The New York Public Library is in temporary possession of a new coffee-table book that weighs in at 61-lbs. The NY Times reports that the rarity was recently hand-made "by scholars, artists and artisans," and is called Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano. The book cost around $126K to make (what recession?) and will be on view through Monday. The cover of the book is "a bas-relief depiction of Michelangelo’s 'Madonna of the Steps,' sculptured on a......

Heather Hunter has been vindicated! What do you mean, who's Heather Hunter? Ever hear of a little film called Screw The Right Thing? Bloopers And Boners? Hung Jury? Nevermind; according to her website, the retired porn star is "hailed as this generation’s most well-regarded sexual icon." And she's "ready to start another phase of her career.......as a rap superstar." But first she had to put a nasty lawsuit behind her, brought by her presumably less......

The New York Supreme Court has ruled that Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. must submit to a deposition by attorneys representing Donald Trump, who is suing Times business editor Timothy O'Brien and the publishers of O'Brien's book TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald. Trump is seeking $5 billion in damages because he says the book grossly underestimated his net worth at $150 million to $250 million, instead of the billions and billions he claims.......

A waiter who turned his service industry lemons into publishing lemonade with his blog Waiter Rant has unmasked himself for the Post today, just in time for the release of his tell-all book. After years of anonymous venting about his miserable experiences serving swells at an unspecified restaurant in “the city's affluent suburbs,” Steve Dublanica has outed himself as the man who “prefers more elegant methods of revenge" than spitting in diners’ food – though......

Rappers Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown (otherwise known as Kimberly Jones and Inga Marchand) were separately contracted to write books for Simon & Schuster...but after collecting their advances, each failed to produce manuscripts. By not making good on their words, they were each delivered a lawsuit in New York State Court yesterday. The NY Sun reports that Jones received a $40K advance for her booked titled, "Untitled Novel" and Marchand received $75K for hers, called......

Last month Dumbo Books announced a new release by writer Richard Grayson called Who Will Kiss the Pig? Sex Stories for Teens; the announcement got some attention after their Craigslist ad was published. You see, they were looking for cool-looking hipsters to write blurbs for the book, and now they've finally sent out a PDF copy to those who inquired. What took so long? "We have been waiting for Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling [on......

John Darnielle may be best known for his band The Mountain Goats, but he's also the latest blogger with a book; this weekend he's in town as both a musician and an author. Tomorrow night Darnielle will read from his book, the latest in the 33 1/3 series, about Black Sabbath's Master of Reality; which he wrote through the voice of a 15-year-old boy who's been institutionalized. Before taking a seat at Housing Works on......

Attention sexy hipster kids, there's a new Craigslist poster that needs YOU...if you are, in fact, a young hip Brooklynite who has a penchant for blurbing and reading about the sexual encounters of teens. Interested? Read on...Cool Brooklyn book publisher looking for cool 18-25yo hipsters to blurb our cool forthcoming book of sex stories for teens. We will send you a PDF of the book and ask for a blurb & headshot for advertising, website,......

Three years ago, Adam Mansbach shook up the world of fiction with his debut novel Angry Black White Boy, or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, a satire about "race, whiteness and hip hop." Dubbed "a remarkably successful remix of the traditional race novel," the book was hailed as the 21st century's answer to Native Son. Not bad for a guy who at the time was barely 30. With his latest novel, The End of the......

With Brooklyn storefronts becoming more and more generic as chains move in to the borough's nabes, a book documenting some of the more old-timey awnings has hit the market. Featuring 75 photographs taken while on bicycle rides, Paul Lacy's Brooklyn Storefronts will take you on a colorful (albeit 2-dimensional) tour of retail exteriors including Los Doctores Tires Shop, the Great Eagle Photo Company, and the St. Jude Religious Articles. This is a decidedly less dangerous......

Nicholas Pekearo was a 28-year-old auxiliary police officer whose life was ended short after being gunned down in Greenwich Village last year. Almost exactly one year later, it has been announced that Pekearo's debut novel will be in stores soon. As an author, Pekearo (who worked in many of New York's book stores throughout his life) is described as "prolific." His book, The Wolfman, follows a werewolf detective who flips burgers by day and "investigates......

Five years ago today, the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" invaded Iraq. Some $600 billion later, with over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, more than 6,000 U.S. casualties, and some some 82,000 dead Iraqi civilians, the U.S. continues to occupy the country. A Nobel prize-winning economist has calculated that the war will ultimately cost the U.S. more than $3 trillion. On Monday, during Dick Cheney's visit to Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 43 people in Karbala.......

Five years ago today, President George Bush announced the start of the Iraq War. Some $600 billion later, with over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, more than 6,000 U.S. casualties, and some some 82,000 dead Iraqi civilians, the U.S. continues to occupy the country. Jason Christopher Hartley, a National Guard soldier who was living in New York City on 9/11 and subsequently served at Ground Zero, maintained a blog during his 2004 tour of duty in......

Yoko Ono is not going to be too pleased with this: it turns out John Lennon was quite happy during his infamous "Lost Weekend" period. The "weekend," which lasted 18 months (during 1973-75), was a separation from Ono, where he spent nearly two years with the couple's one-time employee May Pang (in both LA and NYC). It has long been said that he was depressed during this time, but if Pang's new book of photographs,......

The scandal around the memoir-turned- fake-recalled- from-bookstores memoir Love and Consequences continues to embarrass the book publishing industry. Writer Margaret Jones, who told her publisher she was a half-white, half-Native American raised by a black foster family in South Central L.A. and former Bloods gang member, was exposed as Margaret Seltzer, white private school graduate from Sherman Oaks, California. Her real (white) sister called the publisher Riverhead Books after reading a lengthy NY Times feature......

Alex Ross has worked as the music critic of The New Yorker for over a decade. Somehow he still had time to churn out a book though, his first, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, hit shelves late last year. The tome delves into the cultural history of music since 1900, and even has Björk touting: "Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music." Tonight he'll step away from......

Brooklyn writers are banding together to be the latest voice against Bruce Ratner's vision for Atlantic Yards. A number of local wordsmiths have contributed to Brooklyn Was Mine, an anthology consisting of short essays and stories put together by two Vogue editor to benefit Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (a non-profit that fights development while uniting the community). From the press release:"Brooklyn has given birth to some of America's greatest literary voices," note the anthology's co-editors,......

The elements that have made City Hall Park so attractive to New York's humans have also made the area hospitable to the city's rodent population--so much so that the park has become overrun with rats, who don't seem to mind people company as much as people mind rat company. Regardless of the time of day or the number of people congregating there, rats--lots and lots of them--have made City Hall park their home. The New......