Title: “I Am Ozzy”

Authors: Ozzy Osbourne and Chris Ayres

Rank: 19

Blurb: “People ask me how come I’m still alive, and I don’t know what to say.”

Review: “How could Ozzy write a book? He’s dyslexic and doesn’t read. Well, how can he write songs if he’s musically illiterate and doesn’t play an instrument?”

Customers Also Bought: “Capitalism and Freedom,” by Milton Friedman

Footnote: What? He doesn’t narrate the audiobook version?

I Am Ozzy [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down”

Author: Andrew Young

Rank: 11

Blurb: “Days before the 2008 presidential primaries began, Young gained international notoriety when he told the world that he was the father of a child being carried by a woman named Rielle Hunter, who was actually the senator’s mistress.”

Review: “Edwards’s eyes blink 50 times a minute when he speaks.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Good Karma Divorce: Avoid Litigation, Turn Negative Emotions into Positive Actions, and Get On with the Rest of Your Life,” by Michele Lowrance

Footnote: The tape’s in a safe-deposit box.

The Politician [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack”

Author: Marc Thiessen

Rank: 5

Blurb: “As chief speechwriter for President Bush, he was given unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive intelligence our government possessed on al Qaeda terrorists… What he reveals is a shocking, thoroughly documented account of just how close we came to suffering follow-on 9/11 attacks, how so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (including waterboarding) were directly responsible for unearthing the actionable intelligence that foiled them, and the extraordinary measures the Bush administration took to stay well within the bounds of what was not only legally but morally right.”

Review: “It is no accident that we haven’t been attacked since 9/11.”

Customers Also Bought: “God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades,” by Rodney Stark

Footnote: “It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.” –Marc Thiessen, January 23, 2009.

“Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time.” –Donald Rumsfeld, September 11, 2001. Thiessen was Rumsfeld’s chief speechwriter from 2001-2004.

Courting Disaster [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “The Associated Press Stylebook 2009”

Rank: 91

Customers Also Bought: “Foundations of Pentecostal Theology,” by Guy P. Duffield

Footnote: But enough about that. We just need a cheap excuse to run some recent Greatest Tweets from FakeAPStylebook…

• When burying the lede always eliminate any witnesses.
• Avoid using the term ‘white paper.’ Use ‘Wall Street Journal’ instead.
• Passive voice is used when the receiver of an action is more important than the performer. Ex: Your mom was banged.

Read more »

Title: “Right Now: A 12-Step Program For Defeating The Obama Agenda”

Author: Michael Steele; foreword by Newt Gingrich

Rank: 403

Blurb: “Setting aside appeals for caution in taking on a popular president, Steele throws down the gauntlet, insisting Republicans must expose and refute the policies lying at the heart of this administration’s attempts to resurrect a discredited brand of extreme liberalism.”

Review: “Steele’s book not only changed the way I look at politics, it changed that way I look at facts.”

Customers Also Bought: “Courage and Consequence,” by Karl Rove

Footnote: A week of headline publicity (never mind the previous year), and he can’t even crack the Amazon Top 400? Although we’ll give him this: We were expecting four digits, not three.

Right Now [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun”

Author: Gretchen Rubin

Rank: 20

Blurb: “Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. ‘The days are long, but the years are short,’ she realized. ‘Time is passing, and I’m not focusing enough on the things that really matter.’ In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.”

Read more »

Title: “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead”

Author: Max Brooks

Rank: 94

Blurb: Survival Lesson #4: “Blades don’t need reloading.”

Review: “Let’s face it: at one time or another we’ve all faced a zombie scare we aren’t prepared for.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead”

Footnote: We can think of no better way to commemorate the end of the year — and the decade — than a six-year-old zombie book breaking into the Amazon Top 100.

The Zombie Survival Guide [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]