Book News

To borrow the title of an old song by The Who, “The kKids Are Alright.” Folks who desparage the current generation of kids as slack-jawed video game junkies aren’t seeing the whole picture (My son-to-be 13-year-old son is both a rabid gamer and voracious reader — he tore through the entire Harry Potter series in two weeks — ed.).

Says Newsweek: “Contrary to the depressing proclamations that American teens aren’t reading, the surprising truth is they are reading novels in unprecedented numbers. Young-adult fiction (ages 12-18) is enjoying a bona fide boom with sales up more than 25 percent in the past few years, according to a Children’s Book Council sales survey. Virtually every major publishing house now has a teen imprint, many bookstores and libraries have created teen reading groups and an infusion of talented new authors has energized the genre. ”

If you give them something besides dreary and often dreadfully written textbooks, many tweens and teens will read. Sometimes they just need a little encouragement, as in hitting the off button on the TV/game set.

Swiss business consultants Philippe Rothlin and Peter Werder, Swiss business consultants noticed a common thread among workers whom their bosses tended to think were lazy.
“One might easily call them lazy,” Rothlin tells the Chicago Tribune, “but that’s not true. People suffering from boreout want to do something. They want to work, but their company won’t let them.”
Put simply, they’re bored stiff.
To answer that syndrome, Rothlin and Werder published Boreout: Overcoming Workplace Demotivation, a best-seller in Europe that’s being published in the United States in September.
In the book, they explain that managers who are reluctant to delegate tasks leave their staffers with little to do more than menial tasks. At first they kill time surfing the Web, checking e-mail, etc., but eventually they find the leisurely pace unbearable. In some minds, boreout is worse than burnout. It’s a form of underemployment that can lead to apathy and depression.
But enough on that subject. Don’t you have work to do?

To read more about boreout, CLICK HERE

Wine lovers might experience conflicting thoughts about “The Wine Trials,” a book that explores the phenomenon of “wine snobbery” and how the taste of “experienced” or expert wine tasters varies from everyday wine drinkers.
One blind taste test with 500 people in some cases rated the cheaper wines higher than expensive ($150 a bottle) wines. When they narrowed the group to include only “experienced” oenophiles, the expensive wines fared much better, suggesting that the experienced tasters had a more trained palate and nose.
Author Robin Goldstein also found that price, marketing and other factors influenced preferences.
“The book suggests that if you take away all of these factors and make buying decisions strictly on the grounds of what tastes best in the glass, everyday wine drinkers prefer cheaper wines to more expensive wines,” writes Eric Asimov on his New York Times blog, The Pour.
Subtitled “100 Everyday Wines under $15 That Beat $50 to $150 Bottles,” the book also provides an in-depth listing of wines that did well in the trials.

“The Wine Trials,” ISBN 9780974014357, is on sale now, although some sellers are out of stock.

Read the blog.

Read the editorial.

Author Catherine Friend tries to strike a balance between her carnivorous desires and humane treatment of the animals we eat. A farmer herself, she practices what she we preaches in The Compassionate Carnivore - Or, How To Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, And Still Eat Meat.
Friend raises sheep for meat, and in doing so has developed relationships with the sheep, and feels a sense of gratitude for their sacrifice. It might strike some people as an odd paradox, but a similar ethic was applied by Native Americans hundreds of years ago: respect and gratitude for the animals they hunted.
She compares her small sustainable farm to the factory farms you’ve probably seen vilified in PETA commercials.
The Compassionate Carnivore, ISBN 9781600940071, was published in April by Da Capo Press.

See a Blog Critic’s take on The Compassionate Carnivore.

To buy the book, CLICK HERE

Before you roll yours eyes thinking, “Great, another celeb book,” let us tell you: This guy can write. His latest effort, Swine Not?, is the story of Barley, a 9-year-old boy whose family moves from Tennessee to a New York City hotel with their pet pig, Rumpy. As they move in, a sign bodes ill: “No Pets Allowed.” Strictly enforced.

In addition to keeping a squealy pig out of sight, they have to dodge the hotel’s carnivorous chef. This story is based on true events in the life of the book’s illustrator, Helen Bransford. Buffett, also author of A Salty Piece of Land and A Pirate Looks at Fifty, brings a charming storytelling style to Swine Not?

Swine Not?, ISBN 9780316114028, is on sale now.

Cindy McCain, wife of presumtive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, has backed out of a book deal signed with Viking last fall. A Viking spokeswoman confirmed that the deal was off, at least for now.

Motoko Rich reports on the New York Times Politics Blog: Melissa Shuffield, Mrs. McCain’s spokeswoman, said Mrs. McCain had not decided whether she would write the book at all. “Due to the demand of the campaign trail and various humanitarian trips she has planned this summer,” Ms. Shuffield said, “Mrs. McCain has decided not to complete the book.”

The news already has blog tongues wagging. Check out the responses at the blog.

If you have a bound version of the Oxford English Dictionary, you might want to hang onto it. It’s about to become a collectors’ item.
New York Times writer Virginia Heffernan laments, “The future is here, and the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete — at least according to the folks who publish it. As of now, Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
“But while The New York Times and other newspapers have refrained from rash decisions about their print editions, the Oxford English Dictionary — staid, right? — has already shaken off the shackles of print and said cheerio (“a parting exclamation of encouragement”) to books! The stab I felt was sharper than nostalgia. It was fear.”
On the other hand, if you thought you could never afford the O.E.D. or thought it was too bulky, point your itty-bitty Apple MacBook Air at this: http://oed.com/.

To read more, CLICK HERE

The prolific business leadership writer John C. Maxwell has a new book out, Developing the Leader Within You. Already the author or co-author of more than 50 books including The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, most of them on leadership, Maxwell is also an ordained minister with multiple degrees in divinity. His father was a Wesleyan minister.
His presentations and his books sometimes sound like sermons as he comfortably jumps from religious to secular leadership, finding commonality in the two.

For more info, CLICK HERE

To buy the book, CLICK HERE

Author Bill Yenne dug deep to find the essence of Sitting Bull, the famous Lakota leader. What Yenne found instead of a caricatured fierce warrior was a complicated, even conflicted man who was as adept at driving a hard bargain as dispatching an enemy.
He attempts to convey the nuances of the Lakota holy man who is best known for his role in defeating Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876 in the just-published Sitting Bull.
Yenne, who grew up in Glacier National Park in Montana and knew many Native Americans as just “kids first and only secondarily as `Indians,’ ” is the author of several nonfiction books including “On the Trail of Lewis & Clark: Yesterday and Today.”
Sitting Bull, ISBN 9781594160608, is on sale now.

More info, CLICK HERE

To buy the book, CLICK HERE

As this 2008 presidential election contest unfolds, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz takes us back two decades plus in “The Age of Reagan,” which hit bookstores Tuesday. Subtitled “A History, 1974-2008,” the book recounts how profoundly Reagan reshaped American politics, bringing once-obscure conservatism to a become dominant force, at times, in politics and policy. He traces the beginning of this ascendency of conservatism to the downfall of Richard Nixon, with a few ebbs and flows since.
True, Reagan could be a polarizing figure, loved by conservatives and loathed by liberals.
Publisher Harper Collins said at its Web site: “A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan has been so admired by a minority of historians and so disliked by the others that it has been difficult to evaluate his administration with detachment. Drawing on numerous primary documents that have been neglected or only recently released to the public, as well as on emerging historical work, Wilentz offers invaluable revelations about conservatism’s ascendancy and the era in which Reagan was the pre-eminent political figure.”

“The Age of Reagan,” ISBN 9780060744809, is on sale now.

To see more, CLICK HERE