LOCAL

LOCAL

Warren native offers layman’s medical guide

JAMESTOWN, R.I. — Warren native Joseph Ciabattoni, Ph.D., M.D., gives us “Doctor C’s Medical Guide: What You Need to Know,” Xlibris, 2009.

A John Carroll and Yale universities-educated physician, Dr. Ciabattoni practiced internal medicine in North Providence, R.I., from 1979 until he retired in 2007.

He describes his book as a practical guide designed to provide health-care information on common diseases, their prevention, symptoms and treatment in layman’s terms. It provides home remedies and advises the proper use of over-the-counter medications. In educating the reader, the book helps him to ask the appropriate questions of his physician.

Readers can refer to his Xlibris Web site, www.doctorcsmedicalguide.com, or visit amazon.com, or the book can be ordered at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore.

Ursuline grad authors revisionist radio history

Alexander Russo, a 1992 graduate of Ursuline High School in Youngstown, has published “Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio Beyond the Networks,” through Duke University Press.

In his book, Russo recounts radio history, shedding light on a tiered broadcasting system that offered distinct national, regional and local programming forms, sponsorship patterns and methods of program distribution.

He not only revises our understanding of the relationship between national networks and local stations but also charts the development of new ways of listening — often distractedly rather than attentively — that set the stage for radio in the second half of the twentieth century.

Russo is a professor of media studies at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

The book can be obtained from Duke University Press for $23.95 for paperback or $84.95 for cloth, or by visiting amazon.com.

Pig Iron Poetry reading is rescheduled for Tuesday

YOUNGSTOWN — The Pig Iron Literary & Art Works announces that the Second Tuesday Open Poetry Reading originally scheduled for Feb. 9 was canceled because of snow and inclement weather.

The event has been rescheduled for Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Tomasino’s Pizza, 103 W. Federal Street, downtown.

Readers are invited to participate, and they can sign up at the door. For more information, call (330) 747-6932.

Digital Media

Macmillan books coming back to Amazon

NEW YORK — New copies of books by MacMillan authors including Andrew Young (“The Politician”), Hilary Mantel (“Wolf Hall”), Janet Evanovich, Jonathan Franzen and Barbara Ehrenreich, and from its imprints (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martin’s Press and Henry Holt & Co.) are available again from Amazon.com.

Since Feb. 5, Amazon had limited the availability of Macmillan releases in a dispute over e-books, with Macmillan calling for a new pricing system that would end the $9.99 rate Amazon had been setting for best-sellers on its Kindle e-reader. Macmillan and other publishers believe $9.99 is too low and threatens the value of books overall.

Amazon announced last week it expected to “capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.”

Under Macmillan’s “agency” model, e-books will be priced from $12.99 to $14.99 when first released, with prices to change over time. Macmillan and other publishers are believed to have agreed to a similar structure for Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPad.

Hachette Book Group USA, publishers to Stephenie Meyer and Malcolm Gladwell, supports the agency model, which gives publishers more control over pricing.

The new system will likely reduce initial profits for publishers, but publishers, authors and agents believe that higher prices will benefit the industry in the long-term.

AWARDS

Writers for Writers

NEW YORK — Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz is among this year’s winners of the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.

The award, announced Feb. 10 by the nonprofit literary organization Poets & Writers Inc., is given to authors who help their peers and the “broader literary community.”

Other winners are novelist and memoirist Maxine Hong Kingston and poet M.L. Liebler.

An Editor’s Award, given for contributions to “the publication of poetry or literary prose,” went to Pat Strachan, whose authors have included Tom Wolfe and Nobel laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott.

Vampire author Anne Rice set to release video book

NEW YORK — “Interview with a Vampire” author Anne Rice is giving the vook — or video book — a try. Rice has agreed to terms with the video book company Vook on a multimedia edition of “The Master of Rampling Gate,” a vampire story published in Redbook magazine in 1984 and set in an England mansion in the 19th century.

Vook, based in Alameda, Calif., has been producing video books for Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins’ HarperStudio and also making works out of public domain texts.

According to the company, the Rice project begins “a strategic publishing relationship” with Rice’s literary agency, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. No other specific writers were identified, but clients at Janklow & Nesbit include David McCullough, Edward P. Jones and the late Michael Crichton.

Rice’s vook, which includes an author interview, will be released March 1 and can be purchased through the iPhone, iPod touch and other digital devices. The list price is $6.99.

Vindicator staff/wire reports