NPR’s Fresh Air examined the passionate fights over whether the U.S. should enter World War II, with Lynne Olson, author of Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941, (Random House). The book releases today.

Olson says we may have difficulty understanding it now, but up until Pearl Harbor, Americans looked on the war as “kind of like a movie. … It was something that just didn’t affect them … most Americans, especially those who lived in the heartland — really didn’t feel that they had anything in common with Europe. They hadn’t been there. They thought this was a distant place that they really had nothing to do with.”

A book about The Searchers, a movie that even the author calls, “…perhaps the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen,” hardly seems a candidate for popular interest, but library holds are heavy (although on modest orders).

Directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood, the movie is based on a true story of a woman who was abducted as a young girl by Comanches. Glenn Frankel’s book about the movie, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (Macmillan/Bloomsbury) was featured on PBS News Hour earlier this month and on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show yesterday. Director Martin Scorsese reviews in the 3/15 issue of  The Hollywood Reporter. 

It happened again; an author made Oprah cry and her book sales soared.

Featured in a two-part Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, Dr. Brene Brown brought Oprah to tears when she read the “parenting manifesto” from her book Daring Greatly, (Penguin/Gotham, 2012). Not only did it rise to the #2 position on Amazon’s sales rankings, but an earlier title, The Gifts of Imperfection, (Perseus/Hazeldon, 2010) rose to #3 and  I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), (Penguin/Gotham, 2007), rose to #28.

To see the segment that made Oprah cry, click here. The full episode (clip below) is here.

On this week’s USA Today best seller list, Sheryl Sandberg’s “sort of feminist” manifesto, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT) is #1 in its second week on the list, after debuting at #133 last week.

That may not be much of a surprise, given the amount of attention it has received. The surprise is that it’s one of the few hardcovers on the list. By contrast, the latest Alex Cross title  by James Patterson is at #3, but in ebook. Of the top 50 USA Today bestsellers, 27 are ebooks, 18 paperbacks and just 8 hardcovers.

After a slow start, many libraries are showing heavy holds on all formats of Lean In.

HBO has begun promotion for its Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, which premieres on May 26th. It features Michael Douglas in the lead, with Matt Damon, as his lover, Scott Thorson (pictured, at left, on the cover of the March 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly).

It is based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, which is being re-released by Tantor Audio in three formats; print, audio, and ebook on May 2.

This may be the last film directed by Steven Soderbergh, who, after 26 films in 24 years, has announced he is taking a break from filmmaking and will turn his attention to other interests (among them, importing cognac from Bolivia. What may be his last theatrical film, Side Effects, is currently playing in theaters).

Interviewed in The Hollywood Reporter, the director says he is very happy with his swan song, “I think people are gonna be surprised at how intimate it is, and that there’s no attempt to make fun of them or … to make them seem like cartoons… at the end of the day, [it’s just] two people in a room … there’s just a lot of rhinestone in it.”

An emotional segment featuring Susan Spencer-Wendel, author of the memoir, Until I Say Good-bye: My Year of Living with Joy, (Harper) was broadcast on The Today Show this morning. She has also been featured in USA Today and on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Upcoming is a feature on Inside Edition with Deborah Norville and another  in People

The book rose to #6 on Amazon sales rankings today and holds are growing in libraries.

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Taylor Swift may be on the cover of  the April issue of Vanity Fair, but  Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT) gets star treatment in the issue, profiled by celebrity author Michael Lewis, complete with photo by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Her book is also featured on the cover of the NYT BR (in a review by Anne-Marie Slaughter, who has been portrayed as Sandberg’s chief critic. Their disagreement has even been characterized, in gratingly non-feminist terms, as a “cat fight.” In fact, the review is mostly positive and when critical, only mildly so).

She was featured on CBS 60 Minutes last night, followed today by NPR’s Morning Edition, three segments on ABC’s Good Morning America (one devoted to the controversy, the interview, and a”town hall” discussion coming tomorrow), and tonight on Nightline.

The book has been #1 on Amazon sales rankings since Friday.

Author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin, Susan Orlean, has signed a deal to publish The Library Book, described on Publishers Marketplace as, “a love letter to an endangered institution, exploring their history, their people, their meaning, and their future as they adapt and redefine themselves in a digital world, told through the lens of the author’s quest to solve a crime that has gone unsolved since it was carried out in 1986: who set fire to the Los Angeles Public Library, ultimately destroying 400,000 books, and why?”

It will be published by Simon & Schuster. There’s no word on expected publication date.

The subtitle of the book Wave only hints at the heartache that lies within; A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami (Rh/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT). In it, Sonali Deraniyagala, a British citizen originally from Sri Lanka, recounts how she struggled to cope with the loss of her husband, two sons, ages 5 and 7, and both her parents to that catastrophic event.

The book is currently receiving a round of media attention, with glowing reviews from Laura Miller in Salon, “a spare, radiant book … The extremity of Deraniyagala’s story seizes the attention, but it’s the beauty of how she expresses it that makes it indelible,” the NYT and a feature on NPR Morning Edition. It is also the #1 Amazon Editors’s pick for the month and is even considered “required reading” by the NY Post.

In spite of the attention, however, library holds are relatively light. The story may be a difficult sell, but as Miller attests, the writer’s “extraordinary gifts” reward those who are willing to try it.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book about the challenges women face in trying  to climb the corporate ladder, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio; BOT) doesn’t arrive until next week but there is already a backlash.

Now the backlash has its own backlash. The New Yorker published a long piece yesterday headlined, “Maybe You Should Read the Book.”

Some have taken heed; libraries are showing holds; some as a high as 10:1 on light ordering.

The news from Jeb Bush’s appearance on the Today Show this morning is what he refused to say — whether he plans to run for president in 2016.

Bush appeared on the show to talk about his new book, which releases tomorrow, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, (S&S/Threshold; S&S Audio; also published in Spanish under the title, Las guerras inmigratorias: Forjar una solución estadounidense).

The Today Show‘s Matt Lauer noted that publishing a book can be a sign that a politician is gearing up for a run, but Bush refused to take the bait (he was given precious little time to talk about the actual subject of his book, even in a separate segment).

He’ll have more opportunities to dodge the 2016 question; several other appearances are scheduled for this week, including CBS this Morning,  NPR’s Morning Edition. and on Telemundo-TV.

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It seems the U.S. isn’t the only country obsessed with quick-fix diets. In the U.K., the “Fast Diet” is the talk of the country, according to the New York Times. The book that started the craze has been #1 on Amazon UK since it came out in January. It’s poised to be a hit here as well. Libraries are showing holds on the U.S. edition, which arrived last week, and it is currently #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Also called the 5:2 diet, it recommends two days of “fasting” (consuming just 500 calories) for every five of eating normally.

The FastDiet Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer Retail Price  $24.00 Hardcover 224 pages Publisher: S&S/Atria Books – (2013-02-26) ISBN / EAN: 9781476734941, 1476734941

Get ready for more. The article notes that a “slew of fasting diet books” have come out in the U.K. in the recent weeks.

Martin Scorsese’s next film, The Wolf Of Wall Street was just given a release date of November 15, 2013. Based on the 2007 memoir of the same title by former high-flying investment firm honcho Jordan Belfort, who was indicted in 1998 for securities fraud and money laundering, it also stars Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill, Jean Dujardin, Rob Reiner, Kyle Chandler, Margot Robbie and Jon Bernthal.

DiCaprio stands a chance of going up against himself in the next Oscar race; he also stars  in Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby, which arrives on May 10.

In an amazing stroke of good timing, Vatican reporter John Thavis just published The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church (Penguin/Viking).

He appears on NPR’s Fresh Air today, sounding as surprised as anyone by Pope Benedict’s resignation; “most people around the Vatican, including journalists, are a little bit disoriented … It almost seems as if Benedict made his decision without necessarily scripting the entire process in advance and leaving his Vatican aides to scramble for answers. … no one here really knows what’s going to happen next.”

Making the dramatic argument that the food industry has consciously hooked consumers on junk food, much as the tobacco industry hooked people on nicotine, Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat, (Random House; RH Audio; BOT)  appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air  yesterday. Among his many stunning anecdotes, he describes how food scientists developed the “bliss point,” the precise amount of sugar to make consumers want more, without crossing the line to overly sweet.

The book is excerpted as the cover story for this week’s New York Times Magazine (the author is a NYT reporter who won a Pulitzer for reporting on E. coli in beef), as “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.“

It is currently at #3 on Amazon’s sales rankings; libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.