Books

Books to inspire and inform young people about President-elect Barack Obama and his historic inauguration include an artist's celebration of the American spirit, the life of the first lady-to-be and a look at our 44th commander in chief for preschoolers. Obama-mania has generated junior biographies and fresh presidential encyclopedias by the armload in time for the big swearing-in Tuesday, but parents beware: Splashy Obama covers or promised postelection updates may not pay off, so check inside.

Back in the late 1990s, I wrote a novel about horse racing. Though I portrayed an array of socioeconomic actors from horse grooms to multimillionaires, it was as easy for me to empathize with the industrialist building his engine-parts factory in China as it was to empathize with the Latino apprentice jockey. I didn't mind the inequities all that much, because everyone in the novel was engaged in a single enterprise, and therefore more alike, I thought, than different.

California, the media like to tell us, faces an unprecedented fiscal crisis. The budget deficit is $40 billion and growing. The state is so short of cash that, within days, it may issue IOUs, rather than checks, to pay its bills. The Legislature, bitterly divided, seems unable to agree on a way out. The governor warns of "financial Armageddon." How should we prepare for apocalypse?

Dodgers Manager Joe Torre didn't directly address whether his controversial new book about the New York Yankees would affect his relationship with his current team during an appearance Friday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." "I think that's a great question," said Torre, who revealed his contract with the Dodgers does not include a confidentiality clause. "I say I hope so because they don't want you to write a book unless you win a championship. So hopefully we'll have that issue later on."

Americans have Philip Marlowe and Raymond Chandler. Britons have Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. And Italians have Salvo Montalbano and Andrea Camilleri. Camilleri, a bespectacled, gravel-voiced 83-year-old, has become a national character as beloved as his Montalbano, a shrewd, resolutely Sicilian police commander who solves crimes in the fictional town of Vigata. Remarkably, Camilleri's career didn't take off until he was nearly 70, when he retired as a playwright and screenwriter.

One day in spring of 2007, the phone rang in the little Buddhist center in Long Beach that has been the focus of the Venerable Tenzin Kacho's life since she was ordained a nun by the Dalai Lama. On the other end of the line was her brother, Robert Kiyosaki, a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam who crashed three times and went on to become a globe-trotting entrepreneur and author of a bestselling book on personal finance, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad."

Amazon.com Inc. on Monday unveiled its second-generation electronic reader, a slimmer and faster version of the Kindle device it introduced 14 months ago with promises to revolutionize the way people read books. The average American hasn't come close to abandoning the printed page yet. Electronic books generate less than 1% of the $25-billion U.S. book publishing market. But they're a fast-growing segment of an otherwise stagnant industry.

He spends each day looking over his shoulder, wondering if they are going to kill him for what he wrote. He's lost contact with friends; he describes his existence as living "in a cage." Author Robert Saviano has been under police protection since 2006, when his harrowing nonfiction book, "Gomorrah," blew the lid off Naples' powerful mob, the Camorra, widely regarded as a bigger, and older, organization than the Sicilian Mafia.

End war, forever. Make the planet greener. Please help my dad find work. Make it rain candy! Thousands of kids detailed their hopes and expectations for President Obama in letters and drawings as part of a "Dear Mr. President" project, with 150 chosen for publication in a free e-book being released today, on Presidents Day. Most had tall orders for the new guy in the White House. Anthony Pape, 10, of DuBois, Pa., offered: "I hope that we will have no war ever again.

If Anais Nin had a Nikon D3 and every celebrity in town on her BlackBerry, her photos would probably look a lot like those Deborah Anderson shot for her new book, "Room 23." Anderson, a photographer whose distinctive sensuality is located somewhere between classic French erotica and Helmut Newton -- is releasing a hefty coffee-table volume today filled with an impressive list of stars: George Clooney, Lindsay Lohan, Kid Rock, Sharon Stone, James Blunt, Cindy Crawford, Elton John.