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The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minster and "Iron Lady" who died on Monday, authorized a biography to be published after her death. Written by Charles Moore, it will be published by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin UK. Allen Lane said in a statement: "The biography was commissioned in 1997 on the understanding that it would not be published during Baroness Thatcher's lifetime. Charles Moore was given full access to Baroness Thatcher's private papers and interviewed her extensively." The book, titled Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One: Not For Turning, will be published "immediately following her funeral" next week.

On a related note, let's all take a moment to remember the time Thatcher publicly spanked Christopher Hitchens. From Hitchens' "On Spanking," in the London Review of Books: "I stooped lower, with an odd sense of having lost all independent volition. Having arranged matters to her entire satisfaction, she produced from behind her back a rolled-up Parliamentary order-paper and struck — no, she thwacked — me on the behind. I reattained the perpendicular with some difficulty. 'Naughty boy,' she sang out over her shoulder as she flounced away. Nothing that happened to the country in the next dozen years surprised me in the least."

Victoria Beale takes down Paulo Coelho in a vicious essay for The New Republic titled, "The Gospel of Success: Paulo Coelho's Vapid Philosophy": "If you've absorbed any of Coelho's incredible commercial success, without actually reading the 65-year-old, Brazilian author, it's genuinely shocking to realize just how shoddy and lightweight his books are, how obvious and well-trodden their revelations." That is what Coelho gets for writing things like this in his latest book: "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Robert Silvers, the founding editor of The New York Review of Books, tells New York Magazine about phrases he'd like to ban from his magazine: "Even more insidious and common is in terms of, a fine phrase if you are talking about mathematical equations or economic functions in which specific 'terms' are defined, but it is just loose and woolly when you say things like 'in terms of culture,' for which there are simply no clear terms."

President Obama launches a brain mapping initiative, but he can't concentrate enough to shoot better than 2-for-22 on the basketball court during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Mark Sanford wins the GOP runoff in South Carolina and faces Stephen Colbert's sister next month. Plus, NPR's Ron Elving and health correspondent Julie Rovner on the NRA's proposal of having armed guards in schools.

There's breaking budget news from several places this morning:

— "President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say." (The New York Times)

— "President Obama will release a budget next week that proposes significant cuts to Medicare and Social Security and fewer tax hikes than in the past, a conciliatory approach that he hopes will convince Republicans to sign onto a grand bargain that would curb government borrowing and replace deep spending cuts that took effect March 1." (The Washington Post)

— "President Barack Obama will offer cuts to Social Security and other entitlement programs in a budget proposal aimed at swaying Republicans to compromise on a deficit-reduction deal, a senior administration official said." (Reuters)

— "President Barack Obama's budget will include the final deficit reduction offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner in December, including cuts to both Medicare and Social Security, according to a senior administration official." (Politico)

Politico adds that "the administration hopes including the cuts — adopting the chained CPI for Social Security and slashing about $400 billion from Medicare over the next decade — can persuade Republicans to roll back the cuts in the sequester and agree to further revenue hikes."

In July 2011, NPR's Scott Horsley reported for Morning Edition about how using the "chained CPI" to measure inflation might help reduce the deficit because it could mean lower increases in payments to those who get some federal benefits.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

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