Mitt Romney had a strong showing in the Iowa caucus, was the front-runner in New Hampshire, but has trailed Newt Gingrich since South Carolina. As the nation waits to see if the once-assumed Republican victor will be catapulted on to victory, a new book by Ronald B. Scott explores how Romney decided to enter politics in the first place, portraying him as more human than he often appears to be on the stump. Both as a seasoned journalist and as a fellow Mormon and a distant cousin to Romney, Scott examines Romney’s character and convictions, his words and actions, his flips and flops, and his triumphs and setbacks, interviewing those who know him best—allies and adversaries alike—to provide what nationally syndicated columnist George E. Curry calls “a fascinating portrait of one of America’s most complicated political figures.” 

The only independent biographical profile of the candidate who would be president, “Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics” puts the businessman and former Republican governor of Massachusetts in context like no other book before.

The San Francisco Chronicle hails ABC’s Suburgatory as “a genuinely funny and immediately likable sitcom,” and The Hollywood Reporter calls it “one of the biggest surprises of the fall,” a show that not only “clicks on a number of different levels, it even has a Juno-esque element to it, plus a breakout-worthy star in Jane Levy.” Viewers are equally taken by the series. The show opened in late September as ABC’s biggest half-hour comedy premiere in 8 years, and its ratings have increased steadily ever since.

As with many good TV shows and movies, Suburgatory started with a great book. Linda Erin Keenan was a CNN senior producer/h ead-writer for seven years before she reconsidered her 24/7 lifestyle, exchanging a decent paycheck and a New York City address for a baby and a house in the suburbs. Going from “80 miles an hour to zero,” however, this thoroughly urban, trash-talking news producer soon found herself trapped in what she calls “Lesschester County, a gleaming expanse of white people as far as the eye could see, where subversion seemed policed and I often felt like I’d been taken hostage by an adult Girl Scout troop. What was less about Lesschester? Less humor, less edge.”

Refusing to lessen her own humor and blunt her edge, however, Keenan trained her twisted reporters eye on the strange inhabitants of this foreign land, writing fake news satire. The result was Suburgatory: Twisted Tales from Darkest Suburbia—a book that uses laugh-out-loud humor to target racism, homophobia, submerged suburban sexuality, class welfare, willful ignorance, and the all-around bad behavior raging beneath the surface of those obsessively tended suburban lawns and bikini lines.

On Tuesday, October 20, sheriff’s deputies in Zaneville, Ohio, shot and killed dozens of roaming exotic animals—including 18 Bengal tigers and 16 lions, as well as black bears, grizzlies, mountain lions, wolves, and a baboon—after they were released from their enclosures by their owner. This tragic loss of wildlife stunned animal lovers around the world, renewing calls for tighter restrictions or a ban on private ownership of exotic animals.

“Imagine the panic and terror experienced by the monkeys, bears, lions and leopards that ran loose in Ohio earlier this week as they were chased and then killed by the police,” writes author Peter Laufer in a New York Times op-ed piece following the animal slaughter. “Imagine the heartbreak of the police officers who were obliged to destroy the rambling menagerie. Officers are not trained to stalk big game and bring them in alive with tranquilizer darts.”

Asks Laufer: “Why was there no law regulating the animal collection of Terry Thompson, who freed his animals and then apparently killed himself?”

In hi s latest book out from Lyons Press, No Animals Were Harmed: The Controversial Line Between Entertainment and Abuse, Laufer examines animal rights in terms of how animals have been used for sport and entertainment.

“The more I read, the more I observed, the more animals—human and nonhuman—I met, the more it seemed to me that a possum was pointing me toward my conclusion,” Laufer writes in the prologue. “’We have met the enemy,’ Pogo taught us, ‘and he is us.’ Even the one thing I wanted to promise the reader as I embarked on this project—that no animals were harmed by me during the writing of this book—proved an impossible task.”

"9/11: The World Speaks"—a special commemorative book released in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks—was launched with a special book signing at the Tribute WTC Visitor Center in New York City on Tuesday, Aug. 16. A collection of 226 comments, drawings, and memories left on visitors’ cards at the Tribute center, the book is intended to serve as an inspiration.

"You can say it's a 9/11 book, but it speaks positive of the things that happened after 9/11 and what we all want in our lives, and that's nothing more than to be left alone and live in peace," Lee Ielpi, co-founder of the center, told NY 1 News.

"It's thoughts from people that have come from around the world to the World Trade Center to pay their respects," said Jennifer Adams, co-founder.

The book also launched with an ongoing Twitter campaign that has generated so far tweets from celebrities such as Deepak Chopra, Christy Turlington, Kerry Washington, and Demi Moore.