In its current issue, Newsweek features a full-length photo of economist Dambisa Moyo in a clingy dress and heels under the headline, “The Siren of the Financial Meltdown.”

Her second book, How the West Was Lost, went on sale yesterday. In it, says Newsweek, she argues,

…we have become feckless, overborrowed, and obsessed with consumer goods. Our governments have fed our foolishness with policies that meant well but ended badly. Meanwhile China and the other emerging economies…have been catching up fast and have so far made few of the same mistakes

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly–and the Stark Choices Ahead Dambisa Moyo Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2011-02-15) ISBN / EAN: 0374173257 / 9780374173258

Audio: UNABR; Tantor

This is just the beginning of the media attention; an interview has been taped for NPR’s Morning Edition, more print coverage is coming (The National Review, among others) as well as several public appearances.

Appropriately, there are a torrent of leaks from Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website by former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, which goes on sale today (Friday, February 11).

Among the revelations: Wired magazine reports that “when Domscheit-Berg left WikiLeaks, he took the organization’s encrypted submissions system with him, and Assange’s site has been unable to accept new material since.”

And Gawker says the book claims that Assange has fathered at least four “love children” around the world.

Libraries we checked had modest holds on modest orders.

Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website Daniel Domscheit-Berg Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Crown – (2011-02-15) ISBN / EAN: 030795191X / 9780307951915

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco) gets an “A” from Entertainment Weekly: “In a narrative as searing as the best of her fiction, Oates describes the aftermath of her husband Ray’s unexpected death from pneumonia.” Oates has already appeared on NewsHour, and a raft of features are due next week everywhere from the USA Today to Newsweek. It will also be featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review on February 20.

True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself by Janet Jackson and David Ritz (Pocket Books/Karen Hunter) reveals that Jackson’s brothers verbally abused her and her father beat her, according to a Los Angeles Times report on Meredith Viera’s interview with the singer, which will air on NBC’s Today on Friday, February 11 and Monday, February 14, and on “Dateline” on Sunday February 13.

33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners by Jonathan Franklin (Putnam) is an inside (though above-ground) account of the Chilean mine collapse and rescue operation last year, based on more than 110 interviews with the miners, their families, and the rescue team.

Worth Watching:

History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky (Simon & Schuster) is the poet, novelist and Norton editor’s account of her sister’s early death at age 21, in 1990. PW calls it “a beautifully composed, deeply reflective work, [drawing] from literary and psychological examples to honor her sister through a thoroughly examined life.”

Inconceivable: A Medical Mistake, the Baby We Couldn’t Keep, and Our Choice to Deliver the Ultimate Gift by Carolyn Savage and Sean Savage (HarperOne) chronicles a couple’s spiritual struggle after learning a fertility clinic implanted the wrong embryo. Booklist says, “The story is compelling and well told, although the Savages come across as martyrs more than saints.”

The Washington Post reviews former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir, Known and Unknown, which releases on Tuesday. As a result, the book rose to #8 on Amazon sales rankings (library holds, however, are modest for now).

The book is published by Sentinel, Penguin’s conservative imprint.

Known and Unknown: A Memoir Donald Rumsfeld Retail Price: $36.00 Hardcover: 832 pages Publisher: Sentinel HC – (2011-02-08) ISBN / EAN: 159523067X / 9781595230676

Penguin Audio; UNABR; 24 CDs; ISBN 9780142428382

On the Colbert Report last night, Michael Lewis explained why investing in nickels may be a good idea (4:15 in to the segment).

Lewis’s book on the U.S. financial crisis, The Big Short, came out in trade paperback yesterday; many libraries are still showing significant hold ratios on the title.

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Lewis’s next book, coming in June, is Bomerang. It explores how financial bubbles have turned other countries, such as Ireland, into “the new third world.”

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World Michael Lewis Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2011-06-13) ISBN / EAN: 0393081818 / 9780393081817

One of the key opposition leaders in Egypt is Mohamed ElBaradei. In March of 2010, he signed a deal with Holt’s Metropolitan Books imprint to publish a book on nuclear diplomacy in Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Originally scheduled for release in June, the publisher just announced that the release date has been moved to April 26th; several blogs, including the Washington Post‘s Political Bookworm and  the NYT ArtsBeat, have reported the news.

The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times Mohamed ElBaradei Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Metropolitan Books – (2011-04-26) ISBN / EAN: 0805093508 / 9780805093506

Nora Ephron‘s latest collection of humorous essays, I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections is a People Pick in the new issue, and New York magazine has a Q&A with her. Entertainment Weekly rains on the parade a bit, with a B- review (worth reading as an example of saying a great deal in just a few lines) as does Jane Maslin in today’s NYT, at much greater length.

Ephron’s also said to be launching a divorce section on the Huffington Post this week.

We hope she can remember her schedule next week, it’s a crowded one:

NPR/Morning Edition– 11/8
Charlie Rose – 11/9
Today Show – 11/9
The View – 11/10

All that, coming off the heels of her 2006 bestselling collection I Feel Bad About My Neck, is adding up to a 500,000 print run for her latest.

Booklist says: “A master of the jujitsu essay, Ephron leaves us breathless with rueful laughter. As the title suggests, she writes about the weird vagaries of memory as we age, although she is happy to report that the Senior Moment has become the Google Moment. Not that any gadget rescued her when she failed to recognize her own sister.”

I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections Nora Ephron Retail Price: $22.95 Hardcover: 160 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-11-09) ISBN : 9780307595607

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Decision Points by George W. Bush (Crown) gives personal insight into the major events of Bush’s presidency. Though it’s embargoed, there have been lots of leaks, as we’ve already mentioned.

Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by Newt Gingrich, William R. Forstchen and Albert S. Hanser (Thomas Dunne) is historical fiction about the Continental Army during the winter of 1777, following up on the authors’ success with Try Men’s Souls (2009). Booklist says, “The dialogue tends to get a little long-winded, and the authors are unabashed cheerleaders for GW, but, really, who can blame them? American readers can’t get enough of Valley Forge, so expect high demand for this fair-to-middling fictional adaptation.”

Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons From My Grandmothers Adriana Trigiani  (Harper)  was featured at the BEA – AAP  Librarian Lunch. PW says, “Trigiani combines family and American history, reflections on lives well-lived, and sound advice to excellent effect, as a legacy to her daughter and a remembrance of two inimitable women.”

Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman (Twelve) analyzes the composition and decisions of the Supreme Court during the 1940s and 50s. Kirkus calls it “an immensely readable history that goes behind the façade of our most august institution to reveal the flesh-and-blood characters who make our laws.”

UPDATE: The NYT goes beyond the leaks; Michiko Kakutani reviews Bush’s memoir, which was supposed to be embargoed until next week when it releases. She calls it a “A dogged work of reminiscence by an author not naturally given to introspection.”

Last week, The Drudge Report leaked parts of the embargoed memoir by George W. Bush, Decision Points. Today, the NYT and the Washington Post get into the game.

Washington Post, In memoir, Bush says he considered dropping Cheney from 2004 ticket

New York Tiems, The Caucus: Bush Considered Dropping Cheney From ’04 Ticket

Even Bush’s upcoming interview with Matt Lauer, to be aired Monday evening, is being leaked.

The book arrives next Tuesday.

Decision Points George W. Bush Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-11-09) ISBN / EAN: 0307590615 / 9780307590619

Large Print; Trade Pbk; Random House; 9780739377826; $35
Audio; ABR; 9780307748645; $35

Much is made of what Obama reads. Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg took another approach and read everything that Obama has written, in an effort to understand his guiding philosophy.

The New York Times reviews the resulting book, Reading Obama, in tomorrow’s issue. The book was not reviewed prepub, and, according to WorldCat, is owned by very few libraries.

Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition James T. Kloppenberg Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 296 pages Publisher: Princeton University Press – (2010-10-31) ISBN / EAN: 0691147469 / 9780691147468

Is more vitriol being thrown at the current president than ever before? Yes, says John Avlon, author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Beast Books, 2/23/10).

To date, there have been at least 46 anti-Obama books published.  I’m not talking about thoughtful criticisms of his policies, but detailed demonizations of the president…evidence that the proliferation of Obama Derangement Syndrome has out-paced Bush Derangement Syndrome—big time.

These books could have an impact on the mid-term election says Avlon in an article headlined “The Obama Haters Book Club” in the Daily Beast today.

Legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is setting the tabloid press abuzz over excerpts from his new memoir, Life, in the Times of London, where (big surprise) he says that Mick Jagger has been “unbearable” since the 1980s.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls Richards’ memoir “a big, fierce, game-changing account of the Stones’ nearly half-century-long adventure. . . . some of its most surprisingly revelatory material appears in what Mr. Richards jokingly calls ‘Keef’s Guitar Workshop.’ Here are the secrets of some of the world’s most famous rock riffs and the almost toy-level equipment on which they were recorded.”

Life Keith Richards Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-10-26) ISBN / EAN: 031603438X / 9780316034388

• CD: Hachette Audio; $34.98; ISBN 9781600242403
• Large Print: Little Brown and Co., $31.99; ISBN 9780316120364

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks (Knopf) explores how people with impaired senses handle, and even excel at, everyday life, drawing on six case studies including his own loss of depth perception due to a tumor.

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe (Threshold) outlines the economic ideas of the Fox News pundit.

Memoirs and Biographies

Cleopatra by Stacy Shiff (Little, Brown). Sure, it’s a bio of a fascinating historical figure by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but the buzz around this book has focused on its adaptation as a movie, with Scott Rudin producing, James Cameron in talks to direct (in 3-D!), and Angelina Jolie possibly starring.

The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine (Holt) “revisits familiar territory” from his first memoir, according to Kirkus, “including childhood poverty, the deprivations of World War II, faltering first steps in show business before signature roles in The Ipcress File (1965) and Alfie (1966) made him an international film star—but his warm, wry delivery keeps the material interesting, even though many of the anecdotes have a distinctly practiced feel.”

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness by Julie Klam (Riverhead) is about a “slightly wacky person who, instead of looking inward for answers [to how to be happy], decided to help others — specifically, Boston terriers,” according to the 11/1 issue of People, where the book is a People Pick and garnered 3.5 of 4 stars.

My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: Adventures of an Ordinary Woman by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Scottolini Serritella (St. Martin’s Press) is a collection of true life stories originally written for the Philadelphia Inquirer by the popular suspense writer and her daughter.

Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) examines the relationship between FDR and his wife.  PW says “Despite Rowley’s cheerleading that the cousins’ conflicts brought out their courage and radicalism, and that they loved with a generosity of spirit that withstood betrayal, FDR emerges as a narcissist while Eleanor carved a spectacular life.”

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis (Knopf) gets praise from PW: “Ellis’s supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history’s upheavals.”

Cookbook Season
The major gift-giving season will soon be upon us, bringing a raft of new cookbooks.

Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That?: Fabulous Recipes & Easy Tips by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter) focuses on simplifying meals without sacrificing quality. The Food Network guru will appear on the Today Show October 26  and 27.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, Amanda Hesser (W.W. Norton) ; long before the Contessa became barefoot, the NYT was publishing recipes. In what is sure to be THE gift cookbook of the year, Amanda Hesser examined the NYT recipes since the newspaper began running them in the 1850’s, chronicling the effort in the NYT Magazine series Recipe Redux (the latest is about readers’ “most stained” recipes).

Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes, Harold McGee (Penguin Press) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, shooting the book to #15 on Amazon sales rankings.

In the “who would have thunk it” category, the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard tears apart Dinesh D’Souza’s best-selling The Roots of Obama’s Rage in a review titled “The Roots of Lunacy: How not to understand Obama”

Further, conservative political commentator Andrew Sullivan, calls the review, “satisfyingly brutal…” on his blog on The Atlantic‘s web site, and refers to D’Souza’s book as a “hallucinogenic hate-fest.”

The book was not reviewed prepub (nor elsewhere in the mainstream press to date) and is currently at #4 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction best seller list.

The Roots of Obama’s Rage Dinesh D’Souza Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 258 pages Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-09-27) ISBN / EAN: 1596986255 / 9781596986251

Audio available from Blackstone

Bill O’Reilly appeared on The View today. At one point, the discussion became so heated (good luck on hearing what was actually said) that Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off.

They returned a few minutes later.

O’Reilly’s new book is Pinheads and Patriots (Morrow, 9/14/10); Goldberg’s is, in a bit of foreshadowing, Is it Just Me? Or Is It Nuts Out There? (Hyperion, 10/5/10).

What more can be said about baseball great Mickey Mantle?

Apparently, quite a bit. Jane Leavy bases her biography The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a measly C+:

Leavy does little more than recount Mantle’s feats on the diamond and recycle the crude off-the-field behavior exposed in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. There’s little new info; the Mick seen here is familiar, a brittle demigod who never saw himself as the golden boy his public demanded.

But lots more media is coming: the New York Times will feature the book in the sports section on October 12, the Wall St. Journal has a review scheduled for October 15, and Leavy will be interviewed on CBS-TV’s The Early Show on October 19 – with more to follow.

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood Jane Leavy Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060883529 / 9780060883522

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) makes many of the South African leader’s personal letters and diaries available for the first time, including journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s and diaries written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his 27 years of incarceration.

Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me by Condoleezza Rice (Delacorte) is a book for young readers about the childhood of the Secretary of State under George W. Bush. Lots of media coming on this one: On October 12, Rice will appear on NPR’s Morning Edition, the Today show and Larry King Live, while USA Today runs an interview. On October 13, she’ll be on the Early Show and Tavis Smiley’s radio show on PRI.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) chronicles a series of adventures in Russia’s most desolate areas. It’s an Amazon Book of the Month, and was serialized in New Yorker this summer.

Dewey’s Nine Lives: The Legacy of the Small-Town Library Cat Who Inspired Millions by Vicki Myron (Dutton) includes nine stories about loving cats who improved their owner’s lives.

Great Migrations: Epic Animal Journeys by Karen Kostyal (National Georgraphic) arrives next week in anticipation of National Geographic’s seven-part TV series airing in November, narrated by Alec Baldwin. Half the librararies we checked had reserves in line with their modest orders, and the rest have not yet ordered it.

The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today by Paul David Pope (Philip Turner/Rowman & Littlefield) is about the family that made the National Enquirer into a tabloid giant.

Buzz is building for Where Good Ideas Come From by science writer Steven Johnson. The New York Times ran an early review in the Business section, praising Johnson’s storytelling ability in this exploration of innovative environments like the city and the Internet, and how a “series of shared properties and patterns… recur again and again in unusually fertile environments.”

At libraries we checked, current orders are in line with reserves, but this looks like one to watch, since Johnson was also a featured speaker at TED, the elite technology, entertainment and design conference, this summer. And his cool video trailer for the book appears to be going viral.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Steven Johnson Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 1594487715 / 9781594487712

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Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow gets a respectful review from critic Janet Maslin in the New York Times, who finds that this biography is justified by new material unearthed from Washington’s papers at the University of Virginia.

At 900-odd densely packed pages, Washington can be arid at times. But it’s also deeply rewarding as a whole…. [and] offers a fresh sense of what a groundbreaking role Washington played, not only in physically embodying his new nation’s leadership but also in interpreting how its newly articulated constitutional principles would be applied.

Entertainment Weekly gives the book an “A-,” adding that Chernow

…makes excellent use of Washington’s own voice — the man’s angry letters are like thunderbolts — and turns constitutional debates and bureaucratic infighting into riveting reading.

Washington: A Life Ron Chernow Retail Price: $40.00 Hardcover: 928 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 1594202664 / 9781594202667

Notable Nonfiction on Sale Next Week

A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (Random House) is “a wonderfully meandering journey through history, sociology, science, and more. The thread that connects it all is Bryson’s. . . home, a charming former church rectory in a small English village,” according to bookseller Christopher Rose in the October Indie Next Pick citation. NPR’s Morning Edition will feature the book on October 5, followed by  the New York Times Book Review on October 10. It is also the Amazon Spotlight Selection for the month of Oct.

Is It Just Me or Is It Nuts Out There? by Whoopi Goldberg (Hyperion) finds the actress and co-host of ABC’s The View sharing stories from her own life, when she’s been forced to deal with tough situations in family, marriage, friendship, and business.

Cesar’s Rules by Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier (Crown) is the bestselling dog trainer’s primer on establishing the rules of the house.

The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Harper) considers the far-reaching consequences of the co-evolution of dogs and humans, drawing from recent scientific research.

You: Raising Your Child by Michael F. Roizen & Mehmet C. Oz (Free Press) explores the biology and psychology of raising a child from birth to school age.

Trickle Up Poverty by Michael Savage (Morrow) is the author and conservative talk show host’s attack on President Obama’s agenda and his political tactics.

I’m Not High: (But I’ve Got a Lot of Crazy Stories about Life as a Goat Boy, a Dad, and a Spiritual Warrior) by Jim Breuer (Gotham/Penguin) is a memoir by the comedian and Sirius radio show host best known as “Goat Boy” on Saturday Night Live. He was also featured on the ALTAFF Humor Panel at ALA Annual.

After a few slow weeks, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are back to featuring an array of authors, as well as a movie based on a book.

Monday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Stewart returns the favor of appearing on O’Reilly’s show to promote his book, Earth (The Book). That outing did not produce the sparks of Stewart’s earlier appearances on “The No Spin Zone.” Perhaps the Daily Show set will bring on the heat.

Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama Bill O’Reilly Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061950718 / 9780061950711

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Tuesday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream Arianna Huffington Retail Price: $23.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0307719820 / 9780307719829

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Wednesday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? Linda Polman Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Metropolitan Books – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 0805092900 / 9780805092905

The Colbert Report

One of the first books by an Obama administration insider, The Wall Street Journal says Overhaul its “Cutting, detailed presentation often makes the reader feel like he’s sitting at the table, feeling the tension, wincing at the profanity and taking in the scent of fast food breakfast sandwiches. There’s also a good chance the book will make readers angry.”

Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry Steven Rattner Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade – (2010-09-20) ISBN / EAN: 0547443218 / 9780547443218

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Thursday

Both Stewart and Colbert will feature the movie, The Social Network; Stewart with star Justin Timberlake and Colbert with the movie’s screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin. Opening this Friday, it is already a hit with critics and is based on The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich (Doubleday, 2009). On their cover last week, New York magazine dubbed it “The Movie Facebook Doesn’t Want You to See.”

Official Web Site: TheSocialNetwork-Movie

Tie-in:

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal Ben Mezrich Retail Price: $15.95 Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: Anchor – (2010-09-28) ISBN / EAN: 0307740986 / 9780307740984