Jon Stewart book, George W. Bush biography among season’s new offerings - Book Reviews: Entertainment for the Marine Corps - Marine Corps Times

Jon Stewart book, George W. Bush biography among season’s new offerings

Jon Stewart is a busy man, a most important man who has no time for such pastimes as reading for pleasure.

Unless, of course, the book is his own.

“It is quite simply, with no disrespect to all of those who have come before us, the most sweeping and detailed work about humanity yet put to paper,” he says of the sweepingly titled “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race.”

“A lot of people are a little long-winded in their recounting of human history. We do it all in around 256 pages, with illustrations.”

Stewart’s worldly new work, from the same team that produced the best-selling and relatively local “America (The Book),” foresees civilization’s end and summarizes how we looked and what we did, listing our achievements in government, society and culture.

Compared to “Earth,” all else is commentary. But other releases this fall should make for worthy supplemental reading about government, society and culture, starting with a favorite subject of “The Daily Show,” the American presidency.

At least 10 books will be out on President Obama, a kind of midterm report that includes attacks from the right, attacks from the left and reviews from the middle.

Former President George W. Bush will end a self-imposed silence with “Decision Points,” scheduled for release right after Election Day.

Other presidential books include Ron Chernow’s 800-page “Washington,” which narrates in detail the real tears shed by the supposedly stoic father of this country. Edmund Morris’ “Colonel Roosevelt” completes his award-winning trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt.

Ronald Reagan’s centennial comes next year, so publisher Simon & Schuster is reissuing his memoir, “An American Life.”

Presidential honors have already been bestowed on the fall’s top literary novel, Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom,” subject of a Time magazine cover story and an object of such desire that a bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts provided a vacationing Obama with an early copy. Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley calls “Freedom” the “galvanizing” novel of the fall, the most “likely to stand out.”

Amazon.com senior book editor Tom Nissley is looking forward to new works by Laura Hillenbrand (“Unbroken”) and Oliver Sacks (“The Mind’s Eye”), and anticipates strong sales for the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography, released in full upon the 100th anniversary of his death.

“I can’t wait to read that,” Stewart says. “I just wish I could book him on my show.”

Fall release highlights

Fiction

• Freedom (Farrar, Straus & Giroux): Jonathan Franzen narrates the fall and revival of a modern American family.

• Full Dark, No Stars (Scribner): Four previously unpublished stories by Stephen King.

• Great House (W.W. Norton): Past tragedies haunt the present in Nicole Krauss’ new novel.

• Mockinjay (Scholastic): The finale of Suzanne Collins’ million-selling “Hunger Games” trilogy.

• Moonlight Mile (William Morrow): Dennis Lehane’s sequel to “Gone, Baby, Gone.”

• Nemesis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): Philip Roth imagines a polio epidemic in 1940s New Jersey.

• Reversal (Little, Brown): A new Harry Bosch thriller from Michael Connelly.

• Wicked Appetite (St. Martin’s Press): The Seven Deadly Sins threaten Boston in Janet Evanovich’s latest.

Nonfiction

• Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume I (University of California Press): His own story, 100 years after his death.

• Colonel Roosevelt (Random House): The finale of Edmund Morris’ trilogy of Teddy Roosevelt.

• The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race (Grand Central Publishing): The world in less than 300 pages, plus pictures.

• Decision Points (Crown): Former President George W. Bush describes key decisions in his life.

• Decoded (Spiegel & Grau): Straight talk from Jay-Z.

• Life (Little, Brown): The world according to Keith Richards.

• The Last Boy (Harper): Jane Leavy’s biography of baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle.

• Unbroken (Random House): A World War II bombardier’s story, as recounted by “Seabiscuit” author Laura Hillenbrand.

• Washington (Penguin): Ron Chernow’s 800-page biography of George Washington.