A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz (Harcourt, Oct.). The Israeli novelist's account of growing up in war-torn Jerusalem.
Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger, by Nigel Slater (Gotham, Oct.). A food writer savors his childhood.
The Arts and Entertainment
All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, by Terry Teachout (Harcourt, Nov.); and George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker, by Robert Gottlieb (HarperCollins, Nov.). A two-step for the master.
Cary Grant, by Marc Eliot (Harmony, Sept.). The very fetching Archibald Leach, from boy to superstar.
Disneywar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom, by James B. Stewart (S&S, Nov.). Scrapping for control of the entertainment empire.
The Inner Voice, by Renée Fleming (Viking, Nov.). A soprano's heart-throat-mind connection.
The King & I, by Herbert Breslin and Anne Midgette (Doubleday, Oct.). Pavarotti's manager isn't going to take it any more.
Margot Fonteyn, by Meredith Daneman (Viking, Oct.). The genius of a ballerina.
Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century, by Gary Giddins (Oxford, Nov.). A collection by the leading jazz critic.
Culture, Race, Religion
The Artificial White Man, by Stanley Crouch (Basic, Oct.). Who's the real deal? And how black is black enough?
Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA, by Tim Junkin (Algonquin, Sept.). For another man's brutal crime, Kirk Bloodsworth was going to die.
Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, by James Webb (Broadway, Oct.). The Counsels of Cormac: The Ancient Irish Guide to Leadership, translated by Thomas Cleary (Doubleday, Sept.). The Last of the Celts, by Marcus Tanner (Yale, Oct.). Oh, glorious isles!
An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, by Pankaj Mishra (FSG, Oct.). Just as the Buddha set out to find life's true meaning, Mishra sets out to find the Buddha.
Exuberance, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Knopf, Sept.). The celebrated psychiatrist on how a passion for life can fuel achievement.
Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, by Ben J. Wattenberg (Ivan Dee, Oct.). How will birth dearth affect an economy fueled by growth?
Green River, Running Red, by Ann Rule (Free, Oct.). The 21-year career of a serial murderer.
When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today, by Harvey Cox (Houghton, Dec.). Jesus didn't just hand out answers; he taught us to think.
Why Some Like It Hot, by Gary Paul Nabhan (Island, Sept.). Your genes are hardwired to love jalapeños or, perhaps, hardwired to hate them.
Science and the Environment
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, by Richard Dawkins (Houghton, Oct.). Back in time to the first bacterium.
Bicycle: The History, by David V. Herlihy (Yale, Nov.). Two wheels against the world.
Life at the Zoo: Behind the Scenes with the Animal Doctors, by Phillip T. Robinson (Columbia, Oct.). The pleasures and perils of running a modern zoo.
On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon, by Alan Tennant (Knopf, Sept.). A rattletrap Cessna chases the stately bird, from Texas to the Caribbean.
Vaccine A: The Covert Pentagon Experiment That's Killing American Soldiers, by Gary Matsumoto (Basic, Sept.). How thousands of U.S. and British troops were unwitting guinea pigs to immunization research. •
Marie Arana is the editor of Book World. She can be reached at aranam@washpost.com.
