NONFICTION
Too Much to Know, by Ann M. Blair (Yale; $25). Information overload in Renaissance Europe.
The Anatomy of a Moment, by Javier Cercas, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean (Bloomsbury; $18). An account of the failed right-wing coup in post-Franco Spain.
The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian (Doubleday; $27.95). What we can learn from computers about being human.
A World on Fire, by Amanda Foreman (Random House; $35). Britain’s role in the American Civil War.
George F. Kennan, by John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin Press; $39.95). An authoritative biography of the Cold Warrior and father of containment.
The Chairs Are Where the People Go, by Misha Glouberman, with Sheila Heti (Faber & Faber; $13). Philosophical squibs on the vagaries of contemporary life.
The Fear, by Peter Godwin (Back Bay; $15.99). A memoir of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Pauline Kael, by Brian Kellow (Viking; $27.95). A life of the critic.
Great Soul, by Joseph Lelyveld (Knopf; $28.95). The successes and failures of Mahatma Gandhi.
The Joy of Secularism, edited by George Levine (Princeton; $35). Life after God.
Malcolm X, by Manning Marable (Viking; $30). A monumental biography of the black activist.
What It Is Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly; $25). A Vietnam veteran on the experience of combat.
Molotov’s Magic Lantern, by Rachel Polonsky (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $17). A roving evocation of Russia’s past.
Leningrad, by Anna Reid (Walker; $30). A history of the Second World War siege.
Mightier Than the Sword, by David S. Reynolds (Norton; $27.95). “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Civil War.
The Inner Life of Empires, by Emma Rothschild (Princeton; $35). Private life and public power in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Modigliani, by Meryle Secrest (Knopf; $35). A new life of the Italian artist.
Stolen World, by Jennie Erin Smith (Crown; $25). Inside the international reptile trade.
Adventures in the Orgasmatron, by Christopher Turner (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $35). Wilhelm Reich and the psychology of the sexual revolution.
Pox, by Michael Willrich (Penguin; $27.95). The battle to end smallpox in Progressive-era America and the epochal civil-liberties struggle that ensued.
The Idea of America, by Gordon S. Wood (Penguin Press; $29.95). Reflections on the birth of a nation.
FICTION AND POETRY
Until the Dawn’s Light, by Aharon Appelfeld, translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green (Schocken; $26). In turn-of-the-century Austria, a young Jewish woman converts to Christianity.
The Good Muslim, by Tahmima Anam (Harper; $25.99). Secularism and fundamentalism collide in Bangladesh.
Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur; $14.99). A private investigator sets out to find a woman’s natural parents.
Lost Memory of Skin, by Russell Banks (Ecco; $25.99). A young sex offender struggles to get by in contemporary Florida.
The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes (Knopf; $23.95). In late middle age, a man reflects on a youthful love affair.
Touch, by Henri Cole (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $23). Poems of voluptuous candor.
Open City, by Teju Cole (Random House; $25). A graduate student explores New York City on foot.
Daughters of the Revolution, by Carolyn Cooke (Knopf; $24.95). An all-male Massachusetts boarding school admits its first female student.
The Angel Esmeralda, by Don DeLillo (Scribner; $24). A career-spanning story collection from the laureate of postmodern terror.
Solo, by Rana Dasgupta (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25). A hundred-year-old Bulgarian man looks back on his life and the twentieth century.
A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, by Margaret Drabble (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $24). The collected stories, which address the changing roles of women in society.
The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright (Norton; $25.95). Adultery in Ireland.
The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown; $25.99). A campus baseball novel.
Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson (Ecco; $26.99). Sex, drugs, and hardcore punk in New York.
The Stranger’s Child, by Alan Hollinghurst (Knopf; $27.95). Sexual politics and the making of literary reputations.
The Iliad, translated from the Greek by Stephen Mitchell (Free Press; $35). A brisk, economical new version.
Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $18). The life and times of an anonymous drifter.
Leaving the Atocha Station, by Ben Lerner (Coffee House; $15). Love, poetry, and fraudulence in literary Madrid.
Stone Upon Stone, by Wiesław Myśliwski, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago; $20). A sweeping novel of twentieth-century Poland.
The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips (Random House; $26). An intricate novel posing as the introduction to a newly discovered Shakespeare play.
Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf; $15). Elegiac poems about space, time, and loss.
Coming to That, by Dorothea Tanning (Graywolf; $15). Poems on age, and the only end of age.
One with Others, by C. D. Wright (Copper Canyon; $18). A book-length poem about a civil-rights march.
