Amazon.com Inc.

The most popular artists today on Amazon’s new mp3 download service are, in order:  read more »

Amazon.com has refused to sell Beyond Chutzpah, by Norman Finkelstein.

I first saw Coliseum Books three years ago, just five minutes after an interview for an editorial as  read more »

Since everyone has to wait until 9 p.m. for the results, here are some results that are available now. Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer is ranked #11,286 according to Amazon.com's sales rank. Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani is ranked #10,494. -- Azi Paybarah

Former CIA analyst Robert Baer (author of a new novel, and of See No Evil, which became the film Syriana) said on the Charlie Rose show the other night what so many of us believe: Iraq is a total failure, and the presence of American troops is only making things worse for Iraqis. Baer told guest host Brian Ross that the answer (this is not verbatim) was to admit the failure and change the policy now. And to try and build an international coalition now to shore up Iraqi security, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey. (Maybe Syria, too, huh?) First George Bush must do something very brave, though not nearly as brave as what he is asking American kids to do every day, and renounce his policy. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone, including centrists and Republican and Democratic pols, would help him do this?

P.S. Baer also said that the Iran situation threatens to set off world war.

A kind reader points out that Nation Magazine's Washington correspondent, John Nichols, has written a a bio of Dick Cheney. Dick: The Man Who Is President (Dick Cheney). New Press, 2004.

Just as we were really missing Toni Schlesinger's "Shelter" column that was published in the Village Voice since 1997, this 300-plus page anthology of her writings crosses our desk.

It should be noted that the original cover, from the spring Princeton Architectural Press catalog, is comparatively more tame. Just a doorbell smack in the middle of a blue cover. This new and improved version, which hits stores next month, should appeal more to the Sex and the City box set contingent.

But you can't judge a book by the cover, and inside there numerous columns aggregated by chapter titles like "utopia," "haunted," and "fantastic." Fantastic!

- Michael Calderone Full release from the publisher is after the jump.  read more »

In this town, the price you pay is more than the asking ...

So begins the jacket copy on Seth Margolis' Closing Costs, the latest real-estate potboiler.

Cunning real-estate super agent Lucinda Wells knows that location is everything, and she uses her knowledge to control the fate of New York's high society. Embezzlement, forgery, dot-com busts--these are the scandals that pepper the lives of the city's major players who are vying for the best locations. Only Lucinda knows how to expose their weaknesses and play them off against each other.

In Closing Costs, Seth Margolis weaves together three stories in a sizzling tale that captures the devastating and blissful effects--from renovating a classic and dealing with contractors to the agony of giving up a home--of the market's twists and turns.

Bonus dirty excerpt:

Only the occasional groan from the man indicated that he was awake and deriving pleasure from the exercise--that, and an impressively durable erection. Whether the woman was deriving any satisfaction was hard to tell, as a glistening mass of ...

Hokay, kids! Wait till August 8th for the rest!  read more »

- Tom McGeveran

Neighborhood Nerd Alert: If you get dizzy when the topic is zoning, stop reading now.

Here at the Real Estate we always have a hard time balancing your interest in neighborhood issues and city planning against the unbelievably impenetrable jargon of the field.

Which is why we found ourselves thumbing through, then reading almost cover-to-cover, the City Planning Commission's Zoning Handbook, released this week.

Along with The Works, the book by economic development veep Kate Ascher, the book is kind of essential to understanding the physical shape of New York neighborhoods.

Pages and pages in the front of the book take obscure zoning classifications with names that sound like droid lot-numbers and describe in plain language the character and objectives of each zoning class, complete with diagrams and pictures showing existing streets that exemplify the zone type.

Then the book goes through specific entries on different special zoning districts, and explains in as clear language as we've read how zoning changes are made law.

You can get a copy through the Department of City Planning's bookstore at 22 Reade Street, or order it on the DCP web site ($24.00 / $18.00 each for 10 or more copies).

Sample page after the jump.  read more »

- Tom McGeveran

The Spitzer campaign announced this morning that they're hiring a Madison Avenue veteran, Jimmy Siegel, to produce their television advertising -- and that they're going up on the air next week.

The ad guy, Jimmy Siegel, also writes thrillers, but doesn't seem to have any political experience. He's best known for selling a product that every consumer advocating lawman can stand behind: credit cards. He made Visa ads for BBDO, including that Bob Dole spot, but left the agency after it lost the Visa contract last fall.

By going outside the usual field of political admakers, Spitzer will probably retain more control of the content -- he's known as a demanding client who, at one point, wrote his own ads -- and again demonstrates his skepticism of the way politics is normally done, something he demonstrated in his quick, early, unvetted selection of David Paterson as his running mate, and in his decision last year to place a round of robo-calls to voters.

Marshall Berman takes a long, Marxist look at the cleaned up Times Square in Dissent. He marvels at the flickering lights, hangs outside the Condé Nast building, and analyzes screaming TRL-crazed teenagers that flock to MTV studios (including a lone Tupac supporter). Like any self-respecting leftist, he also gets hassled by the man outside of the Reuters headquarters. So he rightfully becomes angry with the foreign new service.

"[H]ere it was acting just like the many despotic regimes it covers so well around the world, regimes to which the British feel so superior, regimes that deny that their people are a public and deny that their city streets are public space."

See, who says that Times Square isn't edgy anymore? (Dissent) -Michael Calderone  read more »

...says Robert George, in a thoughtful, bipartisan rant: He smacks Hillary, but adds: "[C]onservatives don't get a free pass on this. I don't know who started it -- though this was an early entry -- but too many on the right have adopted the "plantation" language as a favorite trope in trying to dislodge minority (particularly African American) allegiance to the Democratic Party. It matters little whether those comments have come from black conservatives or white conservatives (or Latino conservatives), it is inherently insulting and counterproductive to the very principle that the writer is advocating. It's very difficult to convince someone of the validity of your argument by suggesting that continuing to vote for the other party is evidence of a slave-like mentality. .... In short, suggesting that blacks have a plantation mentality for continuing to support Democrats -- and then expecting them to support Republicans -- makes about as much sense as trying to convince a Republican to switch parties becaused the GOP are Nazis."  read more »

Some million-dollar books get off to a slow sales start, but this slow? Amazon.com's data on Lauren Weisberger's Everyone Worth Knowing, as of this afternoon:  read more »

Just as The Politicker was weighing the relative merits of two child-rearing manuals, Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village and Rick Santorum's competing It Takes a Family, the two authors staged a little debate in the basement of the Capitol:

"It takes a village, Rick, don't forget that," Clinton called out, according to the Associated Press.

"It takes a family," he countered.

"Of course, a family is part of a village!" she replied.  read more »

The two, the AP reports, continued on in opposite directions.

Okay, maybe nobody I know actually thought that the photo of Bill Clinton "mouth-kissing" a strange woman on the Drudge Report was any more convincing than your average supermarket tabloid fare. But given the fact that the highly scrupulous journalist who brought it to light now has a best-selling book on his hands, I can see nothing wrong with a little truth-squadding. It seems that while the rest of us were carefully maintaining our distant superiority, Greg Sargent actually went and found the guy who took the picture. Apparently, Bill's indiscretion was news to the photographer, too. Check New York magazine's website shortly for further details... Update: Here's the link.  read more »

Upper West Side Councilwoman Gale Brewer tells us Robin Williams just finished a month of filming in her West 95th Street home.

Brewer tells us Williams's forthcoming film, The Night Listener, "has something to do with libraries."

The Booklist review of the Armistead Maupin novel it's based on begins, "Gay novelist Gabriel Noone is blue since his spouse, Jess, decamped to pursue his bliss among San Francisco's leather men."

OK.  read more »

"They were very nice and gave a contribution to the block association," Brewer said.

Most writers have a lot of romantic notions about what will happen to their lives the minute they pu  read more »

Manhattan is clogged and constipated with an excess of fashion trends.  read more »

It seems counterintuitive, in a business driven by buzz, that one of the most cutting-edge weapons i  read more »

Gold, the ultimate pre-postmodern investment, had a big 2002, with its best annual percentage gain s  read more »

Palm Beach is incredibly squishy.  read more »

The Perfect Store, by Adam Cohen. Little, Brown, 322 pages, $25.95.  read more »

Holiday gift-giving circa 2001is a minefield. It's not sufficient that gifts be fabulous-they, like  read more »

Don't say I didn't predict it. Unless my eyes completely deceive me, Amazon.com is raising prices.  read more »

Just before Labor Day, I played golf for the first time in my life, 18 holes at Blue Hill, a municip  read more »

We are pleased to report that we watched not one TV second of the Republican Convention.  read more »

Pages from a notebook:Thursday, April 27: I fly down to Dallas with several purposes in mind.  read more »

If John J. Sirica Jr.  read more »

For anyone pondering the mysteries and marvels of the Internet era, the first week of February provi  read more »

(BLOOMBERG NEWS)-The Internet boom has transformed the idea of the company.  read more »

There are times that try our souls, as Tom Paine suggested, and there are times that try our wits.  read more »

Dear vastly influential Manhattanite:Have you found the past few months of life in America somewhat  read more »