Malcolm Jones at the Book Beast highlights 12 books that will be published in the coming months. It’s a great list that includes a few of my favorites such as Jonah Lehrer and John Irving. I’m really looking forward to Robert Caro’s latest installment of his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. A book that I am really excited about is Edward O. Wilson’s book, The Social Conquest of the Earth, which offers up the theory that group selection, not kin selection, is the prime driver of human evolution. Here is the summary from Barnes and Noble:

“Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In a generational work of clarity and passion, one of our greatest living scientists directly addresses these three fundamental questions of religion, philosophy, and science while “overturning the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover magazine). Refashioning the story of human evolution in a work that is certain to generate headlines, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, is the primary driving force of human evolution. He proves that history makes no sense without prehistory, and prehistory makes no sense without biology. Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, Wilson presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.”

George Whitman, founder of the Parisian bookshop Shakespeare and Company, died last week at age 98. Critics say it likely wasn’t the best bookshop in the world, or even Paris for that matter, but Shakespeare and Company was one of the most famous. Two tributes to Mr. Whitman were recently published: one at The Book Bench blog and the other at The Telegraph. This is what Tim Martin wrote in The Telegraph:

“But if you’re one of the innumerable tourists who flock to Shakespeare and Co each year, it’s a fairly safe bet that you’re not going exclusively for the books. You visit for the history: for the chance to poke round the famous upstairs library and reading room where Samuel Beckett, Lawrence Durrell and Allen Ginsberg sipped tea, and for a glimpse into the world’s most famous literary dosshouse, a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookshop” over which Whitman presided with irascible charm between 1951 and 2003. (If you’re visiting in search of the Modernist hangout that hosted Beckett, Joyce, Hemingway, Stein and Eliot, look elsewhere: that shop closed after the Second World War, but Whitman adopted the name in the Sixties as a tribute to its founder Sylvia Beach.)”

The opening paragraph from Elizabeth Minkel’s article in The New Yorker certainly caught my attention. Could it be true that the decline of reading may be on the reverse? Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, reports that more Americans are reading books than in previous years. The increase was small, nonetheless it was there. As Minkel writes, reading has been on the decline in our country for some time. “The steady drop since the nineteen-fifties correlates directly with the rise of television and visual media, but much of the damage has been done in the past two decades, well after TV had solidified its place in Americans’ lives ... But despite the small gains, a solid half of the country still rarely, if ever, picks up a book for pleasure. In the same press release, the N.E.A. said that “The U.S. population now breaks into two almost equally sized groups—readers and non-readers.””

I recommend Minkel’s story. She cites other published stories that look at both sides of the issue. Is reading really on the decline? Or is the reverse really true--is it on the rise again? What difference does it make? Can it be true, as Gioia states in the NEA report, that “cultural decline” hangs in the balance? Many commenters on the subject actually address different questions, as Minkel points out nicely in her final paragraph: “Le Guin is talking about Americans’ lack of interest in pleasure reading; Poe is searching for innovative ways of teaching people who will never find reading enjoyable; and Crain is warning us against the dangers of thinking that reading is something that we can move past. Book sales might be dropping, but for now, those of us who read are not about to abandon the pastime. The question is how hard we should be working to convert the half of Americans who do not.”

I just received my copy of a new book written by historian Stephen Greenblatt called The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. The book tells the story of an ancient manuscript that changed how we look at the world. Here is the overview from Barnes and Noble’s site:

“One of the world’s most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

“Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

“The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.”

For a more detailed review, read Troy Jollimore’s review here.

A couple of years ago, I purshaced David Michaelis’ acclaimed biography called Schulz and Peanuts. I plan to read it this winter. I recently came across this video that makes me want to read it all the more.

It looks to be an exciting fall season for book lovers. The Book Beast has assembled a few of the highlights: “It’s time to get serious with the annual fall reading bonanza when publishers release all their marquee names, big stars, and prize contenders. The good news: serious does not mean dull. Expect stars to return in top form (Charles Frazier, Lee Child), stunning debuts (Chad Harbach, Erin Morgenstern), juicy political memoirs (Condoleezza Rice on her WH years), sweeping history (Simon Sebag Montefiore on Jerusalem, Robert Hughes on Rome), charming celebrity memoirs (Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins), and more.”

I love the Library of America and their wonderful editions of American liiterature. The quality of every volume is of the best quality. I never knew some of the details until I visited the publisher’s website. Some interesting facts from their notes on the production and design:

“Though each volume contains from 700 to as many as 1600 pages, all are compact and trim, measuring less than two inches thick.”

“The paper is acid-free and meets the requirements for permanence set by the American National Standards Institute; it will not turn yellow or brittle. The books are bound with the grain of the paper to ensure that they open easily and lie flat without crinkling or buckling.

“The typeface, Galliard, is exceptionally readable and easy on the eyes.”

“The books are Smyth-sewn for permanence and flexibility, and each includes a ribbon marker.”

“Each volume is attractively jacketed or slipcased and measures 4 7/8” x 7 7/8”. This trim size is based on the “golden section,” which the ancient Greeks considered to be the ideal proportion.”

In 2007, the Library of America made the following video to commemorate its 25th anniversary:

If you are looking for some summer reads, Time magazine has a collection of well-known writers (and readers) who share what they are reading at the moment. Here is what Salman Rushdie has in his bag:

“I’m really looking forward to The Pale King. I’m kind of saving it up a little bit. If you want a really heavyweight book for summer, I find myself rereading Joyce’s Ulysses about once every 10 years, just because it’s one of the greatest things ever written. It’s a way of reminding myself to keep up to the mark.

“Rushdie’s most recent book for children, Luka and the Fire of Life, was published last year.”

We are obsessed by the electronic, writes Johann Hari in The Independent:

“The book – the physical paper book – is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 per cent this year alone. It’s being chewed by the e-book. It’s being gored by the death of the bookshop and the library. And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all. It’s hard to admit, but we all sense it: it is becoming almost physically harder to read books.”

Erik Larson has a new book out and it is already atop the charts. I’m quickly trying to finish his nonfiction hit from a few years ago, The Devil in the White City, a huge bestseller about the murders that took place during the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Larson’s new book fashions the same literary nonfiction techniques to tell the story of the rise of Nazi Germany from the inside. It’s called In the Garden of Beasts. The description from Barnes and Noble:

"The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

“A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

“Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.”

For a review of the book in the New York Times, click here.