THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY
By Michael Chabon
Random House, 639 pages, $26.95
In 1939 New York City, a Brooklynite collaborates on a comic book with his cousin, a Czech artist who has just escaped from Nazi-occupied Prague.
BEOWULF: A New Verse Translation
Translated by Seamus Heaney
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $25
The famous poet offers a modern translation of the 1,000-year-old epic poem, simplifying the Old English and putting his own stamp on the result.
THE DIAGNOSIS
By Alan P. Lightman
Pantheon, 369 pages, $25
A junior executive is rushing to the office when he suddenly short circuits; he can’t remember who he is or where he’s going. An examination of our culture’s information overload.
AN EIGHTH OF AUGUST
By Dawn Turner Trice
Crown, 298 pages, $22.95
In the fictional town of Halley’s Landing, Ill., the Emancipation Festival pays annual tribute to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. This year, the festival will offer some unique freedoms for the celebrators.
THE HUMAN STAIN
By Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin, 361 pages, $26
The aged dean of faculty at a small New England college is accused of racism for his use of an ambiguous word. He’s beset by his peers for other moral issues as well, but the feisty prof harbors a secret that would stun everyone.
RAILS UNDER MY BACK
By Jeffery Renard Allen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 563 pages, $26
Two brothers are married to two sisters in this intergenerational story of two black American families. The first-time novelist explores the meaning of family through the consequences of abandonment.
FOUNDING BROTHERS: The Revolutionary Generation
By Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf, 288 pages, $26
A personal, face-to-face vision of politics in the early days of the republic, focusing on the intertwined lives of seven founders in six key events.
THE LAST CAMPAIGN: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election
By Zachary Karabell
Knopf, 308 pages, $27.50
How clever campaigning and questionable tactics won a victory for Harry Truman in a four-way race most people assumed he’d lose. Also perhaps the last election in which print and radio were the dominant media.
ONE MORE TIME: The Best of Mike Royko
By Mike Royko
University of Chicago Press, 275 pages, $22, $12 paper
One-hundred favorite columns chosen by Mike Royko’s widow, friends and colleagues from nearly 7,500. Spanning the length of his career, these reveal the breadth of his accomplishment.
W.E.B. DU BOIS: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963
By David Levering Lewis
John Macrae/Holt, 715 pages, $35
Second and final volume in the biography of the sociologist, educator, essayist, activist and political theorist who fought relentlessly to solve the problem of racism. Covers his life from 1919 until he died in 1963 in Ghana.
