Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Presidential Candidate John, is unfortunately best known for her perseverance in the face of terrible challenges. She first lost a sixteen year old son in a freak car accident. She was then diagnosed with breast cancer on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. Now, at the onset of the 2008 campaign, she discovered that cancer had moved to her bones, and was now classified as incurable. The doctors gave her about five years to live.

Now, if that woman chose to offer some advice about determination, you would listen, yes? Of course you would, which is why you’ll read the excerpt of her memoir Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers, which was recently released in paperback. In it, you’ll find heart-wrenching descriptions of love, grief, and the value of people coming together.

Lovely.

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain has a new book, Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them, in which he examines the most difficult aspect of being a Decider: making decisions. Written with Mark Salter, the book is largely anecdotal and offers numerous examples of good and bad decisions. During an interview with NPR, McCain drew heavily on history, citing stories from Vietnam and former presidents in an effort to explain how he came to make some of his hardest decisions, most notably his choice to support the Iraq war at its outset.

Of the current state of the war, which he also touches on in the book, he had this to say: “Every bit of knowledge and instinct, awareness and confidence that I have makes me believe absolutely that setting a date for withdrawal will result in chaos and genocide in the region, and we will then have to call on young Americans to make even greater sacrifices.”

Listen to the interview and read an excerpt.

By now, every candidate in the 2008 election has published at least one book, from Obama on down to Biden. The former has, in fact, written two memoirs — The Audacity of Hope and Dreams of My Father — both of which were runaway best sellers. Why? Jon Meacham, the managing editor of Newsweek, argues that the senator’s compelling life story has made them so popular.

Says Meacham, “One of the most ancient devices in presidential politics is to sell one’s life journey as the qualification for high office, whether it’s Lincoln in the log cabin or Andrew Jackson standing up as a 14-year-old to the British and having the British officer hit him in the head with a sword, and it was, I think, very astute of Obama to use his own life in that way.”

Books as a campaign tool began in earnest with Jimmy Carter during the 1976 election, when he published Why Not the Best? “It’s a way of getting his vision of the country out,” Meacham told NPR. “And since then, it’s become a kind of course requirement for a presidential candidate to publish something. How many people read them I think is a very open question.”

Read the article and listen to the full interview.

William Gibson, arguably the king of science fiction for the past two decades, has written a new book! Spook Country, a stand-alone sequel to 2005’s Pattern Recognition, continues Gibson’s tradition of incorporating cutting-edge technology into his books. When he sat down with NPR over the weekend, he cited two specific examples that heavily inform the book: “Locative Art”, which involves creating a blended reality that combines aspects of the real world with a virtual one. Early on in the novel, an artist attempts to convince the managers of the Virgin Mega Store to allow him to set up a virtual recreation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lethal heart attack. Unbeknownst to the managers, though, the piece was already displayed and looping endlessly, but nobody could access it because they did not have what Gibson calls “the URL”.

Spook Country also examines post 9/11 “Big Brother” technology, and the increasing lack of privacy for both the watcher and the watched. Says Gibson, “If you’re a crooked politician, and you’re lying about something, we’re going to know about it, because in the digital world…everything is porous, and its not easy to keep a secret for very long.”

I’ll say this, though: after listening to the interview, which was one of the more interesting I’ve heard recently, I still have absolutely no idea what this book is about. See if you can figure it out.

SoHo wasn’t always the hipsters paradise. Before it became a mecca of designers, fashionistas, and other people that dress better than you or I, it was really kind of seedy: run down, lots of dubious-looking clubs and shops, obvious drug addiction. It’s this, the SoHo of old, that provides the backdrop for Irini Spanidou’s third book, Before, which centers around the beautiful Beatrice, the “It-Girl” of the neighborhood. Beatrice has moved in with and is supporting her hard-drinking, painter husband, Ned, who is oblivious to the fact that his new wife has become an unattainable object of desire for the junkies in the neighborhood. People float in and out of Beatrice’s life, there are ups and downs, and all the while, Beatrice feels powerless, struggling for a self-knowledge and self-worth.

Did my description not make a lick of sense to you? Listen to an NPR interview with Spanidou herself, and be sure to read the excerpt.

Billy Graham, arguably the world’s most famous evangelist, was a close confidant of eleven presidents. No man has had such unfettered access to the White House for such an extended period of time. They called him in for comfort, for advice and guidance, and he considered each one of them a close personal friend. Three of those friends, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, were on hand for the dedication of the Billy Graham Library, in Graham’s hometown of North Carolina, which opened shortly before Graham’s wife, Ruth, slipped into a coma and died. In the wake of all this, there comes a book: The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House, co-authored by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, which examines the unique intersection of faith and politics that Billy Graham personified.

The book was featured on Friday on Good Morning America. Read the article here.

How’s this for alternative history: the first humans were female, and they were called the Clefts. Why? I do not know. They lived in harmonious bliss, impregnated every so often by “a fertilizing wind or wave”. It had been like this since before anyone could remember. But then there was this child, a child produced with a terrible defect, a “lumpy swelling”, the likes of which they had never seen before. From this child, rape and murder are born, and love, consensual sex, and babies as we now know them — the first of a new race.

This could only be the work of that zany Doris Lessing, who, at age 88, is one of the most lauded novelists of the 20th century. The Cleft examines the interplay of and inherent friction produced by the two genders, using a vehicle - the creation myth - that is as effective as it is original. NPR’s Alan Cheuse reviewed the novel a few days back, and you should listen to it here.

It makes you feel like you’re in seventh grade again, all these summer reading lists. They do have their purpose, though, and everyone has found one or two books worthwhile on them. The latest, and probably last of the season, appeared on NPR’s Day to Day this morning, and includes books from James Lee Burke, Tina Brown, Ridley Pearson and several others. Certainly some stuff worth checking out.

Read the list here. A 500 word report will be due on the first day of school.

Jed Babbin. With a name like that, how could you forget him? He was the George H.W. Bush’s Undersecretary of Defense, and now he’s joined the ranks of people that insist we knew about 9/11 years before it happened, and still failed to take any preventative action. But that’s not even the important part: in his newest book, In the Words of Our Enemies Babbin says we’re still being warned by Iran, North Korea, and terrorist factions across the world. The inside flap informs us that the book tackles such topics as, “What the Islamists themselves are saying about their plans for America–mass murder followed by imposition of Islamic sharia law?”, “How Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is leading a radical anti-American revolution that aims to organize the world’s oil supplies against America”, and “How many countries have threatened to use nuclear weapons against America (it’s more than you think)”.

So conspiracy theorists rejoice. This will give you fodder for years.

Babbin appeared on the Daily Show several days ago. Watch the full interview here.

ps. Foreword by Newt Gingrich!

We as a country like rich people. We’re fascinated by them. Whole magazines, TV series, books and movies are devoted to the badness of the idle rich, and somehow, they never get boring. The latest in the vein is The Descendants, the first novel by Hawaiian writer Kaui Hart Hemmings. Set against the lush backdrop of her native state, the book follows resident rich person Matthew King, a royal descendant and one of the largest landowners in the state. Should be happy, yes? Of course not. One daughter, an ex-model, is a recovering drug addict, the other is a smart-ass attention whore, and his wife lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident, unlikely to reawaken. Matt faces the challenge of rallying family and friends to say their bedside goodbyes, except that one man, the most important man, has not been told: the man she was having an affair with, and quite possibly the one man she truly loved. Discovering that man’s existence, the now-estranged husband has to hit the road with his daughters to find this man, and profound personal change and self-actualization remain close at hand throughout.

How about that for a tale of the upper-class woe?

NPR’s Alan Cheuse reviewed the novel, and what that man says matters! Listen to it here, and be sure to check out the little “Novel Ideas” blurb at the bottom of the page.