Bloomberg BusinessWeek profiled Ron Burkle, head of Yucaipa Cos. and owner of 18.7% of Barnes & Noble stock. Burkle is currently at odds with the bookseller's board, which has enacted a poison pill provision limiting outsiders' investments to 20% of stock.

Burkle, who is personally worth $3.2 billion, according to Forbes, has a history of buying large interests in companies that are doing well enough so that it's unlikely he'll take a loss on his investment while promising enough to make a very nice return. Sometimes he influences company policy; sometimes he takes over direction of the company. He sees plenty of opportunity in B&N.

"Before investing in Barnes & Noble," the magazine wrote, "Burkle and his team asked publishers, book agents, consumers, and tech companies the same question: In the era of the e-book, what good is a bookstore? What Burkle learned was that Barnes & Noble has a deep and abiding relationship with its customers and could do a lot more to exploit it."

In his first letter to B&N chairman Len Riggio, Burkle related, "I said, 'You've had such a successful career, you've made so much money. Don't do the college book deal.' "

This referred to B&N's purchase of B&N College, which had been a separate company owned by the Riggios. B&N did make the purchase and then adopted the poison-pill provision.

Burkle's most recent letter to B&N was to ask for a meeting with non-management members of the board, i.e., not the Riggios (Shelf Awareness, February 28, 2010).

Lloyd Greif, head of investment banking firm Greif & Co., commented: "Barnes & Noble is in contempt of Ron, and that's not a good offense to commit. Most folks live to regret that."

Book-related Oscar winners last night included:

Jeff Bridges, who won best actor for Crazy Heart, based on the novel by Thomas Cobb.

Crazy Heart also won best song for "The Weary Kind."

Mo'Nique, who won best supporting actress for Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.

Geoffrey Fletcher, who won best adapted screenplay for Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.

The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), based on the novel La Pregunta de Sus Ojos by Eduardo Sacheri, won best foreign language film.

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Helped by higher-priced 3D tickets, Alice in Wonderland took in an estimated $116.3 million at North American theaters and another $94 million abroad, for a total of $210.3 million on its first weekend in release, according to the New York Times. Alice is directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.

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A new law in Colorado requiring Amazon.com and other online retailers to tell customers in the state how much they owe in sales tax--but doesn't require them to collect sales tax--has led Amazon to stop doing business with third-party vendors in Colorado, according to O'Reilly Radar.

Amazon sent letters to "associates," informing them of the decision. For states in which Amazon has no distribution centers or offices, associates have been cited by states as creating sufficient nexus for requiring the e-tailer to collect sales tax on purchases to people in those states.

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Wi-fi versions of Apple's iPad will go on sale in the U.S. on Saturday, April 3, and in late April for wi-fi and 3G versions, the company said. AT&T, which sells iPhones, will provide 3G service for those iPads but will not sell the iPad in its stores, according to the Wall Sreet Journal. The iPad will go on sale in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.

Effective March 12, U.S. customers may order iPads online or reserve one to pick up at Apple stores.

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Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, Ga., has restored a historic theater downtown and is moving its theater department and bookstore into the building, which will open March 29, according to NACS's Campus Marketplace.

The bookstore is being expanded and will take up two floors of the structure. Trade books and gift items will be on the main floor. Textbooks and school supplies will be on the lower level. The facility includes a coffee shop.

"We've always wanted to be more open to the public and have things that would attract the public more than just a college bookstore," manager Lynda Grable told CM. "We lost our Waldenbooks in Milledgeville, so this is an opportunity for us. We're really gearing this to what the students and the community want."

The bookstore has begun a contest to name itself.

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In the Globe and Mail, Russell Smith lamented the effect of e-books on personal book collections, writing in part:

"So we lose forever the pleasure known to humanity for 500 years of taking a stroll up and down the aisles of someone else's brain by perusing their bookshelves. Gone will be the guilty joy of spending a rainy afternoon at a cottage with the remnants of someone else's childhood: their Nancy Drews, their 1970s National Geographics. Without bookshelves, you will never know the warning signs contained in the e-reader of your handsome date--you will not know for months that he is reading The Secret and Feng Shui for Dummies, even if you stay over. You will never be able to ask, as casually as you can, 'Did you like this?' as you pull down, as if fascinated, Patrick Swayze's autobiography."

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Book trailer of the day: The Name of the Nearest River by Alex Taylor (Sarabande Books).

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The blog of Subterranean Books, St. Louis, Mo., was included in Riverfront Times's list of 13 must-read blogs. Owner Kelly von Plonski wrote, "The blog is so important to us. It's the means by which we spread the Subterranean ethos. It's a really great introduction to who we are as a store. It's reflective of all of our personalities and when you're such a small store, the staff's personalities are the store's personality."

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Here's a nice story about nine-year-old Molly McArdle of Berkeley, Calif., as told by her father to Andy Weiner of Abrams:

"Molly was looking at my DVD box of Ken Burns's Baseball. She looked at the back and said, 'This is wrong.' I asked her what was wrong, and she said, 'It says that baseball is America's national pastime. America's national pastime is reading.' "

Weiner added that "Molly's heart was broken was Cody's closed, but she was restored when Books Inc. opened near where Cody's had been."

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The New England Independent Booksellers Association and ABA are sponsoring an author luncheon and ABA Spring Forum, Wednesday, April 7, in Portland, Maine. The day begins at 11:15 a.m. with a dozen authors reading and talking about their new books, followed by lunch with the authors and a two-hour afternoon session on techniques and tactics for online website promotion.

The event will be held at the University of Southern Maine's Glickman Library. For more information go to newenglandbooks.org.

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The German art, photography and fashion book publisher Steidl is now being distributed in North America by Innovative Logistics, Lakewood, N.J. Steidl was formerly distributed by Distributed Art Publishers.

Publisher Gerhard Steidl commented: "We have made this move in order to develop a tightly focused sales campaign for both our new titles and our extensive backlist."

 

Last week, Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, Vt., hosted an event for Howard Frank Mosher, the first stop on his nationwide tour for Walking to Gatlinburg (Shaye Areheart), and drew an SRO crowd. At the reading and discussion, Galaxy owner Linda Ramsdell (l.) and manager Sandy Scott wore period coats lent by a Civil War reenactor.

This coming Sunday, March 14, is the premiere of the 10-part miniseries The Pacific on HBO. The Pacific is produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the team that produced the wildly popular Band of Brothers miniseries, which originally aired on HBO in 2001. Band of Brothers followed an army company that fought in Europe, and was based on Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name. By contrast, The Pacific is based on the memoirs of three Marines and tells their stories.

Two of those memoirs have been published:

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene B. Sledge (Ballantine/Presidio, $16, 9780891419068/0891419063)
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie (Bantam, $16, 9780553593310/0553593315)

The Pacific also used material from:

Iwo Jima: Red Blood, Black Sand--Pacific Apocalypse by Charles W. Tatum
China Marine: An Infantryman's Life After World War II by Eugene B. Sledge (Oxford University Press, $17.95, 9780195167764/0195167767)

A companion volume, The Pacific: Hell Was an Ocean Away (NAL, $26.95, 9780451230232/045123023X), is by Hugh Ambrose, a consultant to the miniseries and son of Stephen Ambrose.

In addition, War in the Pacific: 1941–1945 by Richard Overy (Osprey, $45, 9781849083942/1849083940) features a foreword by Dale Dye, senior military adviser to The Pacific.

Osprey has also issued in paperback The Pacific War: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, edited by Daniel Marston ($19.95, 9781849083829/1849083827), originally published in 2005.

This morning on the Today Show: Karl Rove, author of Courage and Consequence (Threshold Editions, $30, 9781439191057/1439191050). He will also appear on NPR's Diane Rehm Show today, and tomorrow on the Today Show, Fox News's Hannity and the Rush Limbaugh Show.

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This morning on Good Morning America: Chelsea Handler, author of Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (Grand Central, $25.99, 9780446552448/0446552445). Tomorrow she appears on Live with Regis and Kelly and on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

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Today on the Book Studio: Randi Hutter Epstein, author of Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank (Norton, $25, 9780393064582/0 393064581).

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Today on the Howard Stern Show: Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, $26.95, 9780465014910/0465014917).

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Today on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Random House, $25, 9781400068937/1400068932).

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Tonight on the Daily Show: Harry Markopolos, author of No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller (Wiley, $27.95, 9780470553732/0470553731).

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Tomorrow morning on Fox & Friends: Lewis Lehrman, author of Lincoln at Peoria (Stackpole Books, $29.95, 9780811703611/0811703614).

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Tomorrow morning on NPR's Morning Edition: Deborah Amos, author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East (PublicAffairs, $25.95, 9781586486495/1586486497).

Also on Morning Edition: Patrick Neate, author of Culture Is Our Weapon: Making Music and Changing Lives in Rio de Janeiro (Penguin, $14, 9780143116745/0143116746).

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Tomorrow on Westwood One Radio's Jim Bohannon Show: Don Teague and Rafraf Barrak, authors of Saved by Her Enemy (Howard Books, $24.99, 9781439159101/1439159106).

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Tomorrow on NPR's All Things Considered: Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Norton, $27.95, 9780393072235/0393072231).

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Tomorrow on the Book Studio: Pat Choate, author of Saving Capitalism: Keeping America Strong (Vintage, $15, 9780307474834/0307474836).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Marc Thiessen, author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack (Regnery, $29.95, 9781596986039/1596986034).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Annie Leonard, author of The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health--and a Vision for Change (Free Press, $26, 9781439125663/143912566X). She will also appear tomorrow on CNN's Amanpour.

 

Jean Strouse, the biographer and director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, has won the first BIO Award, to be given each year by members of Biographers International Organization to a colleague who has made "a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of real life depiction."

Strouse will receive the honor during the 2010 Compleat Biographer conference on May 15 at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where she will deliver the keynote address.

BIO's interim president Debby Applegate said, "Strouse's astonishing, masterful, and inspiring work on Alice James and J. Pierpont Morgan has made her a biographer's biographer. As the first recipient of this award, she is setting a high standard for future honorees." Alice James: A Biography won the Bancroft Prize in 1980.

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The long list for the 2010 SIBA Book Awards features 101 books that Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance members will vote on to create a list of finalists. A jury of SIBA booksellers will then pick the winners, who will be announced in July.

 

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:
 
Hardcover
 
The Room and the Chair by Lorraine Adams (Knopf, $25.95, 9780307272416/0307272419). "Using the disparate elements of the newsroom of a moribund newspaper, a test pilot involved in a mysterious crash and an anonymous intelligence agent, Lorraine Adams crafts a riveting story of modern society. As the various threads coalesce, a morally bankrupt and totally dystopian world is revealed. This is fiction serving the purpose of reflecting stark reality."--Bill Cusumano, Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor, Mich.
 

The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin (HarperOne, $24.99, 9780061655937/0061655937). "The Harvard Psychedelic Club brought back lots of memories--some fond, some not--of the '60s, when Timothy Leary, Ram Dass and Huston Smith were among the people who dominated the popular press. Lattin is correct in writing that it took society about 30 years to catch up with 'the lads.' On the other hand, peace and love seem to be just about as far away as ever. A gem of a little book."--Gerald A. DeLong, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cleveland, Ohio
 
Paperback
 
Confessions of an Eco-Sinner by Fred Pearce (Beacon, $16, 9780807085950/0807085952). "It's official: Everyone is going green. Sometimes, though, learning which behaviors really make a difference seems an impossible task. In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce is determined to find the truth by following his possessions from the cradle to the grave. What he learns is sometimes disturbing, occasionally rewarding, and always eye-opening."--Rachel Tavares, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz.
 
For Ages 4 to 8
 
Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper (Hyperion Books for Children, $14.99, 9781423118978/1423118979). "Cupcake is the story of a vanilla cupcake who doesn't feel very special next to all the other cupcakes who have fancy frosting and sprinkles. Then he meets a plain candle who doesn't feel very special either. Together they team up to feel better about themselves. The story is cute and the illustrations are delicious!"--Lauren Peugh, Mrs. Nelson's Toy & Book Shop, La Verne, Calif.
 
[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]
 

Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth (Scribner, $24, 9781416543077/1416543074, March 2, 2010)

Opening lines of books we want to read:

Eighty hungry women are sitting in a circle with bowls of cold tomato vegetable soup; they are glowering at me, furious. It is lunchtime on the third day of the retreat. During these daily eating meditations each woman approaches the buffet table, lines up to be served, takes her seat in the circle, and waits until we all sit down to eat. The process is agonizingly slow--fifteen minutes or so--especially if food is your drug of choice.

Although the retreat is going well and many people have had life-changing insights, at this moment no one cares. They don’t care about stunning breakthroughs or having ninety pounds to lose or whether God exists. They want to be left alone with their food, period.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl