In this day and age, it seems as though cheating is more commonplace than successful monogamy. Maybe you’ve cheated, or been cheated on, or simply known someone who’s been involved with it. Whatever the relation, it’s touched millions of people’s lives, but never before has it been taken head on like this: The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives and Lovers Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal.

Edited by Victoria Zackheim, the book contains memoirs and essays from women on both sides of the coin. The Today Show has both posted the first chapter on its Website, and caught up with a number of these women, assembling their stories in a clip viewable here.

Has your ungrateful newborn left you with a flabby stomach and newly-minted self-esteem issues? How do those other, sexier moms do it? I’ll tell you how: Lean Mommy: Bond with Your Baby and Get Fit with the Stroller Strides(R) Program, by saviors Lisa Druxman and Martica Heane. The book is full of simple ways to incorporate fat-burning exercises into your daily routine. Great detail is paid to the changes a pregnant body undergoes, what you’re left with post-baby and what you can do to reclaim your former physique.

Poor posture? Separated abs? Lower back pain? Check out this book.

The Today Show has posted an excerpt of the book on its Website which you may read here.

With The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America, Allen Brandt, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, offers up the definitive history of the cigarette, from its inception in the late 19th century to its widespread ban in the late 20th. Thursday night, Brandt sat down with Jon Stewart and argued that cigarettes represent nearly every aspect of America: agriculture, business, pop culture, issues of gender and sexuality, advertising, public relations and so on.

In his book, Brandt documents the knowledge that cigarettes are harmful in great detail, but that there is no sense of shame or acknowledgment on the part of cigarette companies, who still go after what they call “replacement smokers,” kids that they lure in with newly reissued flavored cigarettes and tobacco.

Watch the whole interview, in which Brandt puts forth his theory on how cigarettes have remained popular for over a century.

Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic political strategist, has been in his words, “at the center of progressive politcs…from Vietnam to Iraq.” He recently came out with a book, No Excuses: Confessions of a Serial Campaigner, in which he writes about his experiences in politics over the past 30 years, during which time he experienced a drastic change in campaigning.

He sat down with Jon Stewart and discussed how in the 70s each candidate had “their people, and if they lost, they went away.” Now, campaigners jump from candidate to candidate in sort of an interview process. “It’s sure easier to run with someone you believe in.” Campaigning, Shrum argues, is more a business now than ever, and that in order to win the candidate needs to go after the best, most experienced campaigners he can get, regardless of previous affiliation.

Watch the interview for an entertaining story about Julie Christie, Warren Beatty and some democrats.

In 2004, NPR correspondent Rob Gifford traveled across China, following a single highway, Route 312, west from Shanghai for nearly 3,000 miles. He observed the booming economy behind China’s rise to power, but also discovered overwhelming poverty and numerous other things that could undermine the country’s new-found role on the world stage. Part On the Road, part brilliant social commentary, his observations, originally a seven-part series on NPR, have been collected here in China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power.

Gifford spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep late last month: “I’d just get on a bus, and you just find the four people sitting around you all have amazing stories about their life in the countryside or their life in the city. You know, everywhere you go, you just ask the people, ‘What are you doing? What’s your life like?’ And they just want to talk about it, and that’s really what the book is.”

Gifford stopped by The Diane Rehm Show earlier today, during which time he presented a mixture of humorous travel stories with his larger theories on the social and economic progressions of one of the most important countries in the world. Listen to the interview here and read the NPR article and excerpt here.

In June 2005, a group of Navy SEALs embarked on a mission to the mountains of Afghanistan to scope out a rumored Taliban hideout. They were not supposed to engage any one, let alone a group of goat herders. Convinced that if the SEALs executed these herders the bodies would be found and their whereabouts would be compromised, they let them go. In what Marcus Luttrel writes is “the stupidest, most southern-fried, lame brained decision I ever made in my life to vote to let them go. I must have been out of my mind taking a vote that I knew would sign our death warrant.” Some 45 minutes later, a 100 plus Taliban fighters were on the four SEALs. Only Luttrel survived.

Matt Lauer conducted an interview with Luttrel on The Today Show about the ex-SEAL’s memoir, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team Ten. Luttrel and Lauer go through the whole harrowing episode in detail, including how Luttrel survived in the months following the tragedy.

You may watch the interview here and read the corresponding excerpt on the show’s Website.

Emma Forrest has noticed a phenomenon: women share secrets not just with hairdressers, but with their masseurs, Chi Gong teachers, bikini waxers and aestheticians, too. Though who can blame them, really? Those are the people she trusts to keep her aesthetically on track and looking as she feels she should. The sort of intimacy that warrants secret-sharing is inherent in the relationship from the start.

Forrest took this concept and ran with it, assembling essays on how personal grooming has effected personal relationships from notables such as Rose McGowan, Minnie Driver, Francesca Lia Block and Judy Raines. Damage Control: Women on the Therapists, Beauticians, and Trainers Who Navigate Their Bodies, and The Today Show has made the introduction available on their Website. You may view it here.

His mother must love him: Pete Jordon found his calling some 12 years ago as a (drumroll)…dishwasher! He was, in fact, so enthusiastic about it that he set out to wash in all 50 states, chronicling his journey both in magazine articles and segments for NPR’s This American Life. He’s now consolidated his efforts into a book, Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States, which takes the American infatuation with bad people in kitchens (don’t tell me you haven’t watched Hell’s Kitchen!) to a whole new place, which Jordon describes as “the heart of the kitchen…the dish pit!”

Think very carefully if you plan on eating out again and then listen to Jordon’s interview with Michele Norris, in which he discusses the vermin he shares the Dish Pit with, a Chinese restaurant in which the owner insisted washing water glasses was a waste of time, and the inherent racism in the New Orleans’ dish-washing scene.

Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles was featured on NPR yesterday. The book is the latest of many to try and get into the head of the Princess to get “the real Diana.” To this end, Brown sifted through the extensive press coverage and interviewed friends, staff and the people closest to her, ultimately creating a portrait of the beloved Royal as a savvy, globe-trotting humanitarian — the predecessor of Bono and Angelina Jolie

The NPR interview with Brown, along with a brief excerpt of the book is available here.

Brown and her book were also featured on GMA last week, and you may read that here.

Do you know Timothy McSweeney?

McSweeney’s Publishing, the brain child of Pulitzer Prize-finalist Dave Eggers, has long been a bright light in the land of indie publishing. Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, a quarterly fiction magazine, is in its 23 issue and has featured work from the likes of Eggers himself, Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Letham, Miranda July, Roddy Doyle and a whole slew of others.

The issues routinely break the bounds of book design (the 22 issue was held together entirely by magnets; 16 came with a story printed on the back of playing cards that made sense anyway you shuffled them) and oftentimes provides space for new and upcoming artists to showcase their work. McSweeney’s also publishes full length books, and has done so for Eggers, Nick Hornby, David Byrne, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, George Saunders, Lawrence Weschler, Robert Coover (who was responsible for the aforementioned playing cards) and Chris Adrian, among others.

Now, wouldn’t you want an institution like that in your neighborhood?

Unfortunately, McSweeney’s won’t be in anyone’s neighborhood unless they raise $130,000, the amount lost when their distributer filed for bankruptcy last December. To help ease the pain, they are holding various auctions over the next several days that include, but are not limited to, a Dave Eggers portrait of George Bush as a double-amputee; a mix tape by Nick Hornby; original art work by Marcel Dzama and David Byrne; autographed and rare issues of McSweeney’s sponsored culture magazine The Believer, old and rare issues of the quarterly and piles of other neat things yet to be announced.

Check out the McSweeney’s Website, and if you like what you see, head on over to the auction. If nothing catches your eye there, you can still help out by browsing through the McSweeney’s Store and picking up something there. Be sure also to check out other small presses like Soft Skull and Counterpoint, both of whom are similarly effected by the bankruptcy.

Have a heart, buy a book!