The film adaptation of the best-selling nonfiction title The Lost City of Z (RH/Doubleday, 2009) has been in limbo for several years. Rights were acquired shortly after the book was published, with James Gray set to direct, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B overseeing the project and expectations that Pitt would star. In late 2010, however, it was abandoned and Pitt left to take the lead in the film Killing them Softly (based on the book Cogan’s Trade, by George V. Higgins).

But now it appears the project is being resuscitated. Benedict Cumberbatch is in negotiations to star, according to Deadline, with James Gray still directing and Plan B still producing.

The book grew out of a New Yorker article by David Grann, (Doubleday, Feb, 2009), about British explorer, Percy Fawcett, who disappeared int the Amazon in 1935, during an attempt to prove his claim that a highly sophisticated city, which he called the City of Z, was hidden in the jungle. At the time it was published, the NYT critic Michiko Kakutani gave it a rare rave, “at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd,” adding, “it reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.” It ended up topping most of the year’s best books lists.

The September LibraryReads pick, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink, (RH/Crown; RH Audio/BOT; excerpts of both the book and the audio are on the NPR Web site), releasing tomorrow, is building holds in libraries.

It was reviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday (listen here), in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, and gets a solid A from Entertainmend Weekly. The author is scheduled to appear tonight on Comedy Central’s Daily Show and on NPR’s Morning Edition this week.

Below is the LibraryReads annotation:

“Through exhaustive interviews and extensive research, Fink offers a spellbinding account of Hurricane Katrina, a disaster which held the staff, patients and families of a New Orleans hospital captive and left thousands of others marooned by rising flood waters in the heart of city. Filled with unforgettable life and death stories, Fink’s fine work of investigative journalism reads like a novel. The book causes you to rethink your opinions about end of life, do-not-resuscitate orders and medical ethics.” — Marilyn Sieb, L.D. Fargo Public Library, Lake Mills, WI

Asking why, given our country’s history in the Middle East, the president would “…think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise is going to produce a different outcome,” Andrew Bacevich, author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, (Macmillan/Metropolitan Books; released last week), spoke with guest host Phil Donahue on Friday’s Bill Moyers and Company about the U.S. role in Syria.

Bacevich’s book, which is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, was also featured in Sunday’s NYT Book Review.

Below is the video: 

Actor/comedian Billy Crystal releases his new book, which is part memoir, part comedy, Still Foolin’ ‘Em, (Macmillan/Holt; Macmillan Audio) tomorrow. He and the book have received plenty of pre-pub attention,  featured on yesterday’s CBS Sunday Morning (video not yet posted), on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday (listen here), in the NYT and USA Today. He is scheduled to appear on Comedy Central’s Daily Show on Thursday.

Needless to say, the book is  rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, now at  #32. The audio, recorded by Crystal, is also rising, and is currently at #349 (from #4,577).

The movie Philomena, based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by UK journalist Martin Sixsmith (Macmillan U.K., 2009), received such great buzz at the Venice Film festival that the Weinstein Co., which has U.S. distribution rights, quickly  set a limited release date of this Christmas, qualifying it and star Judi Dench for Oscar nominations, followed by a wider release in January.

The book recounts Sixsmith’s efforts to help a woman find the son she had  been forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier. The movie, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), stars Dench as the mother, Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan as Sixsmith. 

The book will be published here in September as a trade paperback tie-in, titled Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search  (Penguin), with a foreword by Dench. UPDATE: both the movie release and the pub date for the tie-in has been moved to 11/27/13.

Featured on the cover of the upcoming NYT Magazine is an excerpt from A House in the Sky, (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio), Amanda Lindhout’s memoir of being kidnapped at gunpoint and spending 460 days in captivity in Somalia.

To be  published on Sept. 10., it is one of the ten titles on the Sept. LibraryReads list, with this recommendation:

“Absolutely gripping, harrowing and unforgettable! This well-written memoir is a true testament to the strength of one woman’s spirit and her will to survive in unimaginable circumstances. The family issues that led Amanda Lindhout from her home in Canada to a life of world travel and a career in journalism are as richly detailed and compelling as the brutal account of her fifteen month-long captivity by Somali Islamist rebels in 2008. She tells her story with such vulnerability and honesty that it is a privilege to read it.” — Mary Coe, Fairfield Woods Branch Library, Fairfield, CT

More coverage is coming; the author will be featured on NBC’s Dateline, the Today Show and The Nightly News with Brian Williams on Friday, Sept 6. The following week, she will be on CNN”s Anderson 360 and MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Many shows have already covered Mark Leibovich’s take-down of politics in D.C. in This Town, (Penguin/Blue Rider). Bill Moyers gave it powerful new attention this weekend, introducing his interview with the author by saying, “Whatever you’re doing these last days of summer. Stop. Take some time, and read this book. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by the last page I think you’ll be ready for the revolution.”

The book, which had been sliding down Amazon’s sales rankings from a high of #3 in late July, rose to #15.

Below is the video of the interview.

Several news sources, including today’s New York Times, reveal that an embargoed biography of J.D. Salinger claims there are at least five more books in the author’s vault, and that Salinger left instructions to begin publishing them in 2015.

The assertions are in the 720-page Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno (S&S; S&S Audio), which is being published on Sept. 3. A related documentary, also titled Salinger, directed by Salerno, will be released a few days later and will be featured in January on American Masters on PBS.

Speaking for the estate, the author’s son refused to comment for the story.

As a result of the coverage, the book rose on Amazon ales rankings to #156, from #2,614.

Below is the trailer for the documentary, More details on the book are in a story in The Guardian.

Holds are  outpacing the number of copies in libraries for Amanda Ripley’s critique of American education, The Smartest Kids in the World (S&S), but that’s not saying much, since library ordering was minimal. Holds may rise now that it is featured on the cover of this week’s NYT Book Review, and is called a “masterly book [that] can also generate the will to make changes.”

This issue also features a “Back to School Children’s Books” section.

Standing in the library that served as a “safe haven” to her and her four siblings (Middle Country Public Library on Long Island, NY) when they were the homeless children of a mentally ill and abusive mother, Regina Calcaterra talks to Inside Edition (video here) about her memoir of that time, Etched in Sand (HarperCollins/Morrow original trade pbk).

Amazingly, Calcaterra managed to not only survive, but to also put herself through law school and help her siblings who are now all doing well. She says she is very moved by “just the thought that my book may be in this library where I came as a kid who was impoverished and that one day one of these kids are going to be reading it too and figuring out how … they are going to be able to pull themselves up out and out.”

In the new issue of People magazine reviewer Caroline Leavitt writes, “Her book reminds us that it’s possible to suffer the unimaginable and still grow up to make a difference.”

On Inside Edition, Jane Velez-Mitchell discusses her book, Exposed: The Secret Life Of Jodi Arias (Harrper/Morrow; download the EXPOSED_PRESS release with more information on the book here). The book was embargoed, so there were no prepub reviews.

It was also excerpted in the New York Post over the weekend.

Many more appearances are in the works on CNN (the author has a nightly show on CNN/HLN).

Scott Anderson’s appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday to discuss his new book Lawrence in Arabia, (RH/Doubleday; Blackstone Audio) caused the book to soar to #16 on Amazon’s sales rankings (from #96).

Holds continue to grow in libraries on minimal ordering (we issued a Holds Alert on it last week).

On Today’s Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviews Piper Kerman. the author of the memoir, Orange is the New Black, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; Tantor Audio), the basis for the new Netflix series.

Gross asks Kerman how accurate the show is. She says “tremendous liberties” were taken, “dreamed up by [producer] Jenji Kohan and her remarkable team of writers.” Gross will interview Kohan tomorrow.

The series has placed the paperback edition on the NYT Non-fiction list. It is currently at #2.

The trailer for the movie Philomena, based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by UK journalist Martin Sixsmith (Macmillan U.K., 2009), was  just  released online and it is already engendering Oscar buzz for its star, Judi Dench.

The book recounts Sixsmith’s efforts to help a woman find her son, whom she had been forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier.

The movie is directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen). Dench plays the mother, Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan plays Sixsmith. It is scheduled for release on Nov. 1 in the UK; no US release date has been announced. To qualify for the Oscars, it has to be released by the end of the year.

The book will be published here in September as a trade paperback tie-in, titled Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search  (Penguin), with a foreword by Dench.

As we predicted, Emily Oster’s claims in her forthcoming book,  Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know (Penguin Press, 8/20; Blackstone Audio) is drawing controversy.

This morning, the book was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America. Senior Medical contributor, Jennifer Ashton, attacked Oster’s reasoning. She said “obstetricians and midwives all over the place are going to be doing damage control” over the assertion that a pregnant woman can have up to one drink a day. In fact, says, Ashton, one drink a day is “a lot for any woman, pregnant or not.”

The New York Post also weighs in on the subject.

More is coming. A live interview with the author is scheduled for Fox & Friends tomorrow.