, (S&S/Touchstone; Tantor Audio), published in hardcover in March, is coming out in trade paperback this week.

She also published a children’s picture book in September, Firebird, illus. by Christopher Myers, (Penguin/Putnam) picked as a best book of the year by NPR:

“The book is for very young dancers who may not see many people who look like them in the world of ballet. It’s illustrated by Christopher Myers, whose collagelike work is painterly, vivid and emotional. Copeland’s writing and Myers’ art draw you into a beautiful world, rich with color, texture and drama. For all budding young artists who maybe don’t have role models they can relate to, this little book provides some inspiration.

Anderson Cooper talked about discovering mindfulness on 60 Minutes last night (it’s a long segment, so we haven’t embedded the video here). He was introduced to the practice by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is called  “the man who’s largely responsible for mindfulness gaining traction.” One of his ten books,  Mindfulness for Beginners rose to #2 on Amazon sales rankings as a result.

It was published in 2011 by Sounds True, a Colorado publisher focused on spirituality, and is available through wholesalers.

Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present Moment–And Your Life
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Sounds True
Hardcover, 9781604076585, $ 21.95
Audio, 9781591794646, $ 19.95

Despite the  popularity of the Little House on the Prairie novels, their source material, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s actual autobiography, has never been published. That was corrected last month by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, with the release of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.

Although the cover of the book paints a romantic picture, the real story is much grittier and is written for adults.

It was featured on the PBS Newshour last night:

The Wall Street Journal also featured the book this week.

Holds are heavy in most libraries. According to the official web site, PioneerGirlProject.org the book is now temporarily out of stock, and is expected to resume shipping in mid-January.

For fans who cannot get their hands on the book, the project’s blog offers a fascinating look at the extensive research behind it, such as the effort to verify the story of a teacher who improvised an igloo out of an overturned sleigh to protect his children during a freak blizzard.

Last night was the premiere of The Interview, a satire about an assassination attempt on the leader of North Korea. Recently, through a series of hacked emails, it’s been revealed that Sony ordered that the movie be toned down due to fears about reactions from North Korea.

The night before, Jon Stewart’s audience gained some perspective on the North Korean culture from Suki Kim, author of Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite,  (RH/Crown; BOT; OverDrive Sample). As a teacher in a private school, Kim saw how the future leaders of the country are being trained.  “All their lives are about ‘The Great Leader’ — they took ‘Great Leader’ classes every day. They did ‘Great Leader Duties’.” She says they had no knowledge of the outside world and her students didn’t have access to computers and hadn’t even heard of the internet.

Stewart ended the interview with, “It’s a book like no other book I’ve ever read. It’s a look into a society, a culture but objective and humanizing and terrifying. Really, an amazing book.”

Libraries we checked are showing heavy holds on light orders.

Several libraries show growing holds on modest quantities of The Wild Truth, by Carine McCandless, (HarperCollins; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe).

The author is the sister of Chris McCandless, a man who seemingly had everything, but ended as an emaciated corpse discovered in a bus in the Alaskan wilderness after giving away most of his money and breaking with his family.

The story was featured in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 best seller, Into the Wild, which was adapted into a 2007 movie adaptation, starring Emile Hirsch and directed by Sean Penn. In her book, Carine McCandles, who was 21 years old at the time, gives more insight into her brother’s seemingly erratic behavior. A new documentary about him, Return to the Wild, will air on PBS on Nov. 25.

Reviewed this week on the NPR web site, it was also featured on ABC’s 20/20 and on the People magazine web site.

During his interview with John Cleese, author of the new memoir, So, Anyway … (RH/Crown), Jon Stewart achieved a career high by making him laugh.

There was’t much talk about the book, but Stewart did say, “So, Anyway … is on the bookshelves now.” Nevertheless, the book roses to #152 (from #411) on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Fresh Air host Terry Gross makes comedian Amy Poehler laugh while interviewing her about her new memoir, Yes Please, (HarperCollins/Dey Street Books; HarperAudio).

The book rose to #2 on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result (it was already at #10). Holds have risen dramatically in libraries.

UPDATE: Thanks to librarian Jackie Davis for pointing out in the comments section that holds in her library are heavier on the audio than the book, which is a first for them. She also notes that they’re not that heavy on either format, but keep your eye on it. If other libraries are an indicator, that may change quickly.