Just as Jarhead was perhaps the authoritative, or at least best-known, memoir for grunts in the Gulf War, perhaps Army officer Matt Gallagher’s Kaboom will be the authoritative tome for grunts in the Iraq War.

Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War is the product of interest generated by the soldier’s blog Gallagher kept while deployed in Iraq, says the Seattle Times. He’s not the first person to chronicle his Iraq War experiences, but readers ate up his “droll detachment and rugged humor” online, with the exception of a few disapproving higher-ups in the military.

After awhile he was contacted by several publishers floating the idea of a memoir in his writing style, but with nearly a year left in his deployment he offered a rain check. Yet when he returned home in 2009, then aged 26, it appeared publisher interest had died down. His New York-based agent, however, deftly navigated the publishing process—one he said felt at the time that modern war memoirs were “like ‘The Black Plague of Publishing’”—and managed to attract the interest of Da Capo Press.

He’s glad he did: even today the bok has remained in or near the Top 50 on Amazon for Iraq and Iraq War books, and the ratings suggest readers think highly of both his style and his story. Originally released in hardcover, it did well enough to warrant a second print, and is now available in a number of formats.

Da Capo says this on the book’s behalf:

When Lieutenant Matt Gallagher began his blog with the aim of keeping his family and friends apprised of his experiences, he didn’t anticipate that it would resonate far beyond his intended audience. His subjects ranged from mission details to immortality, grim stories about Bon Jovi cassettes mistaken for IEDs, and the daily experiences of the Gravediggers—the code name for members of Gallagher’s platoon. When the blog was shut down in June 2008 by the U.S. Army, there were more than twentyfive congressional inquiries regarding the matter as well as reports through the military grapevine that many high-ranking officials and officers at the Pentagon were disappointed that the blog had been ordered closed.

Get Kaboom here

The New York Times yesterday had a compelling article about the fight by publishers to win the rights to Amanda Knox’s imminent book.

Knox, 24, was the American study abroad student who was accused, convicted, and ultimately cleared of murder charges by an Italian court. She was released almost a year ago, and has been keeping a low profile at home in Seattle ever since.

Publishers (mostly the well-heeled ones), and probably Knox herself, are salivating over the prospect of the money and notoriety that could be gained from a book deal.

The story points out that Simon & Schuster hit a home run with the Jaycee Dugard book deal, and that so far more than 1.2 million copies had been sold in one form or another. Seeing as how the cheapest version (eBook) runs $12, gross sales of the book have minimally topped $14.4 million, and assuming copious sales of hardcovers and paperbacks, probably closer to $20 million or more.

And it’s not just a good deal for the parties financially. The Times says street cred is at stake, too:

The publisher that finally acquires Ms. Knox’s book may also pick up bragging rights, publicity and the opportunity to use her celebrity to attract other authors, even if her book does not sell spectacularly.

So who gets the book? Well, the rights are at auction right now. Knox has hired famously meticulous DC lawyer Robert B. Barnett to manage the process. Barnett has experience handling deals for Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as a host of celebrities, and his thorough method ensures that the details will continue to unfold slowly.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Personally, it would be hard to pass up a massive payday like the one Knox has ahead of her, but if nothing else I would feel sheepish about cashing in on such a traumatic ordeal—even if this is the way of things (e.g., Jaycee Dugard, rumors of Casey Anthony shopping a book). It’s unsettling to think of a recently-acquitted murder suspect choosing between multi-million dollar deals at auction when the family of Meredith Kercher merely has a dead daughter to show for their travails. What do you think?

P.S. Fellow suspect and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito is shopping his own book at the moment.

See the current titles on the Amanda Knox trial here.

Whitney Houston | 1963-2012 | rollingstone

Another sad story today revolves around Whitney Houston’s death just yesterday.

Awhile back, the Christian Science Monitor did a story about the “insta-book”; books whose very premise hadn’t even been conceived by authors who go on to rush one to print nonetheless, often in the first week or two after an event occurs. Exhibit A was the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which spawned a flurry of new titles in just the first 10 days after the announcement.

That was back in 2010, since which time “insta-books” have become an even bigger and faster-moving phenomenon. All that said, we can certainly expect to see early biographies and speculative works on the life and death of pop star Whitney Houston. A few such books, mostly hastily cobbled-together eBook titles which were literally written and released the day of her death, already exist. One, in fact, is openly “a collection of Wikipedia pages about her and her work, formatted for the Kindle…” Can you even do that? Nevertheless, the rest of the arguably less opportunistic biographies range in age from between the 1980s up to about 2010.

Until the smoke clears, what follows are the current annals of Houston and her career, in reverse chronological order. Note that the same-day books (“DOD”), perhaps needless to say, probably won’t be nearly as thorough as those which have been out for at least a year or two (click images for more information):

Whitney Houston We Love You Forever

Jean-Pierre Hombach

February 11^th, 2012 (Date of Death | DOD)

Rating: None

Whitney Houston Dead.. Where Do Broken Hearts Go? Fans Remember

Whitney Houston Fans Worldwide

DOD

Rating: 100% (1)

The Whitney Houston Story

Ira Krakow

DOD

Rating: None

Whitney Houston (A Tribute) (A Biography of Whitney Houston’s Life)

RA Chapman, DJ Elliott

DOD

Rating: None

Whitney Houston: For The Record

Craig Halstead

2010

Rating: None

Whitney Houston: Return of the Diva

James Robert Parish

2010

Rating: 80% (1)

Whitney Houston: The Unauthorized Biography

James Robert Parish

2003

Rating: 100% (5)

Good Girl, Bad Girl: An Insiders Biography of Whitney Houston

Kevin Ammons

1998

60% (7)

Diva: Totally Unauthorised Biography of Whitney Houston

Jeffery Bowman, J. Randy Tarraborrelli

1995

Rating: 100% (1)

The Picture Life of Whitney Houston

Gene Busnar

1988

Rating: 100% (1)

Writer Jeffrey Zaslow | 1958-2012

If the name Jeffrey Zaslow rings a bell, you may not be able to put a face—or a book—to a name, but you’ve seen it constantly in best seller lists over the last five years or so, and you may have even seen his work in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Zaslow was the author of the wildly popular and well-reveiwed Last Lecture book about terminally ill computer science professor Randy Pausch’s last class at Carnegie Mellon. With her cooperation, he also wrote the similarly well-received story about Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ struggle to survive after being shot in the head in the 2011 Tucson shooting spree, called simply Gabby. He also wrote the story of “Captain Sully,” whose piloting prowess saved 155 lives after the engines of his A320 stalled when geese were sucked into the intake and he successfully made an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

He is most famous for his writings on tragedy and overcoming the odds; unfortunately, Zaslow himself succumbed to the odds Friday after he lost control of his car on a snowy highway in Warner Township, Michigan. Zaslow, 53, was on his way to promote his new book Magic Room in northern Michigan when his car lost traction and collided with a truck. The truck’s driver survived. His current place of work, the Wall Street Journal, reports that he is survived by his wife, a TV anchor at a Detroit Fox local news affiliate, and three daughters in Detroit.

His latest book, The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters, was published after Christmas last year but, like almost all of his writings, has been extremely well-reviewed. Here’s what publisher Penguin had to say about it, followed by its promotional video in which Zaslow elaborates on the premise and his inspiration (the name, by the way, is inspired by the room in which women try on their wedding dresses for the first time):

You may not have heard of Fowler, Michigan, much less Becker’s Bridal. But for the thousands of women who have stepped inside, Becker’s is the site of some of the most important moments of their lives-moments that speak to us all. Housed in a former bank, the boutique owners transformed the vault into a “magic room,” with soft church lighting, a circular pedestal, and mirrors that make lifelong dreams come true.

Illuminating the poignant aspects of a woman’s journey to the altar, The Magic Room tells the stories of memorable women on the brink of commitment. Run by the same family for years, Becker’s has witnessed transformations in how America views the institution of marriage; some of the shop’s clientele are becoming stepmothers, or starting married life for a second time. In The Girls from Ames, beloved author Jeffrey Zaslow used friendships to explore the emotional lives of women. In The Magic Room, he turns his perceptive eye to weddings and weaves together secrets, memories and family tales to explore the hopes and dreams we have for our daughters.

Get The Magic Room here

Wrapping the week up, here’s what’s going on in literary news:

ABA, indies join Amazon boycott

The American Booksellers Association, as well as a number of online and brick-and-mortar indie stores around the country and the world, have joined Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Indigo Books’ refusal to carry any Amazon-published titles in their physical locations. If you’re following along, this is a backlash against Amazon for its successful efforts to strike exclusivity deals with authors and publishers, which would keep the aforementioned sellers out of the financial equation.

I’m torn on this: on the one hand, if you read comments at Publishers Weekly, the NYT and elsewhere, the battle is frustrating many fledgling authors and publishers whose books are now not allowed in stores other than Amazon. Many couldn’t get traditional publishers and booksellers to give them the time of day, and now that they have gone the Amazon route they find themselves on the receiving end of unrestrained apoplexy. Moreover, it is evident that those who shamelessly wish to insulate themselves from Amazon’s superior business model are overrepresented among boycotters. And yet just when you’d like to be sympathetic to Amazon and its author- and publisher-partners, you learn that they fired the first volley with their exclusivity deals which shut out everyone else. How can you feel sorry for that? It seems that only fledgling authors and publishers are the only ones here for whom sympathy can be mustered.

Librarian hero Nancy Pearl scorned for Amazon partnership

Recall an article I wrote last month about Nancy Pearl, a Seattle librarian who had great success creating enormous citywide reading groups. After shopping the idea of republishing valuable out-of-print titles with a number of publishers and being summarily refused, Pearl made a deal with the similarly Seattle-based Amazon to do it. She even won the Librarian of the Year Award last year from Library Journal, and another group made a superhero doll based on her. But as soon as she made this reprinting deal—critics might call it a deal with the devil—the community’s love and adulation for her vanished overnight. The NYT says this:

The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, which just gave Ms. Pearl its lifetime achievement award, described the reaction among its members as “consternation.” In Seattle, it was front-page news. “Betrayal” was a word that got used a lot. …  Ms. Pearl still seems a little shaken by the intensity of the response. “I knew the minute I signed the contract that there would be people who would not be happy, but the vehemence surprised me,” she said. To protect herself, she did not read Facebook or Twitter or any of the social media sites. (One Twitter post: “I might have to burn that superhero doll”).

Amazon announces mixed Q4 financial news

In the last Amazon-related item today, the company announced its Q4 sales were up 35% to $17.43 billion. The press release fleshes out a number of areas in which the company believes it over-achieved, particularly with the sales of its Kindle Fire and activity on its Kindle Direct Publishing side-business. However, others have pointed out something Amazon did not: that sales of digital works leveled off a bit this quarter, even if they’re still up, and net income decreased precipitously. Those developments were probably inevitable, considering Amazon’s current investments and the reality that digital cannot skyrocket every quarter in perpetuity. Click the link above to read the rest.

Penguin, other publishers withdraw support of eBook borrowing at libraries

Even as technological and political leaps and bounds are made toward accommodating eReader borrowing at public libraries, some suspicious publishers are pulling back. The WSJ reports that Penguin Group USA, which is responsible for books like The Help and Eat, Pray, Love is withdrawing their support of any such programs, having stopped selling their e-books to libraries. Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and a number of other major publishers already either limit the availability of their titles in libraries, or restrict them altogether. People and companies (e.g., OverDrive) who depend on this business are currently attempting to strike alternative deals with publishers to continue such services.

Mortenson asks judge to drop lawsuit against him

It should be no surprise that justice is not always swift, but the latest development in the as yet nine-month case of Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson, who is being sued for fabricating his most compelling stories in print, is that Mortenson is now asking judges to “throw out the civil lawsuit…saying that if it is allowed to proceed, other authors could be subjected to similar claims and the result would be a stifling of the free exchange of ideas.” The case is being prosecuted in part by Larry Drury, who also successfully prosecuted A Million Little Pieces author James Frey for the same thing. A CBC story talks about the similarities, and offers more details. Read here for more details on Mortenson’s possible fraud.

Real Housewives’ Taylor Armstrong talks abuse

Access Hollywood carries the story of Bravo’s Real Housewives star Taylor Armstrong, who is in the middle of a press junket promoting her recently released, and poorly-reviewed book Hiding from Reality. Poor reviews aside, Armstrong talks about husband Russell’s suicide, and says he would beat her savagely and force her to lie about it. At one point she says he even fractured her orbital floor, and now she has a “titanium mesh implant connected” to “hold her eyeball up.” In the book she also talks empowerment, growing up in an abusive home, raising awareness and self-esteem among women, and her husband’s secret love of fame. Reading through reviews of her book and her appearances on TV, critics of Armstrong allege that she is lying about the abuse, and that the release of a for-profit book about the topic is in poor taste. See the video below for her segment on The View, during which she says she “misses the abuse” but that she’s “relieved” her husband is gone:

San Franciscan Daniel Handler, better known by his pen name Lemony Snicket, under which he wrote A Series of Unfortunate Events (later made into a $200 million box office movie), is back.

Fans might be overjoyed to learn that his thirteen-book Series series is being followed by, ironically enough, a new series of prequels. The new four-part series is called All The Wrong Questions, and according to the Christian Science Monitor it’s “the first ‘authorized’ account of the childhood of Lemony Snicket.” It’s a radical departure from his earlier series, which focused mainly on his three Baudelaire orphan children, with the occasional interpolation or prefatory note from Snickety himself.

The first book is called Who Could That Be At This Hour? and while you won’t be able to get your hands on it until October 23^rd of this year, a million copies of the 200+ page book have already been ordered by publisher Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Since it’s nearly a full year out, not much information has been released about the book, but various releases say it…

…follows events that took place during a period of [Snicket's] youth spent in a fading town, far from anyone he knew or trusted. Snicket chronicles his experiences as an apprentice in an organization nobody knows about. While there, he began to ask a series of questions – wrong questions that should not have been on his mind.

Snicket has a rabid fan base, and if reader apprecation of his previous work is any indicator, fans won’t be let down here. Indeed, he is a prolific author and yet none of his typically widely-reviewed books have fallen below 4 stars on Amazon—an incredible accomplishment.

Tip: Amazon is allowing users to pre-order the hardcover for $15.99, but Barnes & Noble is offering its pre-orders of the hardcover for just $10.98 at the moment.

In an unusual press release today, Amazon breaks from its usual discussion of sales figures and distribution center news to announce the 20 Most Romantic Cities.

Those cities probably aren’t what you had in mind.

Their “Most Romantic Cities” list is based on the sales volume of romantic items to large cities. The more items shipped to that city, the more “romantic”; the less items, the more… trouble they might be in come Valentine’s Day. Here’s what Amazon says:

After compiling sales data of romance novels and relationship books (Kindle Books and print books), romantic comedy movies (digital movies and DVDs), Barry White albums (CDs and MP3s), along with sexual wellness products, since January 1 on a per capita basis in cities with over 100,000 residents, [we established] the top 20 most romantic cities in the U.S.

And they are, in descending order:

20. Tallahassee, Fla.

19. Rochester, N.Y.

18. Las Vegas, Nev.

17. Gainesville, Fla.

16. Everett, Wash.

15. Clarksville, Tenn.

14. Erie, Pa.

13. St. Louis, Mo.

12. Clearwater, Fla.

11. Pittsburgh, Penn.

10. Columbia, S.C.

9. Dayton, Ohio

8. Murfreesboro, Tenn.

7. Miami, Fla.

6. Vancouver, Wash.

5. Cincinnati, Ohio

4. Orlando, Fla.

3. Springfield, Mo.

2. Alexandria, Va.

1. Knoxville, Tenn.

Other interesting facts they point out about the list:

• For the last two years, Alexandria, Va., has been the most romantic city in the U.S. This year, Knoxville, Tenn., turned up the heat, taking the first place position and knocking Alexandria to the No. 2 spot.
• Knoxville has been gaining momentum on the romance scale. In 2011 it received “most improved,” jumping 14 places to come in second—this year that momentum carried it all the way to the top spot.
• Cupid didn’t strike New York City this year. According to Amazon customers’ purchase habits, NYC is the least romantic city in the U.S. Winston-Salem, N.C., Patterson, N.J., and El Monte, Calif., also took bottom spots in the ranking.
• Florida is for romantics, with four cities—Orlando, Miami, Clearwater, and Gainesville–ranking among the top 20 most romantic cities.
• For the third year in a row, Miami is the sexiest city in the U.S., winning the top spot in the sexual wellness category.
• The big movers and shakers this year were Dayton, Ohio, climbing 10 spots since last year, and Springfield, Mo., which wasn’t even on the map last year and is now ranked No. 3 on this year’s list.

As you gear up for your first marathon or half-marathon, consider this: there are people out there who have run more than 100 marathons. And as you try to pump yourself up for your first, also consider that you have a new resource in Malcolm Anderson’s The Messengers.

You might say it’s the next level up from another book I’ve talked about, You Are An Ironman, which chronicles the journeys of six unlikely people to become successful Ironman triathletes. Among the takeaways of that book: if you don’t think you can do it, you can. If the guy with congenital cystic fibrosis and a double-lung transplant can do it, so can you.

Now I’m sure the point of Messengers is not to say you can or should do 100+ marathons, but if radical self-improvement is your cup of tea, you’re in for a treat. Kiwi-Canadian author Malcolm Anderson interviewed more than 100 such marathoners for his book, who ranged in age from their 20s to their 80s. Consider that if you think you’re too old, and also consider MSNBC’s mention by American exercise physiologist and serial marathoner Tom Holland that “many…are late bloomers” and many people don’t even start until they reach their 50s. Indeed, he says he knows of a 55-year-old who started running at 50 and is already up to 110 marathons.

So why do they do it? Well, apart from challenging themselves and achieving major self-improvements, the author says that “it’s primarily about doing something with other people, seeing new places and sharing.” And it appears to work: one of the other takeaways is that these people seem to be unequivocally happy, and feel that a lifestyle change for the more sedentary would spoil their personal happiness. Consider the story of Leslie Miller, also via MSNBC:

“It’s my hobby,” said Miller, from Seattle, Washington who has been running for about 10 years and averages one marathon a month. “I just get out and run almost every day.”

Although she is only 32 years old, Miller has completed 160 marathons so far. Her only goal now is to keep running.

“It would change my life if I had to stop,” she said.

Publisher Experience says this of their book:

To most people, running a marathon seems a remarkable and remotely possible achievement, a major lifetime accomplishment. To run 100 or more marathons and ultra-marathons is even harder for people to comprehend, especially when you consider that more people have climbed Mt. Everest than run 100 marathons.

The author conducted interviews with over one hundred and twenty of these amazing individuals from around the world, including Canada, United States, South Africa, United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries. We meet the men’s and women’s world record holders for the most marathons ever completed (and they are still running strong). We meet the clubs around the world that have been formed specifically for those who aspire to, and those who have completed 100 marathons or more. And we meet the people who make this network of clubs and runners possible. Simply, distance running is as much a social movement as it is a movement of the body. And this family – this distance running ‘tribe’ – even with the transformations, adversities and challenges faced, is full of very happy people.

The Messengers presents amazing stories of people from all walks of life. These are stories of courage, tenacity, resilience, humor, camaraderie and commitment. Learn about their experiences traveling, their training, the social connectedness of running marathons, and how these individuals make distance running an integral part of their lifestyle.

You don’t need to do 100 to have made a major accomplishment, but if you’re hesitating at the thought of one, this book might inspire you to the first step.

P.S. I would imagine the title is a reference to Pheidippides, after whom the marathon was created.

Fidel Castro with Book | Roberto Chile, AFP/Getty Images

Fidel Castro has a book, and you probably don’t need to be sitting down when I tell you it’s long, and he took a long time to talk about it. After hearing of the endless bloviating of Hugo Chavez and Muammar Gaddafi, you’re probably aware of the propensity of dictators and autocrats to rhetorically amble about for hours. Castro is no exception. Last Saturday he spent six hours promoting his two-part, 1000-page memoir, clad in his trademark windbreaker at a convention center in Havana.

The book is called Guerrilla of Time, and surprisingly it only covers his life from childhood to late 1958, right before the Cuban Revolution. He says he chose to write the book now because “memory fades,” but the 85 year-old is also known to be ailing physically, and illness forced him to transfer power to brother Raúl in 2006.

USA Today says he covered a wide range of topics at the event:

[H]e mused about a wide range of topics Friday including visits from foreign dignitaries, world events and technological advances.

He reportedly expressed deep opposition to private education and said Cuban leaders were wrong to think that simply by implementing socialism, all the island’s economic problems would be solved.

“Our duty is to fight until the last minute for our country, for our planet and for humanity,” he was quoted as saying.

Lifetime TV has acquired the rights to Dave Cullen’s 2009 best seller “Columbine,” which detailed the grisly 1999 high school massacre in which two Colorado high school students gunned down 13 students and teachers before committing suicide.

Lifetime plans to turn it into a miniseries which will air on their network. While there is no word yet on who will play the key characters—shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, for example—Reuters does report that Tommy O’Haver will write the script and Michael DeLuca of Social Network and Moneyball fame will produce, among others.

Publisher “Twelve” released the book roughly two and a half years ago. It took Cullen a full decade of interviews and research to assimilate and write, and it’s described like this:

On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma-City style, and to leave “a lasting impression on the world.” Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence-irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting “another Columbine.”

When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window — the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris, and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.

The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who came to stockpile a basement cache of weapons, to record their raging hatred, and to manipulate every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boy’s tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.

It’s not the first time the book has been in the spotlight: apart from its impressive sales figures and overwhelmingly positive critical reception, it’s also being made into—controversially enough—stage theater, according to Cullen’s website. And his work is far from the only on the subject, even in film. In 2003 Director Gus Van Sant released “Elephant,” a fairly dark film set in Portland but based mostly on the Columbine massacre.

No word on the release date yet, but for those interested in getting acquainted with Cullen’s chronicle, find it below.