The Ice Maiden, by Johan Reinhard (Natl. Geographic, June). An archaeologist tells of his groundbreaking discovery of an Inca mummy in the Andes.
Istanbul, by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf, June). A star of the literary firmament waxes lyrical about his native city.
Planet of Slums, by Mike Davis (Verso, June). Things have grown so dire that more than a billion of the world's residents live in abject poverty.
Sports and Adventure
Bat Boy, by Matthew McGough (Random House, May). True life adventures with the New York Yankees.
Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America, by Mark Svenvold (Holt, May). A writer heads out to the plains with a motley crew of storm lovers.
Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History, by Jeremy Schaap (Houghton, May). A Depression-era boxer becomes a great American folk hero.
Business and the Economy
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt (Morrow, May). Why did crime rates fall in the 1990s? Because abortion was legalized 20 years earlier. (And other novel explanations)
Winning, by Jack Welch (HarperBusiness, April). The former CEO of General Electric shows us the ropes.
Health and Science
Against Depression, by Peter D. Kramer (Viking, May). The author of Listening to Prozac, on how culture has perversely celebrated depression since the days of Aristotle.
Last Child in the Woods : Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv (Algonquin, May). Are kids spending too much time indoors?
Polio: An American Story, by David Oshinsky (Oxford, May). The fierce rivalry between Salk and Sabin.
Radical Evolution, by Joel Garreau (Doubleday, May). Will the great age of technology change the course of human evolution?
Society and Culture
The Faith of the American Soldier, by Stephen Mansfield (Tarcher, May). The religious foundations of today's warrior ethic.
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, by Chuck Klosterman (Sribner, July). A funnyman critic visits the sites where rock legends breathed their last.
Losing Moses on the Freeway : The Ten Commandments in America, by Chris Hedges (Free, June). The author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning takes on America's moral ruin.
The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on Her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of First Graders to Col lege, by Oral Lee Brown (Doubleday, April). One woman can make a difference.
Thirteen and a Day : The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America, by Mark Oppenheimer (FSG, May). A cultural history of the Jewish-American rite of passage. •
Marie Arana is the editor of Book World.
