Tattered Essence

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this week from 8 a.m. Thursday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV’s website.

Saturday, December 27

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a program that first aired in 1998, Paul Johnson, author of A History of the American People (Harper Perennial, $20, 9780060930349/0060930349), discussed his book, which uses historical documents and quotations from personal diaries to detail race relations, immigration, war and customs in the U.S.

7 p.m. Navy SEAL officer Eric Greitens, author of Strength and Compassion: Photographs & Essays (Leading Authorities Press, $65, 9780971007802/0971007802) contends that, “in times of great hardship and in the face of great evil, people with strength and compassion can live with courage.” (Re-airs Monday at 1 a.m., Saturday, January 10, at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m., and Sunday, January 11, at 3 p.m.)

10 p.m. After Words. Historian Peniel Joseph interviews Philip Dray, author of Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen. (Houghton Mifflin, $30, 9780618563708/0618563709). Dray discusses the prejudice that the 16 representatives faced and the many issues they advocated for. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m., and Sunday, January 4, at 11 a.m.)

Need scheduling software to help schedule your plant’s manufacturing? Plant Schedule software is a browser based scheduling system that can be purchased on a monthly basis, and allows manufacturing plants to schedule production online. The Plant Schedule – Manufacturing Scheduling Software can cost as little as $100 per seat per month. The Service system can handle complex scheduling operations and provides users with a graphical interfaces that can be customized with filters and advanced planning functions. In this way, users can arrange the system based on custom criteria, and the Plant Schedule manufacturing scheduling software can be used by itself or can be integrated into existing company scheduling systems. Let Plant Schedule help you arrange and coordinate all manufacturing components, including machines, employees, tools and materials.  Proper scheduling can have the benefits of increased production, increased capacity, faster time from factory to market, and more. Since Plant Schedule is an online system, it is always available to the company’s schedule-keeper, making it easy to use and maintain. And if you aren’t entirely convinced, you can try Plant Schedule for free before you buy. The free trial is available at the website, so you can try it out with nothing to lose.

Michael Muhammad Knight is a recent self publishing success. The author is responsible for the novel The Taqwacores. The book is about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo. It was self published 5 years ago. And it was picked up by Autonomedia. A revised version is being released from Soft Skull Press on March 1, 2009.

A college professor has called the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims. You can read more about it on the New York Times site.

Soft Skull is publishing several other titles by Knight, who converted to Islam:

• Impossible Man (Or, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Rise of Islam) ($14.95, 9781593762261/1593762267), an autobiography to be published in March.
• Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America ($14.95, 9781593762407/1593762402), with a May 1 pub date.
• Osama Van Halen ($14.95, 9781593762421/1593762429), a July novel.

The New Year is almost upon us. Have you made a resolution to lose those extra pounds? Would you like to do it in the first few months of 2009? How about having it all off by the end of March? P90X is a weight loss system to get the weight off fast. It is a ninety day physical fitness program, which combines healthy eating with regular physical activity to help you get to the best shape of your life. The emphasis is on the importance of regular exercise to build muscle that replaces excess weight. The program also includes the P90X nutrition plan that ups your metabolism to burn away extra calories fast. And plenty of people have already seen the value of the P90X system of exercise and healthy eating. The P90X forums have over one thousand members to help you along in your weight loss goals and share information with you. So, if you want to lose those extra pounds in the new year, and if you want to be toned and trim and in the best shape of your life, make a resolution to join P90X and take the weight off fast.

On January 23, 2009 New Line Cinema will release Inkheart. It is based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Cornelia Funke.

That novel is about a girl who discovers that her father has the ability to bring fictional characters out of books. It was the first title in what became the Inkheart Trilogy. It was followed by Inkspell in 2005 and Inkdeath in October 2008.

Directed by Iain Softley (K-PAX), the film stars Brendan Fraser as Mo Folchart and Eliza Bennett (Nanny McPhee) as his daughter Meggie. Helen Mirren and Paul Bettany also star. Funke, who lives with her children in California, was involved in the film as one of its producers.