Step right up folks, and tune in to the paranoid world of master huckster Kevin Trudeau, whose book "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About" climbed to the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list for advice titles last weekend. The Federal Trade Commission virtually banned Trudeau from the airwaves last year in an attempt to "shut down an infomercial empire that has misled American consumers for years." But by shifting his business model from selling supposed cure-all products to peddling books, which are protected by the First Amendment, Trudeau has been able to slip past federal regulators and continue to sell snake oil to the masses -- first through his infomercial and now via mainstream book retailers like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Continue Reading...

This might sound like the sort of breathless hyperbole regularly used to prop up glaring deficiencies in otherwise flimsy policy papers. Yet there's more than a little menace to Florida's proclamations when you consider that the professor of public policy at George Mason University published "The Rise of the Creative Class" only three years earlier. In that book, he described with earnest, unabashed exuberance the prominence of the very same class in what he calls the new "Creative Age."

Continue Reading...

In 1994, Hallowell published "Driven to Distraction," a groundbreaking bestseller about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and he became the most recognized ADHD specialist and researcher. (The clinical term is ADHD, but it's often simply called ADD, partly because hyperactivity is not a requirement for the disorder.) His book has sold over a million copies and is still considered one of the indispensable bibles of ADD literature by both patients and therapists.

Continue Reading...

Stahl's story didn't start out that way. He moved from his childhood home in Pittsburgh to New York and Columbia University, where he began a promising writing career. He did a stint writing for porn king Larry Flint and then moved on to Hollywood, where he penned episodes for "ALF," "Moonlighting" and "Thirtysomething."

Like so many writers before him, he found television a harsh mistress, and his heroin habit rapidly got out of control. He once submitted a script to the producers of "Twin Peaks" that was covered with his own blood and hair. At age 38, he found himself taking orders at a McDonald's, where his adolescent co-workers believed he was mentally disabled.

Continue Reading...

During the fishing season that culminates in the fall, more than 60 million pounds of lobster are pulled out of Maine waters. It's a catch that supports hundreds of lobstering communities and thousands of boats all over the Gulf of Maine. Maine lobster is known around the world and has become one the most distinct delicacies in our national cuisine. During the Christmas season, thousands of lobsters are stuffed into 747s and flown to France, where the crustacean is a popular holiday meal.

Lobster is unique in our cuisine for another reason. It is pretty much the only remaining animal we kill in the kitchen before eating. Many people are understandably squeamish about plunging a live fellow creature into a pot of boiling water -- even if it looks like a giant bug -- and the ethics of this practice have been disputed for decades.

Continue Reading...

Over the past couple of decades, the memoir has become a familiar staple of American literature. Almost every season one or two books from the lively "I've lived through this!" subcategory draw the sort of media attention that is, unfortunately, more of a testament to the author's wily self-promotion or an unbelievable premise than to the quality of the book.

Continue Reading...

In a Jan. 21 interview with Book Babes, a column written by Margo Hammond and Ellen Heltzel on the Poynter Institute Web site, Keller discussed his ideas for sweeping changes to the New York Times Book Review in the wake of editor Charles "Chip" McGrath's impending departure. In fairness, many observers of the publishing world believe the Book Review has lost much of its oomph in recent years. But it's safe to say that almost as many of those publishing insiders -- and lots of general readers -- were horrified by Keller's ideas. He said he wanted to cut back on the coverage of first novels, and cover more topical nonfiction and mass-market fiction. The section might review more "potboilers," he suggested, to help travelers decide what books to buy in airports.

Continue Reading...

It's unlikely that Ritenbaugh will be hearing happier noises anytime soon: Book buyers now must shell out $20, $30 or even $40 or more for hardcovers that decades ago used to cost less than $10. And the sticker shock is causing many customers not to buy as many books.

"It's just too expensive," one Chicago book buyer said recently at a Barnes & Noble, putting down the new hardcover by a favorite author, Chuck Palahniuk, even though it was discounted 20 percent. "I used to buy more books and be willing to try new authors. But you don't know if the book's going to be good or not and it's too expensive to try something new or even an author I usually like."

Continue Reading...

"It happens more frequently," she says. "There's a boldness that wasn't there before."

In fact, authors often go to considerable lengths to promote their books. Some fire off endless faxes or rambling e-mails to editors and critics, some try phoning directly and the most intrepid simply show up at the newspaper or magazine's office, much to the book editor's alarm. Less aggressive (and perhaps more successful) are those who on their own arrange readings in bookstores or coffeehouses, often selling copies of their books out of the trunks of their cars. Others -- like the half-naked poet mentioned above -- try stunts and other gimmicks to draw attention to themselves.

Continue Reading...

That may seem like an easy enough question to answer -- it's the book that sold the most copies in the past week, a matter of simple, quantitative fact. In reality, though, the actual process of calculating a bestseller list from week to week often involves as much interpretation on the part of list-compilers as it does actual sales figures. And many observers despise the lists, claiming that they spotlight books for dubious or purely commercial reasons.

Others, however, think fussing about bestseller lists is a waste of time. When asked about the accuracy of the lists and what they mean to the culture at large, one publishing executive became scornful: "Bestseller lists don't have much effect [anyway]," he stated. "If someone doesn't like one list, they can just look at another. Or start their own."

Continue Reading...

Public policy and regional development books are often considered best as a cure for insomnia, but Florida's work is challenging many of the verities of the field. He claims that the world has moved away from the old "organizational" era of corporations and homogeneity and into the "creative" era, which is spearheaded by 38 million workers -- from scientists to IT workers to artists and writers -- with a variety of lifestyles and needs.

Continue Reading...

It was supposed to be the final word on the subject, but an executive order by President George W. Bush that modifies the PRA has brought forth a lawsuit and the anger of the historians and writers who use the documents for their work.

Continue Reading...

But even though the government was able to get what it wanted from those libraries under existing laws, intelligence agencies argued they needed more sweeping powers. The result was the passage last October of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA), an acronym for the unwieldy "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act." USAPA, of course, deals with much more than libraries -- it amends more than 15 statutes, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Cable Act, and the Federal Wiretap Statute. The new law gave the government unprecedented authority to conduct secret searches, monitor e-mail and Internet usage, share information between intelligence agencies and seize personal information with only nominal judicial oversight.

Continue Reading...

One of the largest independent booksellers in the country, Tattered Cover has over 100,000 titles and a study-like atmosphere with plenty of what Meskis calls comfortable "grandma's attic" furniture. The brick, turn-of-the-century building seems an unlikely place for criminals, and the police probably thought that day's task would be quick and easy. But almost two years later, the warrant demanding that Tattered Cover hand over records of one of its customers' purchases remains unexecuted, held off by lawyers and temporary restraining orders.

Although many people aren't aware of it, in the eyes of the law buying a book is different from buying a bicycle or a pack of cigarettes. Through the years, the protections accorded materials covered by the First Amendment, such as books and newspapers, have evolved to protect the institutions that provide those materials as well. So when law enforcement officials say they just want information about the books a suspect purchased, booksellers and civil rights advocates see the demand as something that could erode book buyers' privacy and First Amendment rights.

Continue Reading...

El Zaatari consistently maintained that he used the knife in creating his artwork and had simply forgotten that it was in his computer case. Federal prosecutors admitted that they did not believe el Zaatari, whose student visa had expired when he was arrested, had any links to terrorism or terrorists. Nevertheless, until Wednesday's plea agreement they had held him without bail in isolation as a flight risk.

Friends of el Zaatari were outraged by the deal, although happy that he was finally going to be released from jail.

Continue Reading...

Certainly Pittsburgh media thought so, at first. TV news bulletins reported that an "Arab" was "prevented" from "smuggling a knife" aboard an airplane, which was variously "hidden" or "stashed" in his laptop case. The mug shot that accompanied newspaper stories the the following days confirmed the public's worst fears: a dark-skinned, goateed young man, with the type of brooding expression that seemed to hint at coming violence.

Because the young man, Salam Ibrahim El Zaatari, was from Lebanon, Francis was soon asked to get involved in the case. The American Lebanese Congress works to improve relations between Arabs, Christians and Jews; Francis has been honored for his activism by an invitation to the White House, courtesy of former first lady Hillary Clinton. The transportation engineer says he was initially skeptical about El Zaatari's innocence. "If he was guilty, then I didn't want to get involved with him," Francis recalls. "I wouldn't have anything to do with someone like that."

Continue Reading...