JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999)

O ARTISTA INCONFESSÁVEL


Fazer o que seja é inútil
Não fazer nada é inútil
Mas entre fazer e não fazer
mais vale o inútil do fazer.
Mas não fazer para esquecer
que é inútil: nunca o esquecer.
Mas fazer o inútil sabendo
que ele é inútil e que seu sentido 
não será pressentido,
fazer: porque ele é mais difícil
do que não fazer, e dificil-
mente se poderá dizer
com mais desdém, ou então dizer
mais direto ao leitor Ninguém,
que o feito o foi para ninguém.

LISTA DOS MAIS VENDIDOS (11 A 43)

11 Harry Potter e a Câmara Secreta (J.K. Rowling): ~77 milhões de cópias

12 The World Almanac and Book of Facts (2003): ~73,5 milhões de cópias

13 Harry Potter e o Cálice de Fogo (J.K. Rowling): ~67 milhões de cópias

14 Harry Potter e o Enigma do Príncipe (J.K. Rowling): ~66 milhões de cópias

15 O Alquimista (Paulo Coelho): ~65 milhões de cópias

16 Harry Potter e o Prisioneiro de Azkaban (J.K. Rowling): ~61 milhões de cópias

17 O Código Da Vinci (Dan Brown): ~60,5 milhões de cópias

18 Harry Potter e a Ordem da Fênix (J.K. Rowling): ~55-58 milhões de cópias

19 Heidi (Johanna Spyri): ~52 milhões de cópias

20 As Minas do Rei Salomão (Henry Rider Haggard): ~50 milhões de cópias

21 Ben-Hur- Uma História dos Tempos de Cristo (Lew Wallace): ~50 milhões de cópias

22 A Marca do Zorro (Johnston McCulley): ~50 milhões de cópias

23 O Pequeno Príncipe (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry): ~50 milhões de cópias

24 Meu Filho, Meu Tesouro (Dr. Benjamin Spock): ~50 milhões de cópias

25 Crepúsculo (Stephenie Meyer): ~47 milhões

26 A menina e o porquinho (E.B. White): ~45 milhões de cópias

27 Harry Potter e as Relíquias da Morte (J.K. Rowling): ~44 milhões de cópias

28 Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter): ~40 milhões de cópias

29 Fernão Capelo Gaivota (Richard Bach): ~40 milhões de cópias

30 Cem Anos de Solidão (Gabriel García Márquez): ~36 milhões de cópias

31 Seus Pontos Fracos (Wayne W. Dyer): ~35 milhões de cópias

32 Em seus Passos... O que Faria Jesus? (Charles M. Shledon): ~30 milhões de cópias

33 A Lei do Triunfo (Napoleon Hill): ~30 milhões de cópias

34 Dicionário Oxford da Língua Inglesa (A.S. Hornby): ~30 milhões de cópias

35 O Sol é Para Todos (Harper Lee): ~30 milhões de cópias

36 O Vale das Bonecas (Jacqueline Susann): ~30 milhões de cópias

37 Pássaros Feridos (Colleen McCullough): ~30 milhões de cópias

38 E o Vento Levou (Margaret Mitchell): ~28 milhões de cópias

39 A Cabana do Pai Tomás (Harriet Beecher Stowe: ~28 milhões de cópias

40 Orgulho e Preconceito (Jane Austen): ~28 milhões de cópias

41 O Apanhador no Campo de Centeio (J.D. Salinger): ~20 milhões de cópias

42 Como Fazer Amigos e Influenciar Pessoas (Dale Carnegie): ~15 milhões de cópias

43 O Que Esperar Quando Você Está Esperando ~13 milhões de cópias

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livros_mais_vendidos

OS 10 LIVROS MAIS VENDIDOS NO MUNDO

1 Bíblia Sagrada: ~5-6 bilhões de cópias

2 I ching. : ~1 bilhão de copias

3 Corão: ~600-800 milhões de cópias

4 Dicionário Xinhua Zidian: ~400 milhões de cópias

5 O Senhor dos Anéis (J.R.R. Tolkien): ~150 milhões de cópias

6 Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal (J.K. Rowling): ~120 milhões de cópias

7 Livro de Mórmon: ~120 milhões de cópias

8 O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos (Agatha Christie): ~100-110 milhões de cópias

9 Dicionário Webster da Língua Inglesa (Noah Webster): ~100 milhões de cópias

10 Livro Guinness dos Recordes: ~94-100 milhões de cópias

JOAQUINA E JOAQUIM

Viviam as suas diferenças...
Ela gostava de correr, ele de caminhar...
Ela de pensar, ele de agir...
Ela de amar, ele de enrolar..
Sabiam que um dia teriam que contar as verdades e vontades ocultas pelo tempo...
Tentavam adiar o dia, mas seria inevitável...

O BLOG É SEU

No correr do Ano de 2009 diversos leitores participaram de formas diferentes...
Uns escrevendo, muitos lendo, outros comentando...
Abro nesse Dezembro a temporada de escrever...
Quem quiser  participar envie dois textos para o meu email : 
coiatelli@hotmail.com
vou publicando e comentando...
abraços

ROSÂNGELA ROCHA

Ao querido Coiatelli,

moço educado e vistoso,

eu disse naquela noite,

“você é misterioso”.

Mas todas as criaturas

estamos no mesmo barco:

temos saberes e segredos

como você, caro Marco.

Depois que fiz a pergunta,

fiquei meio arrependida;

não foi isso que aprendi

dos que me deram a vida.

Espero que me desculpe

e não me leve a mal;

nenhum mineiro agrada

de quem avança o sinal.

Mas a curiosidade

me fez até esquecer

as regras das Alterosas

e o jeito de lá viver.

Surpreendida fiquei

vendo que não se zangou

e a exótica pergunta

nem mesmo o perturbou.

Foi muito bom conhecer

sua vida de aventura

e suas voltas pelo mundo

antes da literatura.

Tenho certeza que será

ótimo juiz de direito

arranjando soluções

sempre com muito jeito.

Desejo que em 2010

tenha legados e heranças

além de pilhas de livros

para alegrar as crianças.

ELIAS CANETTI (1905-1994)

Do livro :
"Sobre os escritores" de Elias Canetti
Editora José Olympio, 2009
ISBN 978-85-03-01021-4


Seleciono na página 57 :


" AQUELE TEM UM POETA NA BARRIGA, 
SE AO MENOS O PUDESSE PÔR NA LÍNGUA "

JOANA E JOÃO

Casal diferente, eram o que poderia se chamar de anti-consumistas. Só o necessário, pareciam dois extraterrestres naquele mundo louco. Todo dia tinha alguma novidade para ser adquirida não importava em que material quantidade ou preço. O bombardeio era grande. Difícil resistir...
Eles resistiam, moravam numa bela chácara a beira dum córrego, cuidavam da horta e estavam sempre realizando alguma atividade artesanal, no fundo viviam disso, tinham um Ateliê movimentado, todos gostavam daquela produção especial e as recomendações só aumentavam...

JOAQUIM NABUCO (1849-1910)

No livro :
"JOAQUIM NABUCO DIÁRIOS"
ISBN 858874719-7 
página 159, encontro o seguinte trecho 
escrito quando ele estava com 28 anos:


" Há certos homens, eu não estou longe deles, que seriam tão felizes como Dom Quixote, se não levassem sempre atrás de si o seu Sancho Pança. É o papel da experiência mostrar sempre à imaginação que , onde ela supõe estar o sublime, está o ridículo. "

JOHN STEINBECK (4/4)

Foi demitida, e talvez com razão, por deixar de ensinar o básico.Tais coisas têm de ser apreeendidas. Mas ela deixou em nós a paixão pelo puro conhecimento do mundo e a mim ela inflamou coom uma curiosidade que nunca me abandonou. Não sei fazer uma simples operação aritmética, mas por meio dela senti que a matemática abstrata era bem parecida com a música. Quando foi afastada, a tristeza caiu sobre nós, mas a luz não se apagou. Ela deixou em nós a sua assinatura, a literatura do professor que escreve nas mentes. Tive muitos professores que me contaram fatos logo esquecidos, mas só três que criaram em mim uma coisa nova, uma nova atitude e uma nova fome. Suponho que, em boa parte, sou o manuscrito não assinado daquela professora do ginásio. Que poder imortaljaz nas mãos de uma pessoa assim.
Posso dizer a meu filho, que aguarda com horror quinze anos de chatice, que em algum lugar da empoeirada escuridão pode acontecer a mágica que iluminará os anos...se ele tiver muita sorte.


A AMÉRICA E OS AMERICANOS. 
Editora Record; paginas 177,178. 
ISBN 85-01-06560-9

JOHN STEINBECK (3/4)

Meus três tinham essas coisas em comum: todos amavam o que faziam. Não falavam - catalisavam um desejo ardente de saber. Sob sua influência, os horizontes se abriam, o medo sumia, o desconhecido tornava-se passível de conhecer. Mas o mais importante é que a verdade, aquele troço perigoso, ficava bela e preciosíssima.
Vou falar apenas de minha primeira professora porque, além de outras coisas, ela trouxe a descoberta.
Ela nos estimulou em discussões gritadas, de sacudir livros. Tinha a turma mais barulhenta da escola e nem parecia notar. Nunca podíamos nos prender ao assunto, geometria ou recitação cantada dos filos decorados. Nossa especulação abarcava o mundo. Ela instigava curiosidade em nós para que trouxéssemos os fatos ou verdades abrigados em nossas mãos, como vaga-lumes capturados.

LUCY COUSINS

YUMMY: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales

Written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins.
Candlewick. $18.99. (Ages 3 and up) 

Eight popular fairy tales retold in vivid color

TAEEUN YOO

ONLY A WITCH CAN FLY

By Alison McGhee. Illustrated by Taeeun Yoo.
Feiwel & Friends. $16.99. (Ages 4 to 8) 

An illustrated poem about a little girl who dreams of flying on her broomstick on Halloween night.

JERRY PINKNEY

THE LION AND THE MOUSE

Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.
Little, Brown. $16.99. (Ages 3 to 6)

This illustrated retelling of the classic fable has only seven words, all sound effects.

ANTOINETTE PORTIS

A PENGUIN STORY

Written and illustrated by Antoinette Portis.

HarperCollins. $17.99. (Ages 4 to 8)

Edna the penguin goes on a quest to discover new colors.

KOMAKO SAKAI

THE SNOW DAY

Written and illustrated by Komako Sakai.
Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $16.99. (Ages 3 to 5)

A bunny child stays home from school when the world is beset by a snowstorm.

100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2009 by NEW YORK TIMES NEWSPAPER

100 Notable Books of 2009

By THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

The Book Review has made these selections from books reviewed since Dec. 7, 2008, when we published our previous Notables list. It was not easy picking the winners, and we doubtless made mistakes. To the authors who made the list: congratulations. To the equally deserving ones who did not: our apologies.

The ever expanding literary universe resists generalizing, but one heartening development has been the resurgence of the short story — and of the short-story writer. Twelve collections made our fiction list, and four biographies of short-story masters are on the nonfiction list.

This list will appear in print on Dec. 6, 2009. —The Editors

Previous Years: 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999

Jump to:

• Fiction and Poetry
• Nonfiction

FICTION AND POETRY

'Amateur Barbarians'

By ROBERT COHEN

Cohen’s middle-aged protagonist heads to Africa, leaving his wife back home in New England with a younger rival. (Scribner, $27.)

• Review | Excerpt

'American Rust'

By PHILIPP MEYER

Meyer’s crime novel/road novel hybrid also manages to chronicle life in a dying mill town. (Spiegel & Grau, $24.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Anthologist'

By NICHOLSON BAKER

Baker’s ardent novel about poetry — with its hero trying, and mostly failing, to write an anthology introduction — actually does justice to poetry. (Simon & Schuster, $25.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Art Student’s War'

By BRAD LEITHAUSER

In midcentury Detroit, a young woman searches for authenticity and passion in art and in love. (Knopf, $28.95.)

• Review Will Be Posted Friday, Nov. 27

'Asterios Polyp'

Written and illustrated by DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI

A graphic novel 10 years in the making combines a modernist style, a formalist structure and a story about a bristly academic. (Pantheon, $29.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Await Your Reply'

By DAN CHAON

Three essentially separate story lines, with morbidly alienated main characters, link up at the end of Chaon’s unremittingly dark and provocative novel. (Ballantine, $25.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It'

By MAILE MELOY

Meloy’s calm, intelligent prose renders her stories’ self-sabotaging characters — lawyers, unfaithful spouses, eccentric older women, Montanans — eminently understandable. (Riverhead, $25.95.)

• Review

'The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein'

By PETER ACKROYD

Return to Top

This clever novel’s Frankenstein hobnobs with the Shelleys. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Chronic City'

By JONATHAN LETHEM

Beneath the gaudy makeup of this dancing showgirl of a novel, set in an alternate-reality Manhattan, is the girl next door: a traditional bildungsroman with a strong moral compass. (Doubleday, $27.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Confessions of Edward Day'

By VALERIE MARTIN

An actor, saved from drowning by an unsavory rival, learns that gratitude never follows humiliation. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $25.)

• Review

'Dearest Creature'

By AMY GERSTLER

Gerstler’s poems — skillful in every kind of comedy, yet deeply serious — show a fondness for animals without sentimentalizing them. (Penguin Poets, paper, $18.)

• Review

'Do Not Deny Me: Stories'

By JEAN THOMPSON

The woes dramatized here are no less painful for being unexceptional. (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, $14.)

• Review

'Don’t Cry: Stories'

By MARY GAITSKILL

Gaitskill implicates the reader in what feels like a violation of her own characters, whose lives are more often broken than in any way admirable. (Pantheon, $23.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Every Man Dies Alone'

By HANS FALLADA; translated by MICHAEL HOFMANN

This is the first English version of Fallada’s 1947 novel, based on a real-life German couple who mounted modest but suicidal resistance against Hitler. (Melville House, $27.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned'

By WELLS TOWER

This polished story collection takes its sustenance from class conflict, rough men and strong women, and the intersection between hotheads and cool customers. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.)

• Review | Author Profile

'Family Album'

By PENELOPE LIVELY

It’s the slow, inexorable way everyone comes to acknowledge the suppressed event at the heart of this domestic novel that makes it quietly devastating. (Viking, $25.95.)

• Review Will Be Posted Friday, Nov. 27

'Follow Me'

By JOANNA SCOTT

A heroine bent on reinvention is at the center of this densely stitched crazy quilt of a novel, which spans six decades and a wealth of genres while evoking a quintessential American mythology. (Little, Brown, $24.99.)

• Review

'A Gate at the Stairs'

By LORRIE MOORE

Moore’s latest novel, about a Midwestern college student who hires on as a nanny for a brainy couple on the eve of adoption, brandishes some big material — war, racism — in a resolutely insouciant key. (Knopf, $25.95.)

• Review | Excerpt | Author Profile | Video

'Generosity: An Enhancement'

By RICHARD POWERS

This novel’s central figure is a woman ostensibly afflicted with hyperthymia — an excess of happiness. (Frances Coady/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel'

By JEANNETTE WALLS

Assuming her maternal grandmother’s voice, Walls, the author of “The Glass Castle,” recreates an adrenaline-charged existence on the rough-and-tumble Southwest frontier. (Scribner, $26.)

• Review | Excerpt

'How it Ended: New and Collected Stories'

By JAY McINERNEY

This collection, from a career now reaching nearly three decades, reminds us how broad McInerney’s scope has been and how confidently he has ranged across our national experience. (Knopf, $25.95.)

• Review | Video

'In Other Rooms, Other Wonders'

By DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN

The eight linked stories here follow the scheming of a rich and powerful Pakistani family and their employees. (Norton, $23.95.)

• Review | Author Profile

'Invisible'

By PAUL AUSTER

The student-hero of Auster’s masterly novel learns about love from several characters, but an affair with his sister permanently defines his personality. (Frances Coady/Holt, $25.)

• Review

'Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi'

By GEOFF DYER

This haunting novel is like a rough guide to transformation: moving from scenes of erotic decadence to scenes of squalor, the death it describes is that of craving, of intention, even of self. (Pantheon, $24.)

• Review

'The Lacuna'

By BARBARA KINGSOLVER

This novel, about a boy’s memorable bonds with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, is a call to conscience and connection. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.)

• Review

'Lark and Termite'

By JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS

Phillips’s inspired novel, with its Faulknerian echoes, revolves around a loyal sister and her impaired brother, who sees what others don’t. (Knopf, $24.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Let the Great World Spin'

By COLUM McCANN

Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers is pivotal to all the lives in this deeply affecting New York novel. (Random House, $25.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Little Stranger'

By SARAH WATERS

In Waters’s novel of postwar anxiety, members of a decaying upper-crust English family start to come to sticky ends in their creepy mansion. (Riverhead, $26.95.)

• Review

'Love and Obstacles: Stories'

By ALEKSANDAR HEMON

The worldly eccentric who narrates these tales declares a specialty in “those brainy postmodern setups” somehow tied to identity. (Riverhead, $25.95.)

• Review | Excerpt | Author Profile

'Love and Summer'

By WILLIAM TREVOR

Return to Top

A heartbreaking and satisfying novel about the relationship between a restless amateur photographer and a shy young Irish farm wife. (Viking, $25.95.)

• Review

'The Museum of Innocence'

By ORHAN PAMUK; translated by MAUREEN FREELY

The city of Istanbul is on exhibit in Pamuk’s novel of first love painfully sustained over a lifetime. (Knopf, $28.95.)

• Review | Author Profile

'My Father’s Tears: And Other Stories'

By JOHN UPDIKE

In his final collection of new fiction, Updike relives the matter of a lifetime and grapples with the effects of aging, disease and death. (Knopf, $25.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall'

By KAZUO ISHIGURO

First-person tales of human emotion in the waning hours of light. (Knopf, $25.)

• Review

'Nothing Right: Short Stories'

By ANTONYA NELSON

Nelson is drawn to the damage that results when strong women foolishly trust weak men. (Bloomsbury, $25.)

• Review

'Once the Shore: Stories'

By PAUL YOON

Elemental tales of lives on a South Korean island, in spare and beautiful prose. (Sarabande, paper, $15.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'One D.O.A., One on the Way'

By MARY ROBISON

An angry heroine is thrust into the volatile world of her dying husband’s family, which includes his “utterly identical” twin. (Counterpoint, $23.)

• Review

'Sag Harbor'

By COLSON WHITEHEAD

Benji, the well-off 15-year-old black hero of Whitehead’s memoiristic fourth novel, lives in a world where life doesn’t assault him but rather affords him the time to figure out who he wants to be. (Doubleday, $24.95.)

• Review | Excerpt | Author Profile

'A Short History of Women'

By KATE WALBERT

Improbably, this spare and wrenching novel lives up to its name, hopscotching through time and alternating among the lives of a British suffragist and her descendants. (Scribner, $24.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Sky Below'

By STACEY D’ERASMO

It’s hard not to be seduced by D’Erasmo’s selfish hero, an artist whose hunger for expression, for a father and for a home embodies a sense of entrapment that could make anyone behave badly. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Song Is You'

By ARTHUR PHILLIPS

Phillips turns the notion of the artistic muse on its head and gives it a spin, delineating a pas de deux between a young singer-songwriter and the older man who actively, obsessively inspires her. (Random House, $25.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Too Much Happiness'

By ALICE MUNRO

Munro’s stories take on pulp fiction’s sensational subjects. But episodes of murder, suicide and adultery turn out to be just anterooms to an echo chamber filled with subtle and far-reaching thematic reverberations. (Knopf, $25.95.)

• Review Will Be Posted Friday, Nov. 27

'Typhoon'

By CHARLES CUMMING

British and American spies clash in the buildup to the Beijing Olympics. (St. Martin’s, $25.99.)

• Review

'A Village Life'

By LOUISE GLÜCK

In a stylistic departure, Glück’s poems use the village as a lens to examine the lives within, which counterpoint the memories of her life without. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.)

• Review

'Wolf Hall'

By HILARY MANTEL

Tolerant, passionate and humane, Thomas Cromwell is cast as the picaresque hero of this Man Booker Prize-winning novel of Henry VIII’s turbulent court. (John Macrae/Holt, $27.)

• Review

'The Year of the Flood'

By MARGARET ATWOOD

Return to Top

Through other mouths, Atwood has brilliantly retold her 2003 novel “Oryx and Crake,” showing how the kids Glenn and Jimmy became Crake and the Snowman. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.95.)

• Review

NONFICTION

'The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn'

By LOUISA GILDER

Gilder’s book brings the reader into a mix of ideas and personalities, which she handles with verve. (Knopf, $27.50.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science'

By RICHARD HOLMES

The twin energies of scientific curiosity and poetic invention pulsate through this study of “the second scientific revolution.” (Pantheon, $40.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Ayn Rand and the World She Made'

By ANNE C. HELLER

Heller maintains critical perspective while conveying the conviction and odd charisma of Rand, whose angry message resonates today among the anti-Obama right. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $35.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater'

By FRANK BRUNI

A memoir by The Times’s former restaurant critic, who writes of food, family, friendship and being fat. (Penguin Press, $25.)

• Review | Essay Adapted From ‘Born Round’

'The Case for God'

By KAREN ARMSTRONG

Armstrong, a former nun, wants to rescue the idea of the Deity from its cultured despisers and its more literal-minded adherents alike. (Knopf, $27.95.)

• Review

'Cheever: A Life'

By BLAKE BAILEY

This detailed biography follows John Cheever’s path step by stumbling step, disclosing the addictive urges and bawling self-pity to which he subjected himself and those in his household. (Knopf, $35.)

• Review | Excerpt

'City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s'

By EDMUND WHITE

Friends and sheer perseverance got the novelist through his years of desire, poverty and thwarted ambition. (Bloomsbury, $26.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Closing Time: A Memoir'

By JOE QUEENAN

In Queenan’s account of his life, the belligerent priests, the poverty, the girls and the music all pale beside the rages of his drunken, violently abusive father. (Viking, $26.95.)

• Review

'Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places'

By BILL STREEVER

From the physics of absolute zero to the cold-resistant gluttony of small birds, Streever reports on the extreme regions of low temperatures and the scientists who love them. (Little, Brown, $24.99.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Columbine'

By DAVE CULLEN

Cullen’s nuanced account anatomizes the massacre, showing how readily truth was obscured by myth. (Twelve, $26.99.)

• Review

'A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent'

By ROBERT W. MERRY

How the 1840s paved the way to the Civil War. (Simon & Schuster, $30.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker'

By JAMES McMANUS

This copious, lively history treats the game, and the qualities it demands, as characteristically American. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression'

By MORRIS DICKSTEIN

Dickstein demonstrates how glorious entertainments thrived in a decade of crisis. (Norton, $29.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits'

By LINDA GORDON

An absorbing, well-researched and highly political biography of a transformative figure in modern photojournalism. (Norton, $35.)

• Review

'Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815'

By GORDON S. WOOD

Return to Top

A grand, fascinating account of America’s first quarter-century, presented with great insight and scholarship. (Oxford University, $35.)

• Review Will Be Posted Friday, Nov. 27

'The Evolution of God'

By ROBERT WRIGHT

In his careful yet provocative contemplation of religious history, Wright sees continuous positive moral change over time but denies the specialness of any individual faith. (Little, Brown, $25.99.)

• Review | Author Interview

'A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon'

By NEIL SHEEHAN

Sheehan fully sets Schriever, a crucial figure behind the creation of America’s ICBM force, in the context of the cold war’s early years. (Random House, $32.)

• Review | Excerpt | Author Profile

'The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found'

By MARY BEARD

A Cambridge classics professor leads a fine tour, turning up surprises around every corner. (Belknap/Harvard University, $26.95.)

• Review

'The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt'

By T. J. STILES

Stiles writes with care and panache about the quintessential “robber baron,” a man widely revered as well as hated. (Knopf, $37.50.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor'

By BRAD GOOCH

Witty, obsessed and almost inhumanly brave, O’Connor was peculiar, her work even more so. But Gooch strives to make it all quite normal. (Little, Brown, $30.)

• Review

'Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City'

By GREG GRANDIN

Ford tried and failed to build an ideal American society on an Amazonian rubber plantation. (Metropolitan/Holt, $27.50.)

• Review

'The Good Soldiers'

By DAVID FINKEL

Finkel’s harrowing chronicle of modern combat is based on the eight months he spent with an Army battalion in Iraq. (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.)

• Review

'The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11'

By JOHN FARMER

A senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission assails the Bush administration’s depiction of the event as so much public relations flimflam. (Riverhead, $26.95.)

• Review

'Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme'

By TRACY DAUGHERTY

Not dwelling on Barthelme’s dark soul or his uneven work, Daugherty has created a convincing narrative from a life that was engaged, passionate and maybe even fulfilled. (St. Martin’s, $35.)

• Review

'Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan'

By DOUG STANTON

An uplifting account of how Special Forces soldiers joined with mounted local militias to beat back the Taliban in 2001. (Scribner, $28.)

• Review

'In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic'

By DAVID WESSEL

A hair-raising tale of the race to stave off a depression. (Crown Business, $26.99.)

• Review

'The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America'

By STEVEN JOHNSON

A satisfying genre-blending consideration of Joseph Priestley and his fertile ideas. (Riverhead, $25.95.)

• Review

'The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China'

By HANNAH PAKULA

Pakula’s often absorbing biography presents Madame Chiang as far more complicated, awful and brilliant than we had imagined. (Simon & Schuster, $35.)

• Review Will Be Posted Friday, Nov. 27

'Lit: A Memoir'

By MARY KARR

Despite the deep seriousness of the topics here — motherhood, disintegrating marriage, alcoholism, depression, God — nothing can keep Karr from being funny. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.)

• Review

'Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World'

By LIAQUAT AHAMED

Return to Top

In a sweeping narrative built around four powerful central bankers, Ahamed describes the cascading series of events that led to the Great Depression. (Penguin Press, $32.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir'

By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

In its moments of real ambivalence, this loving and funny filial memoir of Bill and Pat Buckley is surprisingly strong drink. (Twelve, $24.99.)

• Review | Essay Adapted From ‘Losing Mum and Pup’

'The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story'

By JULIE MYERSON

Myerson interweaves powerful scenes of her son’s drug addiction with the story of a young consumptive who died in 1838. (Bloomsbury, $26.)

• Review | Excerpt | Author Profile

'The Lost City Of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon'

By DAVID GRANN

Grann follows the trail of the English adventurer/explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925. (Doubleday, $27.50.)

• Review

'Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever'

By WALTER KIRN

The witty, self-castigating story of how Kirn’s schooling left him “not so much educated as wised up.” (Doubleday, $24.95.)

• Review

'Louis D. Brandeis: A Life'

By MELVIN I. UROFSKY

An admiring biography of the Supreme Court justice as a reformer and legal innovator. (Pantheon, $40.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks'

By ROBIN ROMM

Romm’s fury over her mother’s cancer is magnetic, with the power to both repel and attract, and here it is transformed into an instrument for pursuing truth. (Scribner, $22.)

• Review

'Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town'

By NICK REDING

In his unnerving portrait of Oelwein, Iowa, Reding depicts a catastrophe of Chernobylish dimensions, precipitated by the loss of jobs and the rise of methamphetamines. (Bloomsbury, $25.)

• Review | Excerpt

'My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times'

By HAROLD EVANS

Evans was a large part of the era of British newspapers he describes, when journalists were literate buccaneers. (Little, Brown, $27.99.)

• Review

'The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street'

By JUSTIN FOX

In this essential account, Fox zeroes in on the academics whose efficient-market theories enabled abuses. (Harper Business/HarperCollins, $27.99.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Open: An Autobiography'

By ANDRE AGASSI

Bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily, Agassi’s is one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete. (Knopf, $28.95.)

• Review | Excerpt | Author Profile | Video

'A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster'

By REBECCA SOLNIT

A powerful work that offers an impassioned challenge to the social meaning of disasters. (Viking, $27.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life'

By CAROL SKLENICKA

Sklenicka’s biography is invaluable as a chronicle of Carver’s growth as a writer, particularly in its account of his difficult, ultimately poisonous relationship with the editor Gordon Lish. (Scribner, $35.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend'

By LARRY TYE

Along with athletic ability, showmanship helped make Satchel Paige the most lasting symbol of black baseball. (Random House, $26.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force — the NYPD'

By CHRISTOPHER DICKEY

Much credit for success goes to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. (Simon & Schuster, $26.)

• Review

'Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work'

By MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD

Return to Top

An encomium to manual skills, by a political philosophy Ph.D. who can rebuild VW engines. (Penguin Press, $25.95.)

• Review | Essay Adapted From ‘Shop Class as Soulcraft’

'The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom'

By GRAHAM FARMELO

The quantum pioneer had an almost miraculous apprehension of the physical world, coupled with an innocent incomprehension of other people. (Basic Books, $29.95.)

• Review

'Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original'

By ROBIN D. G. KELLEY

A superbly textured, compassionate biography. (Free Press, $30.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Third Reich at War'

By RICHARD J. EVANS

This riveting final volume to Evans’s magisterial trilogy illuminates the endless human capacity for evil and self-justification. (Penguin Press, $40.)

• Review

'The Weight of a Mustard Seed: The Intimate Story of an Iraqi General and His Family During Thirty Years of Tyranny'

By WENDELL STEAVENSON

This elegantly told story weaves together the Iraqi past and present. (Collins/HarperCollins, $24.99.)

• Review | Excerpt

'When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present'

By GAIL COLLINS

A Times columnist’s thorough, smart and often wry account of American women’s strides and the hurdles they still face. (Little, Brown, $27.99.)

• Review

'Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector'

By BENJAMIN MOSER

The Brazilian writer was born to remorse, shaken by trauma and imbued with a deep sense of alienation. (Oxford University, $29.95.)

• Review | Excerpt

'The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America'

By DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

Roosevelt, as shown in this vast, energetic book, saw conservation as crucial to America’s military and moral standing. (Harper/HarperCollins, $34.99.)

• Review | Excerpt

'Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity'

By DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN

A sense of urgency runs through this disturbing exploration of the motives and actions that have led to mass murder. (PublicAffairs, $29.95.)

• Review

'Yours Ever: People and Their Letters'

By THOMAS MALLON

Mallon’s fine meditation on the art of letter-writing embraces old friends — Flaubert, Freud, the Mitfords — and plenty of unknowns as well. (Pantheon, $26.95.)

• Review Will Be Posted Friday, Nov. 27

'Zeitoun'

By DAVE EGGERS

This suspenseful nonfiction account of what happened to a Syrian-American man and his family after Hurricane Katrina is a powerful indictment of Bush-era policies. (McSweeney’s, $24.)

• Review | Excerpt