William T. Vollmann is a reclusive, eyebrowless (They were burned off in an accident at the North Pole) pistol-packing writer, and as such he is probably the last of a dying breed: The badass literary figure.

Recently we told you about a new book that claims Jackie Kennedy and brother-in-law Robert were engaged in a long-hidden affair. But just wait! There is an utter smackdown of the book and the man who wrote it.

Jerry Oppenheimer, the author famous for his gossipy, unauthorized biographies of people Anna Wintour (excellent), Martha Stewart (also good) and Jerry Seinfeld (boring), is publishing a new book about Bernie Madoff. Some of it sounds pretty juicy: Oppenheimer delves into possible ties between Madoff and members of the Mob, his serial unfaithfulness to wife Ruthie, and the book report that he may have fudged in a high school English class. Then again, some of it sounds like total nonsense. Like Oppenheimer's claim that Madoff didn't know how to tell time:

Hey, remember that time Jeff Bezos snuck in to your place and stole from your bookshelf that one time, before silently slipping away into the night? The Amazon.com CEO feels awful.

Borders, a seller of printed "books," is trying to trick America's youth into thinking that buying popular "books" about vampires is cooler than buying record albums of hip hop, for example. Yea right.

Oh good! Carrie Prejean, the brave stateswoman who stood up nobly at a Miss USA pageant and said that gay people shouldn't have equal rights, has landed a book deal with prestigious imprint Regnery. Andrew Breitbart is so excited!

It's being turned into a movie by Aaron Sorkin, but Ben Mezrich's book about the creation of Facebook is apparently as badly written as a typical status update on Facebook. Janet Maslin's New York Times review is unsparing.

Is Amazon.com just trying to be creepy? It's already headed by a "chuckling maniac" being sued over defective Kindles and swindling newspapers on the e-book reader. Now his company is quietly deleting people's Kindle books. It's Orwellian. Literally.

It's a good thing this epic recession is an opportunity to "reset" our culture, as Kurt Andersen tells us, or slough off the chains of corporatism, as per Douglas Rushkoff. Otherwise it would really suck for all the unemployed people.

First came former Valleywag Nick Douglas' Twitter book deal with HarperCollins, followed within a month by New York Times columnist David Pogue and his similar compilation of tweets for O'Reilly. Now Pogue is trying to leapfrog.

Learning Annex instructor Donald Trump apparently cannot sue the pants off someone just because their so-called "facts" negatively impact Donald Trump's self-esteem.

Yesterday we showed you the opening parts of Spin, a new roman à clef about nightmare PR lobster lady Lizzie Grubman. You seemed to "like" it, so we thought we'd continue the book club. By skipping to the very end!

Book agent fight! Book agent fight! Wily Andrew Wylie has stolen Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul away from his old partner and mentor, Gillon Aitken. The 76-year-old author was likely wooed astray with promises of more monies and better international representation.

Lizzie Grubman, lobster-faced PR woman and runner-over-of regular people, once had an assistant named Robert Rave. That since-disillusioned young man has now published a roman à clef about a boy working for a fearsome PR dragon. We've got a manuscript!

Publishers release "advance reader copies" or "galleys" of books for the New York Literary Elite to have before the masses and Oprah ruin them for you. Being spotted with some merits certain kinds of "status"...that we're about to ruin.

The first Jackson-related book was published last weekend—apparently two Chinese writers "slaved for 48 hours straight," subsisting "on a diet of coffee and cigarettes" to finish it. But a quick look at Publishers Marketplace indicates many more are on the way, including one that will be on sale as early as next week. Let the feeding frenzy begin:

The blog ScriptShadow got hold of the first draft of Aaron Sorkin's Facebook movie. The verdict? The movie reads oddly mesmerizing, and has an unexpected hero: Sean Parker, an early investor in the social network.

The New York Post runs some tidbits today from the new book Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story, which purportedly reveals some steamy, sad secrets of a long-hidden affair between Jackie Kennedy and her brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy.

Here is the German Economy Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, reading a fairy tale about the exchange rate to some children at the behest of "the German Center for Fairy Tale Culture." Ok, Germany! Can you imagine if Geithner did this?

Two blogs, Texts From Last Night and Look at this Fucking Hipster, scored contracts at Penguin's Gotham Books imprint in the past week, the latest in an endless series of such deals. Shouldn't you get a piece of the action?