Art
Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan. By Jean K. Cadogan (Yale Univ.). Will give the artist's new admirers a rare chance to become familiar with the gorgeous pictures that he turned out before his untimely death from plague in 1494. Blake Gopnik
Goya: Images of Women. Edited by Janis Tomlinson (Yale). A sophisticated and deeply satisfying book. . . . Like the exhibition it accompanies, [it] makes Francisco Goya seem an ever-larger figure. John Loughery
Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention Since the 1980s. By Chin-Tao Wu (Verso). [Wu's] thoroughly researched, closely argued study performs the invaluable service of presenting the familiar image of today's arts entrepreneurship in its true, disquieting guise. Chris Lehmann
Biography
Anthony Blunt: His Lives. By Miranda Carter (FSG). Sympathetic, expertly paced and altogether enthralling. . . . I haven't enjoyed a biography so much since Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette. Michael Dirda
Charles Darwin: The Power of Place. By Janet Browne (Knopf). A wonderful account of the life and work of one of the truly great scientists of all time . . . detailed and sympathetic, and candid without at the same time being cynically debunking. Michael Ruse
Churchill: A Study in Greatness. By Geoffrey Best (Hambledon and London). Well-written, superbly researched with a fine critical bibliography of Churchilliana. If you need to read a single book on the great man, Best's is it. John P. Rossi
Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. By Anthony Everitt (Random House). [This] fine biography of Cicero turns the marble statue back into a man. Everitt's life of Cicero weaves descriptions of Roman life and politics and accounts of Cicero's thought and writings into the story of a life so dramatic that one wonders why playwrights and screenwriters have passed over Cicero in favor of Caesars and gladiators. Michael Lind
Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. By Donald Keene (Columbia Univ.). This carefully crafted biography of Meiji is a monument to cosmopolitan scholarship: judicious, balanced, authoritative. It is another remarkable gift from a distinguished American author to the people of Japan. Akira Iriye
Isadora: A Sensational Life. By Peter Kurth (Little, Brown). Hers was a sloppy life. She drank; she took drugs; she was prone to tantrums. But she was more than just another rowdy, interesting footnote in the history of bohemia; rather, Duncan was one of the true visionaries of modern dance. Tim Page
Mervyn Peake: My Eyes Mint Gold: A Life. By Malcolm Yorke (Overlook). This is an artist's biography, one that judiciously examines Peake's drawings within the context of the art world of the times. Most valuably, the book is generously illustrated with examples of the works discussed. There will never be a clearer explication of Peake's progress as a visual artist. Michael Swanwick
Mussolini. By R.J.B. Bosworth (Oxford Univ.). An impressive and fascinating biography of a complicated, flawed leader who possessed neither sufficient vision nor the requisite political skills to rule a nation. Carlo D'Este
Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. By Rüdiger Safranski (Norton). Rich in fine phrases, deftly adduced details and striking observations, [this] book examines the many stages in the development of Nietzsche's thinking and the full range of his writings. Peter Berkowitz
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. By Brenda Maddox (HarperCollins). This lively, absorbing and even-handed new biography . . . is a complex portrait of a passionate, flawed, courageous woman who was neither the dowdy shrew of The Double Helix nor the innocent and passive victim of feminist myth. Susan Okie
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Girls. By Mary S. Lovell (Norton). She has tried to write a book for younger people, to give them a taste of "what it was like." They should snap at the bait, for it was a fascinating time and an extraordinary family. Alice K. Turner
Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. By Michael T. Kauffman (Knopf). Paints a richly textured portrait of Soros's life. He emerges, despite accounts of his harshness, dismissiveness and penchant for "transactional friendships," a deeply fascinating and appealing man. Judith Warner
Stardust Melodies: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael. By Richard M. Sudhalter (Oxford Univ.). Meticulous, admiring, perceptive and informative . . . a first-rate job of showing that Carmichael's mind was deeper and tougher than first impressions might suggest. Jonathan Yardley
Current Events
The Age of Sacred Terror. By Daniel Benjamin & Steven Simon (Random House). With telling detail and crisp prose, Benjamin and Simon's book may emerge as the best insider account of the pre-Sept. 11 fight against al Qaeda. Mark Strauss
Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo. By Matthew McAllester (New York Univ.). McAllester displays the natural gifts of the storyteller who, in the most uncanny ways, is able to develop characters, build tension and keep a plot churning. Robert D. Kaplan
A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage. By Dan Stober & Ian Hoffman (Simon & Schuster). A well-written cautionary tale that dissects what can happen when race, ambition and politics mix with espionage, criminal law and foreign policy. James Bamford
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. By Ahmed Rashid (Yale Univ.). Rashid again puts his formidable reportorial powers to work on another little-understood subject: the various "stans" of the former Soviet Union that remain uncomfortably suspended "between Marx and Mohammed." Peter L. Bergen
The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia. By David Hoffman (Public Affairs). Tracing the lives of six people who shaped the new Russia from the last years of communism through the rise of Putin, Hoffman brilliantly shows how seemingly halting and insignificant acts finally culminated in changes in a whole society. Timothy McDaniel
Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan. By Mary Anne Weaver (FSG). Weaver's beautifully written reportage goes a long way toward explaining how Pakistan has emerged as the epicenter of terrorism . . . a brilliant portrait of a troubled country, vivid and frightening. Nayan Chanda
The Paradox of American Democracy: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone. By Joseph S. Nye Jr. (Oxford Univ.). Nye never forgets that the trick to extending American influence into the far future is to cajole and seduce the world into wanting what America wants rather than to bully it into sullen submission. Martin Walker
Revenge: A Story of Hope. By Laura Blumenfeld (Simon & Schuster). The visceral desire for retaliation, for rough justice, that [the author] expressed . . . never subsided. It possessed her body and soul . . . . A work of ambition and humanity. Samuel G. Freedman
Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America. By David Wise (Random House). Wise offers his readers the excitement of spying on spies, and the pleasure of hooting at good guys who stumble because they are too smug. Robert Sherrill
Them: Adventures With Extremists. By Jon Ronson (Simon & Schuster). British journalist Jon Ronson has managed to write a hugely amusing book about the lunatic fringe . . . a tour d'horizon of the world of the conspiracy theorists. JY
Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. By John L. Esposito (Oxford Univ.). Esposito expertly traces [the] militant strain of Islam, but readers will quickly come to understand that it is only one strand of a multitude in the rich history of Muslim thought. PLB
War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle For a Promised Land. By Anton La Guardia (Thomas Dunne). A beautifully written new account [that] provides fresh insights that expand our understanding. Producing an entertaining book valuable to readers at all points of the knowledge spectrum is an impressive accomplishment. Thomas W. Lippman
Law and Crime
A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder, and a Small Town's Struggle For Redemption. By Dina Temple-Raston (Henry Holt). Probes beneath the press-conference versions of Jasper, attempting to apprehend the more complicated realities of race relations in a small, economically depressed Southern town confronting a terrible hate crime. Karen Olsson
In America's Court: How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled Into a Criminal Trial. By Thomas Geoghegan (New Press). What most enlivens the book is a passion for justice that is found in precious few attorneys in America today. It ends with a self-indictment that shows how deeply Geogegan feels about what kind of lawyer he is and what he could have been. Jonathan Kirsch
Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future. By Jesse L. Jackson Sr., Jesse L. Jackson Jr. & Bruce Shapiro (New Press). The intellectual clarity of [this book] and the profound moral questions it raises deserve a wide audience and demand a political response. Jennifer Wynn
Literature and the Arts
Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years. By Mortimer Frank (Amadeus). This is exemplary music criticism -- specific, straightforward, fair-minded. It also has the great advantage of being true. TP
The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II, 1939-1948. Ed. by Edward Mendelson (Princeton Univ.). The collection, which can be dipped into or read as a whole, is a feast of language and insight, and a brilliant, if indirect, cultural history of the World War II period as well as an often prophetic look at our own. Arthur Kirsch
Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement. By Derwent May (HarperCollins/Trafalgar Square). All in all, a splendid, beautifully composed work of literary and institutional history. One might even say that it irradiates its subject. MD
Live From New York: An Uncensored History of "Saturday Night Live." By Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller (Little, Brown). Feels like the party to which we've waited to be invited for years, the one where everyone is free to dish and tell all beyond the clammy reach of 60-second tape delays and network standards-and-practices spoilsports. Gene Seymour
Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer On Writing. By Margaret Atwood (Cambridge). A clear-eyed glance into the shadows where writers work and live. Negotiating the Dead will be enjoyed not only by writers but by readers too. Craig Nova
New Biographical Dictionary of Film. By David Thomson (Knopf). The book that the Dictionary should be paired with on any film buff's book shelf is Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies, and that is lavish praise indeed. Dennis Drabelle
Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. By David Edmonds & John Eidinow (Ecco). Two gifted BBC journalists . . . describe a 10-minute serio-comic encounter between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, two men with strikingly different ideas about what philosophy should do. . . . A thoughtful, lively book. Mark Edmundson
Memoirs
Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York. By Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan (Morrow). More than any other recent work I can think of, it reminds us that the present really does slip irrevocably into the far-off, more than half-forgotten past. Carolyn See
Bad Blood: A Memoir. By Lorna Sage (Morrow). A wonderful book, hesitantly affectionate in tone, yet written with a cold Yeatsian eye and a tomboy's slightly swaggering voice. MD
The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan. Ed. by John Lahr (Bloomsbury). Given such a regret-laden, heartsick chronicle, why should anyone bother reading these diaries? Because they are, like the dazzling Tynan himself, quite irresistible. MD
The Dressing Station: A Surgeon's Chronicle of War and Medicine. By Jonathan Kaplan (Grove). Packed with moments of searing intensity. . . . Kaplan conveys the same gripping urgency whether he is negotiating a deep, shrapnel-torn abdominal cavity . . . or improvising a slapdash razor to perform a skin graft. An extraordinary book. Julian B. Orenstein
Escape from China: The Long Journey From Tiananmen to Freedom. By Zhang Boli, trans. by Kwee Kian Low (Washington Square). Escape from China is a heart-stopping tale of pursuit and escape under authoritarianism. But it is far more than that, for it provides a fascinating glimpse of China's outcasts, vagrants, itinerant farmhands, fishermen, former prisoners and others scraping by on China's social margins. Judith Shapiro
My Losing Season. By Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday). [Conroy] imposes art on memory, and he produces a harsh, abrasive, sad, funny, cheerful, revelatory and very readable book. . . . A superb accomplishment, maybe the finest book he has written. Robert W. Creamer
Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. By Ruth Kluger (Feminist Press). What an amazing book it is. The literature of the Holocaust is vast and ever-growing, some of it of an uncommonly high order, but Still Alive moves at once to the forefront. JY
The Territory of Men: A Memoir. By Joelle Fraser (Villard). An excellent, gorgeous writer who thinks it's smart to head toward the tumult during a prison riot or spend long evenings in "dive bars," sure that life is more authentic at the very, very bottom. CS
Military History
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-43. By Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt). What a splendid book this is. . . . A project so ambitious would be easy to drown in, but Atkinson has a steady focus -- the emphasis throughout is on the human drama of men at war. Geoffrey Perret
The Englishman's Daughter: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in World War I. By Ben Macintyre (FSG). The story Ben Macintyre tells in this lovely, affecting book is at once simple in the extreme yet complex and elusive. JY
Pogue's War: Diaries of a Combat Historian. By Forrest Pogue (Univ. of Kentucky). Pogue's descriptions of life for the combat soldier are among the finest in military literature. John F. Wukovits
Tank: The Monstrous Progress of a War Machine. By Patrick Wright (Viking). Wright has assembled a prodigious saga of how a homely armored vehicle serves as a force-field for all sorts of revealing reveries of state domination, democratic resistance, scientific progress, even a kind of civic animism. CL
Vietnam, Now. By David Lamb (Public Affairs). The heart of Vietnam, Now, and the thing that makes it exceptional, is that it deals with the part of human nature concerned with healing. There are stories in this book that you will not forget. David Chanoff
The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228. By Dick Couch (Crown). An exceptionally nuanced and insightful book. A critical resource for readers who wish to understand the distinct culture of special warfare organizations. Chris Bray
Nature and the Environment
Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life. By Peter Raby (Princeton Univ.). Relying heavily on Wallace's published works, Raby's sympathetic . . . biography relates the naturalist's life from start to finish. Edward J. Larson
American Bison: A Natural History. By Dale F. Lott (Univ. of California). A powerfully written omnium gatherum of what we know about this beast, including its history. Michael Olmert
The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes. By Peter Mathiessen (North Point). By the end of the book, the reader is left not only with the sense of the precariousness of the cranes' existence in many parts of the world, but also with the belief that the loss of such a species would mean considerable spiritual devastation as well. CN
Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake. By Jack Brubaker (Pennsylvania State Univ.). Brubaker's meticulous and loving description of the river should do much to heighten our appreciation of this secret treasure in the heart of our part of the world. JY
Eating in the Dark: America's Experiment With Genetically Engineered Food. By Kathleen Hart (Pantheon). [Hart has] pieced together a panoramic image of a powerful industry, an easily influenced bureaucracy, decisions that left the introduction of these foods underregulated, safety studies that were missing or of questionable relevance, and a seduced or sleepy press. Nicols Fox
The Future of Life. By E.O. Wilson (Knopf). Makes it clear once again that Wilson is one of our most gifted science writers -- capable both of dissecting the intricate life forms concealed in rainforest topsoil and explaining the macroeconomic issues behind population growth. Steven Johnson
Politics
Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush. By Frank Bruni (HarperCollins). Not so much about Bush as about what it's like to cover him. Bruni's affection -- even admiration -- for Bush is always breaking the surface. Christopher Caldwell
One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky and 13 Days That Tarnished American Journalism. By Marvin Kalb (Free Press). The virtue of Kalb's book resides not in his solutions but in his exposure of the ways that good journalists can make startling errors in judgment. Kerry Lauerman
Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. By Jeffrey Toobin (Random House). High-level entertainment. A fly-on-the-wall account of the political maneuvers and judicial decisions in the five-week period that followed last year's election, it moves along like a political suspense novel. Judith Warner
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich. By Kevin Phillips (Broadway). Retracing 200 years of American history leads the one-time theorist of Republican realignment to a striking conclusion: The United States today increasingly resembles a banana republic . . . . [He] brings the usual mind-numbing litanies of statistics and historical data vividly to life. Thomas Ferguson
Who We Are: A History of Popular Nationalism. By Robert H. Wiebe (Princeton). Neatly captures the mood of disaffiliation that now wracks so much of traditional politics, and fuels in turn the apocalyptic grievances among fundamentalist zealots. CL
Religion and Spirituality
Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election. By John L. Allen Jr. (Doubleday). An invaluable primer on the mechanics of the [pope-nominating committee] and the issues the cardinals will be considering when they cast their ballots, along with the best-guess list and short bios of the top 20 contenders. Andrew Nagorski
Pope John XXIII. By Thomas Cahill (Viking). Lively journalism, spiced with opinions that will evoke bravos from some readers and bile from others. Either way, intellectual freshness is here, as it was in the Vatican of good Pope John. Colman McCarthy
Science
The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story. By Richard Preston (Random House). In a taut, riveting narrative that rivals that of his earlier book, The Hot Zone, Preston tells the story of last fall's anthrax letter attack and describes the potential threat, and the likely consequences, of smallpox being used as a biological weapon. Ed Regis
Future Evolution. By Peter Ward (Times). Offers a clear and gripping synthesis of recent thinking on mass extinction and global change. SO
The Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science. By John Tyler Bonner (Harvard). Smoothly integrates advances in biology during the 20th century with tales from a life that now stretches into its ninth decade. Sally Squires
Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth From Interplanetary Peril. By Timothy Ferris (Simon & Schuster). Entrancing and beautifully written, this latest work by Ferris, the writer laureate of astronomy, will be treasured by generations of stargazers to come. Marcia Bartusiak
Social Issues
Bachelor Girl. By Betsy Israel (Morrow). A lively and intriguing look at single women and the cultural attitudes toward them [in the 20th century], stylishly written and well-researched. Judith Warner
The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America. By Ellis Cose (Washington Square). Cose's lucid, eloquent and deeply personal book goes a long way toward enlightening us about the pitfalls and possibilities of black male life. Michael Eric Dyson
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices. By Xinran (Pantheon). Xinran's prose is remarkably evocative, bursting with details that make each account haunting. These stories have all the force of good fiction. More remarkable, they combine vigorous universalism with a bone-deep cultural authority. Etelka Lehoczky
Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. By Peter Irons (Viking). Provides an engaging, panoramic history of school desegregation, including the exhilarating breakthroughs and the heartbreaking setbacks. Richard D. Kahlenberg
The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony. By Pamela Paul (Villard). A well-written and intelligent book that proves, among other things, that beneath their veneer of Organization Kid obnoxiousness, the divorced young of today are incorrigible romantics. JW
The Zygote Chronicles. By Suzanne Finnamore (Grove). The book's emotional climax -- the baby's birth -- hits home with the full force of raw, unrehearsed emotion. You read along skippingly until -- blam! -- you are crying like a lactating new mother watching AT&T commercials. JW
Sports
Clearing the Bases: The Greatest Baseball Debates of the Last Century. By Allen Barra (Dunne). Barra's arguments are sometimes surprising but almost always convincing. He takes a purist's approach to baseball stats, eschewing batting averages for on-base average and slugging percentage. Sean Callahan
The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle. By Robert Anasi (North Point). Always honest and even brutal, The Gloves is as close as you'll get -- and probably as close as you'll want to get -- to stepping into the ring yourself. Allen St. John
Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing. By Elizabeth Mitchell (Hyperion). Racing enthralls its fans as well as its participants, and Mitchell infuses the whole book with the zeal of the recently converted. Eliza R.L. McGraw
Travel
Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown. By Michael Cunningham (Crown Journeys). Cunningham's short book is a haunting, beautiful piece of work. . . . He knows the town well, and is an informed, sensitive, ultra-intelligent guide. Rick Whitaker
Route 66A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists. By Tony Perrottet (Random House). A whimsical trek through classical history, famous sites and arcane trivia. This book belongs to the genre of tales of joyful peregrination. Tracy Lee Simmons
Trail of Feathers: In Search of the Birdmen of Peru. By Tahir Shah (Arcade). This is highly entertaining fare, and Shah gives us just enough history and anthropology to swallow a bit of learning as we trundle along. Marie Arana
U.S. History
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. By H.W. Brands (Doubleday). Brands is primarily (and refreshingly) a narrative historian who creates his rich fabric by interweaving individual stories -- those of miners, merchants, bandits, politicians -- with historical sweep. Peter Schrag
At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. By Philip Dray (Ramdom House). Asks us not only to feel the shame of our country's lynching past but also to take pride in those Americans who struggled, against great odds, to make things right. We owe them, and their able chronicler, a great deal. Gart Gerstle
Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller. By Gregg Herken (Henry Holt). [Herken] succeeds in telling the vivid behind-the-scenes tale of these scientists' brilliant teamwork during World War II, and of the bristling jealousies, political intrigues and shifting loyalties that would ultimately bring them into bitter conflict. Jennet Conant
The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century. By Charles Kupchan (Knopf). A powerful and erudite book [that] sparkles with insights. MW
Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life. By Jean Bethke Elshtain (Basic). Aims to refurbish our regard for Addams, not only as an activist but as an intellectual. Quoting her at great length throughout, Elshtain leaves no doubt of Addams's narrative gifts or moral wisdom. Robert Westbrook
Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. By William Lee Miller (Knopf). For a quarter-century William Lee Miller has been writing brilliantly about the American political idea in crisis. Now he has added the crowning piece. Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
"A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. By Samantha Power (Basic). Power tells this long, sorry history with great clarity and vividness. She is particularly good at bringing alive various people who were eyewitnesses to these catastrophes as they were happening and who tried to make Americans share their outrage. Adam Hochschild
Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy. By James S. Hirsch (Houghton Mifflin). Offers a compelling account of the clash between history and memory, as the author revisits the contending white and black versions of the massacre. Thomas J. Sugrue
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. By Max Boot (Basic). Boot bravely calls for a new imperialism (and even more bravely, or rashly, quotes Kipling about taking up the "white man's burden"); he advocates an American policy explicitly designed to contain the unruliness. H.W. Brands
World History
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. By Jenny Uglow (FSG). Magnificent group-history [that] chronicles a last great upsurge of the all-embracing Renaissance spirit, when a few amateurs and tinkerers ushered in, ironically enough, the gloomy age of Machinery and Specialization. MD
A Secret History of the IRA. By Ed Moloney (Norton). Moloney's unsentimental, albeit pro-Republican, portrayal of one of the world's oldest continuously operating insurrectionist forces deserves landmark status in the field. Fred Barbash
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. By Michael B. Oren (Oxford Univ.). Oren's description of the acutely tense and nervous atmosphere before and during the war reflects ironically on the supposed national unity of the time. This is not only the best book so far written on the Six Day War, it is likely to remain the best. Geoffrey Wheatcroft
