Fiction.
THE IRON TRACKS
By Aharon Appelfeld, translated by Jeffrey M. Green
Schocken Books, 195 pages, $21
Some believe this novel about a Holocaust survivor who travels the trains of south-central Europe in search of a Nazi tormentor is one of the finest books ever written about the pain and memory of war.
CLOUDSPLITTER
By Russell Banks
HarperCollins, 758 pages, $27.50
The veteran author takes a historical turn with this powerful novel about anti-slavery fanatic John Brown, whose messianic fervor led to the raid on Harpers Ferry.
THE VOYAGE OF THE NARWHAL
By Andrea Barrett
Norton, 399 pages, $24.95
The National Book Award winner for “Ship Fever” brings a keen knowledge of natural history and human nature to her fascinating account of an Arctic expedition in the 1850s.
COLLECTED FICTIONS
By Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley
Viking, 560 pages, $40
The best of the world-class, if unclassifiable, fictional works of the brilliant, lyrical, Argentine magical realist.
THE HOURS
By Michael Cunningham
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 228 pages, $22
A splendid retelling of “Mrs. Dalloway” in which the sad lives of three women, separated by time and place but bound by Virginia Woolf’s classic novel, are related.
THE FARMING OF BONES
By Edwidge Danticat
Soho, 312 pages, $23
From the first scene of a woman screaming in labor, this stunning novel by the author of “Krik? Krak!” resounds with truth and passion as it limns the life of Haitian immigrants in the 1930s Dominican Republic.
THE SHORT HISTORY OF A PRINCE
By Jane Hamilton
Random House, 349 pages, $23
The Oprah-anointed author of “The Book of Ruth” returns with a serious novel about a Midwesterner who grapples with youthful ambition. Winner of the Tribune’s Heartland Prize for fiction.
THE FALL OF A SPARROW
By Robert Hellenga
Scribner, 463 pages, $25
In this complex novel by the author of “The Sixteen Pleasures,” a Midwestern college professor, recently estranged from his wife and enamored of a student, travels to Italy to avenge (he thinks) the murder of his daughter, who died in a random bombing.
IN THE POND
By Ha Jin
Zoland, 178 pages, $20
A first novel by the Chinese dissident and poet who, like his Russian counterpart Solzhenitsyn, makes striking fictional use of his experience of daily life under the thumb of the party.
THE INN AT LAKE DEVINE
By Elinor Lipman
Random House, 253 pages, $23.95
A charming comedy of manners about anti-Semitism, food and love–just the kind of delightful, screwball story (with pith!) we’ve come to expect from the author of “Isabel’s Bed.”
AND BOTH SHALL ROW
By Beth Lordan
Picador USA, 178 pages, $21
Stories and a novella, mostly set in a rural town called Claybourne, explore the magical and the everyday in a prose that is dramatic yet restrained.
THE COCKFIGHTER
By Frank Manley
Coffee House Press, 224 pages, $19.95
This debut novel is a coming-of-age tale that avoids the genre’s mawkish side and shows a boy’s conflict when he receives a prize rooster from his father.
CHARMING BILLY
By Alice McDermott
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 280 pages, $22
A reader is drawn from the first pages into this intimate portrait of an Irish-American family that reveals the damage of lost love and enduring memories. The National Book Award winner for fiction.
THE TREATMENT
By Daniel Menaker
Knopf, 269 pages, $23
This delightful first novel features hilarious verbal bouts between a tyrannical Freudian analyst and his reluctant patient, a flippant private-school teacher in New York.
EVENING
By Susan Minot
Knopf, 264 pages, $23
A moribund Boston matriarch drifts from memory to reverie to dream as she relives her life in her mind, lingering longest on the one great love who got away.
THE MAGICIAN’S WIFE
By Brian Moore
Dutton, 229 pages, $23.95
Set in the mid-19th Century, this suspenseful novel from a master storyteller follows a married couple from France to Algeria, where they plot they own intrigues.
BIRDS OF AMERICA
By Lorrie Moore
Knopf, 291 pages, $23
This renowned short-story writer’s fourth–and best–collection is filled with witty comical twists that lighten her sharply drawn characters’ melancholy experiences.
THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN
By Alice Munro
Knopf, 320 pages, $24
The ninth–and, even for this beloved master of the short form, an exceptional–collection of stories about secrets and lies among ordinary western Canadian folk.
IN THE HOUSE OF BLUE LIGHTS
By Susan Neville
University of Notre Dame Press, 169 pages, $14 paper
Troubled relationships among everyday people take center stage in this heart-wrenching short-story collection set in the Midwest. Winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize for Short Fiction.
I MARRIED A COMMUNIST
By Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin, 323 pages, $26
Philip Roth’s artful retort to ex-wife Claire Bloom’s nasty tell-all is set in the 1950s and chronicles the downfall of a marriage between a Jewish communist-sympathizing radio star and his self-hating, Jewish actress wife.
BLINDNESS
By Jose Saramago, translated by Giovanni Pontiero
Harcourt Brace, 304 pages, $22
An epidemic of blindness that overtakes an unnamed European town and the ensuing social breakdown are at the core of this compelling and profound meditation on what it means to be human.
SHADOWS ON THE HUDSON
By Isaac Bashevis Singer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 548 pages, $28
The hopeful time after World War II is marred, for a group of Jewish New Yorkers, by ambivalence about the future, in this newly translated novel by a Nobel Prize winner.
THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON
By Jane Smiley
Knopf, 452 pages, $26
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “A Thousand Acres” makes surprisingly entertaining this story about a plain-spoken young woman who married into the abolitionist movement in the 19th Century Kansas Territory.
DAMASCUS GATE
By Robert Stone
Houghton Mifflin, 500 pages, $26
A bomb plot in Jerusalem serves as the perfect vehicle for the novelist to gather a combustible mix of troublemakers and truth seekers.
DEATH IN SUMMER
By William Trevor
Viking, 240 pages, $23.95
A subtle yet rigorous thriller from the author of “Felicia’s Journey” offers William Trevor’s characteristically unobtrusive prose, fine plotting and intelligent road map to the meanderings of the human heart.
MEMORIES OF MY FATHER WATCHING TV
By Curtis White
Dalkey Archive Press, 157 pages, $12.50 paper
An unusual, brilliant novel with drawings about the way fathers and sons relate when at least one of them conducts all his personal business in front of the tube.
Nonfiction
THE LIFE OF THOMAS MORE
By Peter Ackroyd
Doubleday, 448 pages, $30
An impressively thorough biography of the 16th Century lawyer who became a saint, this stunning book corrects the mistaken impressions of More held by fans of the film “A Man for All Seasons” and examines the notions of conscience, freedom and individuality.
THE BOYS OF MY YOUTH
By Jo Ann Beard
Little, Brown, 208 pages, $22.95
This debut collection of “personal narratives” perfectly evokes adolescence in a voice that is at once comic and very, very serious.
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PETER DRUCKER
By Jack Beatty
The Free Press, 204 pages, $25
The author clearly interprets the writings of a path-breaking business philosopher who made his greatest contribution in the study of management theory.
LINDBERGH
By A. Scott Berg
Putnam, 628 pages, $30
This definitive biography of Charles Lindbergh starts with the aviator’s heroic solo flight across the Atlantic, the high point of a life that soon spiraled downward.
REMEMBERING SLAVERY: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation
Edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller
The New Press, 355 pages, plus two 60-minute audio cassettes, $49.95
This book-and-audio tape boxed set includes a fine essay, photographs and transcripts of recordings made in the 1930s that offer a unique perspective on our not-so-distant past.
PILLAR OF FIRE: America in the King Years, 1963-65
By Taylor Branch
Simon & Schuster, 746 pages, $30
In this second volume of a trilogy, historian Taylor Branch analyzes the effect of Martin Luther King on the American consciousness and concludes that these were watershed years in the nation’s development of its ideals.
UNAFRAID OF THE DARK
By Rosemary L. Bray
Random House, 282 pages, $24
In her convincing memoir, the Yale-educated author rebuts critics of the welfare system by relating how it helped when she grew up in Chicago.
TITAN: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr.
By Ron Chernow
Random House, 774 pages, $30
A large-scale biography of the turn-of-the-century oil baron reveals the humanity and the ruthlessness of one of the most controversial businessmen of his or any other time.
HEARTS GROWN BRUTAL: Sagas of Sarajevo
By Roger Cohen
Random House, 523 pages, $27.95
A New York Times reporter lucidly explains the history of Yugoslavia and the recent Balkan war by viewing the tragic events through the eyes of four families.
HEADING NORTH, LOOKING SOUTH: A Bilingual Journey
By Ariel Dorfman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $24
A fascinating memoir by the Argentine-born, Berkeley-educated Chilean writer in which his quest for identity leads him to understand the power of perseverance and of language.
COLD NEW WORLD: Growing Up in a Harder Country
By William Finnegan
Random House, 421 pages, $26
A journalist profiles four teenagers who are trapped in destructive subcultures, such as drug dealing and white supremacy, in this searing look at America’s hidden underclass.
MY SISTER LlFE: The Story of My Sister’s Disappearance
By Maria Flook
Pantheon Books, 353 pages, $25
The novelist’s painful memoir about the hole left in her life when, as a 12-year-old, her older sister ran away from their home in Wilmington, Del.
THE STORY OF AMERICAN FREEDOM
By Eric Foner
Norton, 422 pages, $27.95
From the Puritan era to the present, this is a detailed history of a virtue we Americans hold dear, whether we ever really understand–let alone attain–it.
MY GERMAN QUESTION: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin
By Peter Gay
Yale University Press, 250 pages, $22.50
The historian and noted Freud biographer recalls his childhood in this instructive memoir about an anti-religious boy who became Jewish by decree.
VISIONS OF JAZZ: The First Century
By Gary Giddins
Oxford University Press, 690 pages, $35
The 79 essays on the progenitors of jazz by the Village Voice critic are far too idiosyncratic to make this a mainstream reference book, though it should serve as a companion to tamer tomes of essential jazz literature.
OTHER POWERS: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull
By Barbara Goldsmith
Knopf, 531 pages, $30
A delectable biography of a woman who personified the surprising links between early feminism, the occult and sexual misconduct in the middle of the last century.
WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR FAMILIES: Stories From Rwanda
By Philip Gourevitch
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 356 pages, $25
The New Yorker writer offers harrowing reportage and cogent analysis of the Rwandan massacres by tracing the roots of the violence back to the first interactions between the rival Tutsi and Hutu tribes.
THE CHILDREN
By David Halberstam
Random House, 783 pages, $29.95
The prize-winning journalist’s characteristically long and detailed examination of the civil rights movement in the American South.
NOLA: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness
By Robin Hemley
Graywolf Press, 338 pages, $24.95
A tender memoir about the author’s schizophrenic sister, a talented writer from a family of writers who all remember and interpret the experience differently.
KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
By Adam Hochschild
Houghton Mifflin, 366 pages, $26
This utterly absorbing account of genocidal control over the Belgian Congo at the turn of the century revives a nearly forgotten time of foreign domination.
THE MAN WHO LOVED ONLY NUMBERS: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth
By Paul Hoffman
Hyperion, 302 pages, $22.95
No advanced academic degree is needed to enjoy this anecdotal biography of an eccentric Hungarian mathematician whose big thoughts crowded out normal daily concerns.
CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War
By Tony Horwitz
Pantheon Books, 406 pages, $27.50
A journalist’s first-rate chronicle of his travels around Civil War sites, where he chats with locals, re-enacts battles and learns how old wounds still ache in the New South.
AN EMPIRE WILDERNESS: Travels Into America’s Future
By Robert D. Kaplan
Random House, 393 pages, $27.50
The author began at Ft. Leavenworth and traveled throughout the West to produce this striking piece of journalism about America, the decline of nationalism and the rise of the isolated suburban “pod.”
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER: A Story of Two Towns, a Death and America’s Dilemma
By Alex Kotlowitz
Doubleday, 317 pages, $24.95
From the author of the best-selling “There Are No Children Here” comes this stunning look at race relations as seen through the prism of two Michigan towns–one mostly white, the other largely black–and the mysterious death that simultaneously united and divided them. Winner of the Tribune’s Heartland Prize for non-fiction.
DEAR GENIUS: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom
Collected and edited by Leonard S. Marcus
HarperCollins, 406 pages, $22.95
The correspondence between the legendary children’s book editor and colleagues including Maurice Sendak and Laura Ingalls Wilder proves Nordstrom was a visionary who chose creativity over sentimentality every time.
ANNALS OF THE FORMER WORLD
By John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 696 pages, $35
An omnibus of four books, and a new essay, that completes the author’s engagingly written geological survey of the North American continent.
A BEAUTIFUL MIND: A Biography of John Forbes Nash Jr.
By Sylvia Nasar
Simon & Schuster, 459 pages, $25
Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar chronicles the bizarre life and work of John Forbes Nash Jr., a brilliant mathematician who was passed over for the Nobel Prize because of his schizophrenia but who eventually claimed the award for his work in game theory.
CLONES AND CLONES: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning
Edited by Martha C. Nussbaum and Cass R. Sunstein
Norton, 351 pages, $26.95
The regrettable title aside, these two dozen essays by experts ranging from Stephen Jay Gould to Andrea Dworkin are an excellent guide to the post-Dolly world.
JUST AS I THOUGHT
By Grace Paley
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 332 pages, $24
Thirty years’ worth of essays, reviews and lectures add up to an unusual self-portrait of a writer known for her wit and honesty in making the political personal–and vice versa.
EAST AND WEST: China, Power, and the Future of Asia
By Christopher Patten
Times Books, 304 pages, $25
Britain’s last colonial governor of Hong Kong–a sharp-tongued fighter for democratic rule and free markets–looks back on his tenure and forecasts likely trends.
A PROMISE OF JUSTICE: The Eighteen-Year Fight to Save Four Innocent Men
By David Protess and Rob Warden
Hyperion, 258 pages, $23.95
Two journalists offer a riveting account of the tireless efforts to free a group of Chicago men who were wrongly imprisoned for the murder of a couple in 1978.
KING OF THE WORLD: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero
By David Remnick
Random House, 326 pages, $25
In this outstanding biography, the champion’s thrilling early career is placed squarely in the context of boxing’s checkered past and the social upheaval of the 1960s.
PORTRAIT OF DR. GACHET: The Story of a Van Gogh Masterpiece
By Cynthia Saltzman
Viking, 406 pages, $25.95
This brilliant work charts the international art market by studying the eventful life of a single painting, a portrait that sold for $82.5 million in 1990.
THE FACTORY OF FACTS
By Luc Sante
Pantheon Books, 306 pages, $24
The author returns to his birthplace, a factory town in Belgium, to assemble a memoir out of native parts found only in the history of his former country.
ONE OF OURS: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing
By Richard A. Serrano
Norton, 321 pages, $26.95
A comprehensive study of the bomber and the lives his crime destroyed, by the Los Angeles Times reporter who covered the story from that fateful day in Oklahoma.
STRANGERS AMONG US: How Latino Immigration Is Transforming America
By Roberto Suro
Knopf, 349 pages, $26.95
Particular issues involving Spanish-speaking immigrants are examined in the Washington Post reporter’s straightforward yet detailed account of the Latino experience in cities and towns across America.
A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN: An American Odyssey From the Inner City to the Ivy League
By Ron Suskind
Broadway Books, 372 pages, $25
This biography of a talented black teenager who escaped the inner city for Brown University is strikingly different because Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind keeps himself–and his biases–out of the story.
GIRL IN THE MIRROR: Three Generations of Black Women in Motion
By Natasha Tarpley
Beacon Press, 181 pages, $22
The author’s quilt-like memoir combines vibrant pieces about her grandmother, her mother and herself, stitched together by poetry and prose.
LOUIS KAHN TO ANNE TYNG: The Rome Letters 1953-54
Edited by Anne Griswold Tyng
Rizzoli International Publications, 216 pages, $45, $29.95 paper
These 53 letters from the heralded architect to his colleague, lover and mother of his child reveal as much about the creative struggles and internecine battles of 20th Century designers as about the unusual and passionate relationship Louis Kahn and Anne Tyng carried on for nearly three decades.
EVERYBODY WAS SO YOUNG
By Amanda Vaill
Houghton Mifflin, 470 pages, $30
This elegant biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy, friends to authors Hemingway and Fitzgerald (and model for some of the latter’s more famous characters) is also a compelling and affecting portrait of the so-called Lost Generation.
KADDISH
By Leon Wieseltier
Knopf, 588 pages, $27.50
The stark book jacket hints at a somber subject but hides the richness of the author’s story about the Jewish mourner’s prayer he recited for his father.
CONSILIENCE: The Unity of Knowledge
By Edward O. Wilson
Knopf, 332 pages, $26
In elegant prose, the pre-eminent Harvard biologist posits an orderly world in which all the branches of learning are based on a few natural laws.
