Holds are growing in several libraries for Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia, (RH/Doubleday; Blackstone Audio), which receives a mixed review in this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review, with the dismissive comment that books keep being written about T.E. Lawrence because, “After all, somebody keeps buying the stuff.”

USA Today, on the other hand, is completely positive, giving it 4 of 4 stars, saying that, in over 500 pages,  Anderson “thrillingly” illuminates “the bureaucratic fumblings, the myriad spies, heroes and villains, the dense fugue of humanity at its best and worst operating in the Mideast war theater of 1914-17.”

Remember when the Wall Street Journal caused and uproar by publishing a “Saturday Essay” that began the Tiger Mom controversy and launched a best seller?

They’re at it again. This week’s “Saturday Essay” is titled “Take Back Your Pregnancy.” The author, economist Emily Oster, uses her background to analyze the data behind the list of rules pregnant women are given. As a result, she decided to continue to drink coffee and an occasional glass of wine during her own pregnancy. She also became less obsessed with weight gain.

Her book, Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know (Penguin Press; Blackstone Audio) will be released on August 20.

Expect to see more from the media-savvy Oster (she’s known for her TED talk in which she used her background to debunk accepted knowledge about AIDS in Africa).

When George Clooney calls, they come running. Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett all join him in his adaptation of the nonfiction title, The Monuments Men, by Robert Edsel (Hachette/Center Street) about the effort to rescue art from the hands of the Nazis. It debuts in theaters on Dec. 18.

In addition to The Monuments Men, Edsel published another book in May on the subject (Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Norton). Several other books and a documentary have also been released about the story (see our earlier post).

Monuments Men Official Site: MonumentsMen.com

Tie-ins:
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
Robert M. Edsel, Bret Witter
On Sale Date: October 22, 2013
Trade Pbk: 9780316240055, 0316240052

Mass Mkt: 9780316240079

Audio: 9781427235404 (Macmillan Audio)

The second trailer for Tom Hanks’ next movie, based on Captain Richard Phillips’ memoir, A Captain’s Duty, (Hyperion; Tantor Audio; Thorndike) has debuted online. Phillips became a national hero in 2009 when Somali pirates hijacked his unarmed merchant marine ship and he courageously allowed himself to be taken hostage to save his crew.

Titled Captain Phillips, the movie is directed by Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremecy), and is coming to theaters on Oct 11.

For some reason, the tie-in is now showing as “cancelled.”

Official Site: CaptainPhillipsMovie.com

Zooming up the Amazon charts overnight, now at #16 and rising, is The Sports Gene, (Penguin/Current), a ” deliciously contrarian exploration of great athletic feats.” (Library Journal) by David J. Epstein, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.

The book was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday. It has also been covered by the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Science News and Businessweek, among others.

Library ordering is conservative.

“Jerusalem fever” is spreading across the country, according to the NYT.

Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi (Ten Speed), released last year, was chosen as the IACP’s Cookbook of the Year, and was the James Beard  winner in the International category.

The NYT story notes that Ten Speed already has 200,000 copies in print, which is unusual since most new cookbooks, especially those that are not by celebrities, “disappear without a trace” (sadly, the same could be said for all book categories).

At least part of the success is attributed to social media. Fans started a page on Facebook dedicated to it, as well as on Pinterest and Instagram. The hashtag #tastingjrslm, allows them to communicate about favorite recipes. The NYT itself features the authors on this month’s “Recipe Lab” videochat.

Holds in libraries are unusually high for a cookbook (one library shows 90 on 17 copies). The NYT story quotes the rector of an Episcopal church, who says, “I took it out from the library as many times as I was allowed to. And there were still so many things I wanted to make that I was forced to buy it.” (We like the image of the library rapping the reverend on the knuckles for hogging the book).

After a slow start in libraries, holds are growing fast on This Town by Mark Leibovich, (Penguin/Blue Rider), which zoomed to #1 on the NYT Combined Nonfiction bestseller list this week, its first week on sale.

The author appeared on Comedy Central’s Daily Show last night. Host John Oliver, standing in for Jon Stewart, notes that the book is much more than a collection of gossipy stories about D.C. insiders.

A release date for the movie Parkland, based on Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the JFK assassination, Reclaiming History, (Norton, 2007), has been set for Sept. 20, a date regarded by Deadline as a bid for Oscar nominations (release was orginally planned for Nov. 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination). The movie  focuses on the chaos that ensued at Parkland Hospital in Dallas when Kennedy was brought there after the shooting. It is produced by Tom Hanks’ Playtone Partners. Stars include Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver and Paul Giamatti (as Abraham Zapruder, the man in the crowd who captured the assassination on his home movie camera).

The release date for the tie-in is now likely to be moved up.

Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)
Vincent Bugliosi
Trade paperback: $16.95
Norton, (2013-09-23)
ISBN / EAN: 0393347338 / 9780393347333

Attention to Reza Aslan’s book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Random House) blew up over the weekend after his appearance on the FoxNews.com show “Spirited Debate.” Host Lauren Green grilled Aslan about why, as a Muslim, he would write a book about Christ, to which Aslan replied, “I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim.”

People weighed in all weekend, with the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum tweeting that the interview was, “absolutely demented” but that Aslan “handled it with remarkable calm.”

The book debuted at #2 on the latest NYT Combined Print & E-book Nonfiction best seller list but this controversy has sent its sales even higher. It is now at #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings and holds are multiplying in libraries.

The author has appeared on several other shows, including NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Back in May, USA Today called Michael Paterniti a “hot summer author” for a book on a subject that may not sound perfect for hot-weather reading; a legendary cheese handcrafted in a small village in Spain. Called The Telling Room, (RH/Dial; Brilliance Audio), it arrives next week on the heels of today’s intriguing, if somewhat mixed, review by Janet Maslin in the NYT.

Libraries are showing rising holds. If you want to read it, digital ARC’s are still listed on NetGalley and Edelweiss, but hurry, they will no longer be available after Tuesday’s pub. date.

We first heard about the title when Doug Lord,  LJ‘s Books for Dudes columnist, picked  it as a BEA Shout ‘n’ Share title.

The cover story of the upcoming NYT Magazine, published online last night, already has 100 comments and is one of the most e-mailed articles from the site.

A Life-or-Death Situation is about Margaret Pabst Battin, professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, who has written many books about the ethics of dying, including Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die, (OUP, 2005), Ethical Issues in Suicide (1982; currently O.P.) and The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life. (OUP, 1994).

These issues are now practical as well as philosophical for Battin. When her husband broke his neck in a bicycling accident, he survived because of the very interventions his living will stated he did not want. Now he is paraplegic and the two struggle with the question of when his life is no longer worth the pain.

Many libraries own Battin’s books.

A biopic about Nelson Mandela, based on his 1994  memoir, Long Walk to Freedom
will debut in an Oscar-qualifying limited release in the U.S. on November 29.

The first UK teaser trailer is below (it lists UK release date of January).

Idris Elba plays Mandela and Naomie Harris his former wife, Winnie.

Tie-ins:

Long Walk to Freedom : The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Hachette/Back Bay
On Sale Date: October 8, 2013
9780316323543, 0316323543
Trade Paperback; $18.00 US / $20.00 Can.
Hachette Audio
$30.00 US / $33.00 Can.

Chronicle is also releasing a book about the film:
Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedo : The Book of the Film
Nelson Mandela, Keith Bernstein
Chronicle Books
On Sale Date: November 26, 2013
9781452128412, 1452128413
Hardback; $35.00 US

Don’t withdraw those copies yet!

As Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (Random House, 2010) continues to be a best seller (on the NYT Nonfiction list at #8 after 135 weeks), it was just announced that the film adaptation, to be directed by Angelina Jolie, will be released 12/25/14. Production is set to begin in late September (the New York Daily News reports Jolie is scouting locations in Hawaii).

In a statement, the director said about the 96 year-old man who is the focus of the book, “I’ve had the privilege of spending a great deal of time with Louie Zamperini, who is a hero of mine, and now—I am proud to say—a dear friend. I am deeply honored to be telling his extraordinary story, and I will do my absolute best to give him the film he deserves.”

A film about Zamperini was the works long before Hillenbrand began working on her book or Jolie thought about adapting it. Universal bought Zamperini’s “life rights” in the 1950′s, with plans to star Tony Curtis, which were never realized.

Today’s NYT review of Mark Leibovich’s takedown of D.C. insiders begins with a list of the many things the reviewer finds irritating about the city, including the fact that it is often referred to as “This Town,” which is also the name of the book. From title alone, says the reviewer,  “you know [Leibovich has]  a sharp ear, and a sharp eye to accompany it. You also know that he’s got the sharp knives out.”

This Town, (Penguin/Blue Rider) wasn’t always the book’s title. Many library catalogs are still showing it under an earlier version, The Club.

The book is embargoed until its release a week from Tuesday, but, predictably, the Washington Post already broke it, so the NYT followed suit, even though Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, is one of their own (the excerpt that is the cover story for the NYT Magazine was probably meant to be the first glimpse of the book).

Highly anticipated, not to mention feared, for months, the cover reportedly carries a frustrating label, “WARNING: This Town does not contain an index. Those players wishing to know how they came out will need to read the book.” The Washington Post overturned this clever marketing ploy by creating an index of their own. Library users seem unimpressd; most libraries are showing few holds on light ordering. The book has broken into the top 100 on Amazon sales rankings, however, reaching a high of #38 on July 4, the day the Washington Post index was released.

It’s a book announcement that caused a molecular biologist blogging on the Scientific American site to go all weak in the knees. Astronaut Chris Hadfield signed a deal with Random House Canada to write two books (Hadfeld is Canadian). The first, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, is scheduled for release on Oct. 29. It will be published in the U.S. on the same date by Hachette/Little, Brown.

Commander of the International Space Station for five months, Hadfield is known his creative use of social media to document his experiences.

At this point, only the Canadian edition is listed on retailer and wholesaler sites. Below is the Random House Canada book trailer.