Newsreels

Readers already owning the hardcover edition of Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence and wanting to read the 30-page epilog written exclusively for the paperback edition can now purchase just the epilog for $5 as an ebook standalone. This marks the first offering from Penguin Group and its recently launched eSpecials Program, through which such "eSpecials" will be available in formats including Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle, and Adobe Acrobat.

Autism: The Musical (www.newvideo.com. ISBN 978-1-4229-0799-3. $26.95) won two Emmy® Awards last month, for Best Editing and Outstanding Nonfiction Special. The HBO documentary (LJ 9/1/08), which focuses on five autistic children and their involvement in a special-needs theater program, was created by Elaine Hall and Diane Isaacs, themselves parents of autistic children.

On September 16, two weeks after its new video-on-demand service went live, Amazon launched a free video-streaming service through its Internet Movie Database (IMDb) web site. Users now have the option of either streaming ad-supported TV/movie titles on IMDb for free, or renting or purchasing commercial-free content via Amazon Video on Demand.

The best-selling novels of TV producer Ben Sherwood—The Man Who Ate the 747 (LJ 8/00) and The Death & Life of Charlie St. Cloud (Bantam, 2004)—are both currently in development as feature films. We now hear that the Netherlands-based TV production company Endemol, maker of the hit UK show Big Brother, will be producing two shows based on Sherwood's latest book, Who Survives: How Ordinary People Overcome Extraordinary Challenges (Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/08)—a network game show and a documentary series.

Responding to demand, the Ann Arbor District Library, MI, recently debuted a new collection of 171 Blu-ray DVDs. Patrons can browse the collection of high-definition titles by genre—action, animation, comedy, drama, fantasy, foreign language, horror, musicals, nonfiction, sf, war, Westerns—as well as place holds online. Check out the complete list at aadl.notlong.com.