The NYT giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other.

One of the most powerful influencers on book sales, the New York Times Magazine, devoted Sunday’s cover to an excerpt from a book about the TV morning show wars, Top of the Morning (Hachette/Grand Central) by one of the newspaper’s own media reporters, Brian Stelter.

But on Monday, the daily NYT reviewer dismissed the book as merely “fairly engaging,” and groaned over the writing style (“sometimes Mr. Stelter seems to throw out verbiage mainly for his own amusement.” A 109-word sentence is called a “veritable life imprisonment”) and detailed spotty reporting.

Stetler responds in an interview with The Wrap, saying he expects NYT reviews to be tough but that he’s “more interested in readers’ reviews,” noting he has been “overwhelmed by positive messages from people on Twitter.”

The media is fascinated with the story of the morning shows’ struggle for ratings (New York magazine also devoted a long feature to it), but readers may be less so. Despite all the attention, the book barely cracked the Amazon Top 100 on release yesterday and holds in libraries are light.

Dirty Wars is both a documentary, with a newly-released hot trailer and a book (Perseus/Nation Books). Excerpted in The Nation, where the author, Jeremy Scahill is a correspondent, it accuses the Obama administration of continuing “the policies that liberals were outraged about under Bush … just with a kind of rebranding.”

He appeared yesterday on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. The book is currently at #61 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The documentary, which won an award at the Sundance Film Festival, will be released first in NY, LA, and Washington DC on June 7 and then nationwide.

As part of their coverage of the Boston marathon bombings, last night’s 60 Minutes took a look at the training of bomb-sniffing dogs. Featured was Mike Ritland, who trains military dogs and has set up the K9 Warrior Foundation to care for retired warrior dogs. In Trident K9 Warriors: My Tale From the Training Ground to the Battlefield with Elite Navy SEAL Canines (Macmillan/St. Martin’s), published last week, he takes readers inside that secretive world.

As a result of the story, the book rose to #1 on Amazon’s sale rankings.

Diane Sawyer was supposed to have the first word on Amanda Knox’s memoir, Waiting to Be Heard,(Harper; HarperLuxe, HarperAudio) in an interview with the author on April 30, the book’s publication date. Instead, the NYT‘s publishing reporter, Julie Bosman got it first, breaking the embargo with a story on Friday.

Knox, an American attending college in Perugia, Italy, was accused, along with her boyfriend, of killing her roommate. She was tried, convicted and imprisoned, but released after the the decision was was overturned. In March, the Italian courts again changed their minds and ordered a new trial, which is to be held some time next year.

Holds are heavy in many libraries.

The International Association of Culinary Professionals handed out several cookbooks awards at their annual meeting in San Francisco last week.

Among the many publishers that traditionally win awards is a new face, Amazon Children’s Publishing which won in the Children’s, Youth and Family category for Teen Cuisine: New Vegetarian by Matthew Locricchio, the follow up to the author’s previous title, also from Amazon Children’s Publishing, Teen Cuisine, 2010.

The Random House/Crown imprint, Ten Speed, was a big winner, with four awards, including Cookbook of the Year for Jerusalem: A Cookbook, Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, which also won in the International category. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza, Ken Forkish (a name that’s just too perfect for a culinary professional), won in the Baking category and Vietnamese Home Cooking, Charles Phan (Ten Speed Press) was the winner in the Chefs and Restaurants.
 

Technology gained a foothold among printed books this year. Judges Choice was awarded to a digital cookbook My Provence by Laurent Gras (available via via Amazon). It also won a Digital Media award for Intriguing Use of Technology (the publisher describes it as a “unique HTML5 technology. No special downloads or software are required – it looks beautiful on iPads, Android Tablets, Macs and PCs so you can access it anywhere you want with no hassles.”) The Julia Child Award for First Book went to a cookbook that originated as a blog, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Deborah Perelman (Random House, Inc. (RH/Knopf)).

In the Digital Media Awards, Salted and Styled won best Culinary Blog and Food52.com best Web site.

The other winners, after the jump (official list of all the winners here)
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Still at #1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after 4 weeks, Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (Random House) urges women to seek egalitarian marriages. Promoting a different approach, 90’s pro volleyball star Gabrielle Reece appeared on NBC’s Today Show and Rock Center on Friday to say that she rescued her marriage to pro surfer Laird Hamilton by becoming “submissive.”

Her book, My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper, (S&S/Scribner), which also outlines Reese’s views on fitness and parenting, arrives tomorrow. It’s now at #53 on Amazon sales rankings. Holds are heavy on light ordering in several libraries.

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Michael Hainey’s memoir, After Visiting Friends, (S&S/Scribner) came out in February, was an IndieNext pick for March, racked up many admiring reviews, and is now gaining new fans. It was on the Today Show yesterday, and  will be reviewed in this Sunday’s NYT Book Review.

The book is about Hainey’s quest to find out what really happened to his father, a Chicago newspaperman, who died unexpectedly when the author was six years old. Reports simply stated that he had died “after visiting friends.”

Libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

In case you’ve had trouble imagining Michael Douglas as Liberace, below is a glimpse via the first trailer for HBO’s biopic about the entertainer, Behind the Candelabra.

Premiering on HBO on May 26th, it also stars Matt Damon as Liberace’s lover, Scott Thorson. It is based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, which is being re-released by Tantor Audio in print, as well as audio and ebook on May 2.

Below is a quick look at titles to know before you work the information desk today.

Media Attention

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, Mark Mazzetti, (Penguin Press) — NYT front page story, Washington Post book review, plus an appearance on Face the Nation, with much more coming this week (see our New Title Radar, Media Magnets).

Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story, Carol Burnett, (S&S; S&S Audio) — Carol Burnett was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, yesterday (see video).

Holds Alert

Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print) is on the rise. It has been reviewed widely, most recently in the L.A. Times and the Seattle Times.

Expect to see it on next week’s best seller lists; it is currently at #4 on Amazon sales rankings and has been in the top 100 for 2 weeks.

NYT Notable Hardcover Best Seller Debuts

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

The latest in the “Real Housewives of Historical Fiction” genre (recent titles include The Paris Wife, which continues as a best seller at #8 on the Trade Paperback list and The Aviator’s Wife, which is now on the extended hardcover list) follows in the footsteps the other titles’ footsteps, arriving on the NYT Fiction best seller list at #10. See our earlier coverage (also note that promotion for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby may bring additional interest).

World War II continues to be a strong interest in Nonfiction, with

Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941, (Random House) — #10 in nonfiction. It was featured on NPR at the end of March.

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, Denise Kiernan, (Touchstone, $27.) About the women who worked on a project was enriching uranium for the first atomic bomb. — at #14. The author appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The popularity of “bonnet fiction” continues with a new title by the “queen of the genre,”  Beverly Lewis’s The Guardian, (Baker/Bethany House). It debuts at #5 on Trade Paperback fiction list.

Childrens Books 

New to the NYT Children’s Picture Books best seller list:

Poems to Learn by Heart, collected by Caroline Kennedy, illus. by Jon J. Muth, (Disney/Hyperion, 3/26/13). arrives at #1. See our earlier story.

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, (Macmillan/Roaring Brook), the perfect title for spring,  debuts at #9  even though it has been out for a year. EarlyWord Kids contributor Lisa Von Drasek included it in her annual list of “Best Books To Give Younger Kids You Don’t Know Very Well.”  The book’s trailer shows off its clever cut-outs:

Film critic and author of several books, Roger Ebert, died yesterday at 70. The Chicago Tribune, where he worked for over 45 years, declares “in words and in life he displayed the soul of a poet whose passions and interests extended far beyond the darkened theaters where he spent so much of his professional life.”

He showed the range of his passion for the movies in over a dozen books from A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length: More Movies That Suck (Andrews McMeel) to appreciations of The Great Movies, Volume One and Volume Two (RH/Broadway).

He also wrote a book about one of his favorite cities, The Perfect London Walk (Andrews McMeel, 1986)  and even a cookbook, The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker, (Andrews McMeel, 2010).

In 2011, after treatments for thyroid cancer robbed him of his ability to speak, he published a memoir, Life Itself, (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio). In the New York Times, fellow critic Janet Maslin, called it, “candid, funny and kaleidoscopic … the best thing Mr. Ebert has ever written.”

UPDATE: The producers of a film based on Life Itself have announced that they will finish it. Martin Scorsese is one of the executive producers. Ebert was participating in the documentary. (The Hollywood Reporter)

David Sheff, lived through the nightmare of his son’s addiction. As a journalist, he was able to take that experience and write about it in a best selling memoir, Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Meth Addiction (HMH, 2008). That son, Nic Sheff wrote his own memoir, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (S&S/Atheneum YR, 2008).

Nic wrote a second book, We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction. (Little, Brown YR, 2011) about his struggles to stay clean. His father, who sent him to ten different treatment programs, writes in his new book, Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy, (HMH, Brilliance Audio), that he has severe doubts about how addicts are currently treated and suggest alternatives.

He was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday and on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday and is featured in USA Today.

The book is currently #8 Amazon’s sales rankings and rising. His earlier book, Beautiful Boy, is also rising.

The new pope is getting the Life pictorial treatment in Pope Francis: The Vicar of Christ, From Saint Peter to Today, (Hachette/Life). A paperback book/magazine edition appears on newsstands this week, with the hardcover releasing on April 16.

A book by the new Pope, previously published in Spanish in 2010, will be released in English on May 7. On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century, (RH/Crown/Image Books) is a record of conversations between the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires. According to the Random House press release, the two religious leaders address “such topics as God, fundamentalism, atheism, the Holocaust, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and globalization.”

It will be released simultaneously in print, digital, large print and audio formats. The original Spanish-language version, Sobre el Cielo y la Terra will be published in North America in both trade paperback and eBook by RH/Vintage Espanol.

Also coming from the Image imprint of Random House is a book by Robert Moynihan, the founder of Inside the Vatican magazine, Pray for Me: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Francis, First Pope from the Americas.

Jon Stewart clearly loves Mary Roach, greeting the author on Monday night’s Daily Show with the words, “I like your books!”

Her latest, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (Norton; Tantor Audio), was released on Monday. The interview begins with the question of why your stomach doesn’t digest itself (hint; it’s a trick question).

After the appearance, Gulp rose to #3 on Amazon sales rankings.

Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In, will appear on the show tonight. That appearance is unlike to result in a rise on Amazon’s sales rankings, however. The book has held the #1 spot for most of the last month.

Below is part one of the interview; part two is here (warning: it features nutrient enemas).

Major media is lining up for a book about the CIA by Pulitzer Prize winner and NYT reporter, Mark Mazzetti. Titled The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, it is embargoed until release next Tuesday (probably to give the New York Times the first crack at it).

Covering the hot topic of the day, it examines the use of drone strikes that have been referred to as “surgical” (thus, “the way of the knife“) and the consequences of that policy.

Coverage begins Sunday with a New York Times page one story and the author’s live one-on-one with Bob Scheiffer on CBS’s Face the Nation. On publication day, 4/9, the author is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and PBS’s Charlie Rose Show. Later in the week, comes MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, among others. The next week, Mazzetti is scheduled for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

In addition, the first serial will appear in the 4/12 issue of the New York Times Magazine (online on 4/9)

Like many library reference sections, Frommer’s print travel guides recently became the latest victim of Google. In this case, the link is even more direct, since Google actually owns Frommer’s (they bought the series from Wiley for $22 million last year).

The reasons may seem obvious, but Fortune explores them anyway and notes that other guidebooks may be under the gun. The L.A. Times objects that there are still places in the world that don’t get decent cell service (there’s a business opportunity; print travel guides for places without cell service).

Frommer’s continues as a Website, featuring the indefatigable Arthur Frommer’s blog. Long before Rick Steves, he encouraged Americans to travel, self-publishing his first book, The GI’s Guide to Traveling In Europe in 1955 and followed that with the first Europe on 5 Dollars a Day (cover above).