Best Books 2000

Eric Bryant, Barbara Hoffert, Heather McCormack, Rebecca Miller, Mirela Roncevic, Nathan Ward, & Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 1/8/2001

Why a best books list? Aren't there enough guideposts to good reading already, from the local paper's best sellers list to Amazon's rate-it-yourself opportunities? In fact, we think that LJ's annual best books list has a lot of value. Not only does it allow us to assess a year's worth of work (what are trends? what did I really think of that big biography?), but, more importantly, it lets us give a uniquely library spin to the hunt for superlatives in the publishing world. From the work of Nobel laureates Gunter Grass and Saul Bellow (also the subject of a biography that made this list) to first novelists Myla Goldberg and Zadie Smith, from James Parakilas's piano studies to Sophie Calle's unique art to David Sibley's soaring guide to birds, this list ranges farther than you might expect to bring you the very best reading.

Abrams. ed. by Paul Greenhalgh. ISBN 0-8109-4219-4. $75.
Art Nouveau spanned a wink in time, leaving Tiffany lamps as its most recognizable relic. Copiously illustrated, this companion to the traveling exhibition of the same name is the first study to exhume the complete spectrum of the movement's roots, myriad practitioners, and stunning objets d'art. (LJ 11/15/00)

Atlas, James. Bellow: A Biography. Random. ISBN 0-394-58501-1. $35.
Atlas overcomes the obstacles of writing about a living, sometimes unlikable, but great novelist by seeing Bellow's life as both representative of the 20th-century Jewish immigrant experience in Chicago and as brilliantly exceptional, culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature and this year's Ravelstein. (LJ 10/1/00)

Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Life. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-017586-9. $36.
After 93 years, longtime Columbia professor Barzun has published this elegantly opinionated synthesis of 500 years of Western 'culture,' which discursively includes sociology, government, sexuality, art, technology, and politics. An impressive and readable achievement. (LJ 3/15/00)

Bellow, Saul. Ravelstein. Viking. ISBN 0-670-84134-X. $24.95.
In this imaginative re-creation of his friend Allan Bloom, Bellow uses a risky technique that only a really great writer can pull off. Instead of plot, he offers portrait; Abe Ravelstein is a multidimensional protagonist made all the more fascinating by Bellow's dwelling so lovingly on his psyche. It's refreshing to read about a self-directed character who is not defined by the actions of others. A coup for Bellow. (LJ 4/15/00)

Farrar. tr. by Seamus Heaney. ISBN 0-374-11119-7. $25.
It took a poet of Nobel laureate Heaney's grand lyric sensibility to rescue this Anglo-Saxon epic from the classroom and bring it back where it belongs: to readers, who will thrill at the clash of good and evil, human and monster, in a dark world where fate rules and missteps aren't allowed. Strident, stirring, mythic, magical--this is powerful stuff that revitalizes our literary roots. (LJ 12/99)

Black, Ira B. The Dying of Enoch Wallace: Life, Death, and the Changing Brain. McGraw. ISBN 0-07-136208-8. $24.95.
A series of vignettes presenting a fictionalized patient's struggle with Alzheimer's gives readers an emotional narrative they can grasp. In intervening chapters, some may be surprised to find themselves learning about the most up-to-date discoveries in neuroscience. A leader in this field, Black makes no attempt to dumb down the concepts yet is always lucid and accessible. (LJ 10/15/00)

Bodanis, David. E=mcA²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation. Walker. ISBN 0-8027-1352-1. $25.
What does the Theory of Relativity really mean? For most of us, Einstein's linkage of energy and mass is an important but impenetrable concept. Bodanis's marvelous and very readable 'biography' lucidly explains the science and profiles the scientists (besides Einstein) behind this earth-shattering discovery. (LJ 11/1/00)

Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. 2: Revolution and Renunciation, 1790-1803. Oxford Univ. ISBN 0-19-815869-6. $45.
A satisfying melange of biography, history, philosophy, and literary and cultural criticism, this authoritative second volume of an expected trilogy is the definitive study of the German poet's life and times. Published on the 250th anniversary of his birth, it focuses on his pivotal years--the age of the French Revolution--and convincingly demonstrates the relevance of even the minutest details to his career. (LJ 6/15/00)

. Bulfinch: Little, Brown. ed. by Alain Sayag & Annick Lionel-Marie. ISBN 0-8212-2668-1. $75.
Brassai;'s images of the Parisian demimonde of the 1930s have become iconic, a danger for someone with a gift for capturing spontaneity. This massive tome, which includes not only many rediscovered photos but also writings by Brassai; and friends and the artist's sometimes less successful forays into painting and sculpture, brings back the artist's undeniable vitality. (LJ 11/1/00)

Breger, Louis. Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-31628-8. $30.
It is difficult to imagine Freud the icon as a child with problems of his own. In this singular biography and cultural study, Breger reveals how his elusive subject turned his analysis of his own childhood into a profoundly personal science. What comes into startling focus is Freud's gift for wearing masks--and the effect it had on his theories. (LJ 9/1/00)

Buford, Kate. Burt Lancaster: An American Life. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44603-6. $27.50.
Lancaster led a king-size American life that took him from the melting pot of East Harlem to Hollywood Babylon. Written with the cooperation of his widow and friends, Buford's captivating biography is the first to pay homage to the former circus performer's crackling sexuality as well as his contributions to independent film production. Burt, we never knew thee--until now. (LJ 2/15/00)

Cairns, David. Berlioz. Vol. 1: The Making of an Artist. ISBN 0-520-22199-0. Vol. 2: Servitude and Greatness. ISBN 0-520-22200-8. ea. vol: Univ. of California. $40.
With the dissemination of this two-volume masterstroke, the first published a decade ago in Britain and since revised, Berlioz could recapture the rapturous acclaim that greeted him upon the performance of his signature Symphonie fantastique in 1830. Cairns has rescued from obscurity this med student turned composer--often dismissed as dissonant--and spun his life and music into a harmonic whole. (LJ 3/1/00)

Calle, Sophie with Paul Auster. Double Game. Violette Eds., dist. by D.A.P. ISBN 1-900828-06-5. $65.
Calle served as a model for a character in Paul Auster's Leviathan, and now this versatile artist has returned the favor by playing out roles Auster wrote specifically for her. That is actually just one aspect of this complex and stunningly beautiful volume, which documents several overlapping projects. This is everything an artist's book should be. (LJ 10/1/00)

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Random. ISBN 0-679-45004-1. $26.95.
Chabon accomplishes the near-impossible, successfully blending tragedy (Joe Kavalier escapes the impending Holocaust, which echoes darkly throughout) and comedy (Joe joins forces with Brooklyn cousin Sam Clay to conquer the comic book trade). Delightful and involving, written in fresh, surging prose, this work shows how much Chabon has matured as an artist. (LJ 10/15/00)

Cohen, Adam & Elizabeth Taylor. American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley; His Battle for Chicago and the Nation. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-83403-3. $26.95.
Equally the story of the consummate American machine boss who ruled Chicago from 1955 to 1976 and a study of the city he remade in his image, this work is gripping reading and an exemplary political biography. (LJ 3/15/00)

Conover, Ted. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Random. ISBN 0-375-50177-0. $24.95.
A Jack Londonesque adventurer-journalist, Conover was constantly rebuffed when he tried to gain access to prison guards. So he applied, went through training, and joined the ranks of guards at New York's notorious Sing Sing prison. This record of his tenure there stands out for its honesty in documenting both the environment and how profoundly the experience changed Conover himself. (LJ 6/1/00)

Crace, Jim. Being Dead. Farrar. ISBN 0-374-11013-1. $21.
In this unique novel, which centers on the murder of two middle-aged zoologists, death is rendered in exacting detail as a phenomenon that instigates both the body's decay and the mind's 'never-ending' nothingness. Crace invites the reader to consider the mysterious beauty rather than the morbidity of such a state. Instead of plot, the novel depends on haunting scenes and a daring writing technique to deliver its considerable punch. (LJ 2/15/00)

de Villiers, Marq. Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. Houghton. ISBN 0-618-03009-3. $26.
Water, water everywhere, and one day, de Villiers argues, there may not be a fresh drop to drink. His eloquent look at the coming global water shortage (in some countries, it's already here) will make readers appreciate a resource too often taken for granted and get them to fix their leaky taps! (LJ 7/00)

Drakulic, Slavenka. S.: A Novel About the Balkans. Viking. ISBN 0-670-89097-9. $22.95.
Known in her native Croatia as an outspoken cultural critic and feminist, Drakulic delivers a powerful, authentic, and painfully intimate account of the physical and mental abuse afflicted upon hundreds of Bosnian women by Serbian nationalists during the Balkan civil wars. The focus is on the dignified nature of human suffering rather than accusation of the guilty. (LJ 12/99)

Duany, Andres & others. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. North Point: Farrar. ISBN 0-86547-557-1. $30.
This is not the first book to question how we became a nation of disconnected people in detached tract homes. But Duany and his partners at a thriving architecture firm are hard-nosed realists who use real data to describe the environmental and social ills that have resulted from sprawl, and they have a wealth of experience to back up their prescriptions. (LJ 3/15/00)

Eggers, Dave. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-86347-2. $24.
As a rule, memoirs by people in their twenties are to be avoided except perhaps by readers in their teens. This is a notable exception. It's not just that Eggers has had such an eventful life; it's that the distinctiveness of his imagination as he recounts raising a brother and founding a magazine is visceral, immediate, and absolutely thrilling. (LJ 11/15/99)

Eller, Cynthia. The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Beacon. ISBN 0-8070-6792-X. $26.
Eller's thoughtful deconstruction of a modern feminist myth explores its appeal, its historical plausibility, and the inherent limitations in its picture of women. Her careful, readable argument urges engagement for the future over the false comforts of an Edenic past. (LJ 4/15/00)

Findley, Timothy. Pilgrim. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019197-X. $25.
Incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital under the care of one Carl Jung, Pilgrim wants achingly to die--but he cannot. His task is to be a witness to history, and as he moves from one life to another, Findley moves with him, rendering each world with breathtaking veracity. The result is a gorgeously complex novel of ideas that is also a rousing good read. (LJ 12/99)

Fortey, Richard. Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40625-5. $26.
In his engagingly written and fascinating book, British paleontologist Fortey shares his lifelong passion for the ancient, crustacean-like creatures that dominated the oceans long before dinosaurs walked the earth. As he eagerly explains, 'This is not an academic study, rather, it is an incitement to discovery.' And what wonders readers will discover here! (LJ 10/15/00)

Goldberg, Myla. Bee Season. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-49879-9. $22.95.
'Before the bee, Eliza had been a consonant, slow and unsurprising. With her bee success, she has entered vowelhood.' How nine-year-old Eliza Naumann's newly discovered gift for spelling throws her family into chaos is the subject of this bittersweet debut novel by talented newcomer Goldberg. (LJ 4/15/00)

Gopnick, Adam. Paris to the Moon. Random. ISBN 0-679-44492-0. $24.95.
This fluent and witty report of New Yorker cultural critic Gopnick's sojourn in Paris does what the best writing should do: it informs as it entertains. The essays take the intimate and everyday as their genesis, but these are just starting points for deeper reflections on what it means to be French, to be American, and simply to be alive at the close of the 20th century. (LJ 10/15/00)

Grass, Günter. Too Far Afield. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-100230-4. $30.
Not as brash as The Tin Drum but just as long and complex, this novel shows that the 1999 Nobel laureate still can build a sweeping theme out of wry, telling details. Grass's ruminative yet accessible look at reunification through the eyes of two 70-year-old East Germans touches on the full history of Germany and spares no one in the process. (LJ 9/15/00)

Green, Hannah. Little Saint. Random. ISBN 0-394-56595-9. $25.95
Green's posthumously published book is not only a loving tribute to Sainte Foy, the 12-year girl martyr whose relics have drawn pilgrims to the French village of Conques for hundreds of years, but also an eloquent memoir of Green's own spiritual journey. A fitting epitaph for a lovely writer. (LJ 6/15/00)

Harper, Kenn. Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo. Steerforth. ISBN 1-883642-53-1. $24.
In 1897, the explorer Robert Peary thrilled New York by bringing six Greenland Eskimos to the Museum of Natural History for study, including the young Minik and his father, who died within a year. Harper's straightforward telling of this tragic story of scientific interests gone awry follows Minik's ill-fated attempt to get the museum to release his father's remains and his struggle to find a place in the world. (LJ 3/1/00)

Irwin, Robert. Night & Horses & the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. Overlook, dist. by Penguin/Putnam. ISBN 1-58567-064-2. $40.
More than an anthology, this elegant and thoroughly researched study elucidates key themes in Arabic literature by examining ten centuries of translated poetry and prose. While the wealth of historical background makes this accessible to the less-informed, there is plenty of astute criticism to satisfy Irwin's fellow academics. (LJ 9/1/00)

Kershaw, Ian. Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04994-9. $35.
With this new work (following his Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris, LJ 1/99), Kershaw completes what is now the definitive biography of Hitler in a crowded field. Lucid and authoritative, Volume 2 moves from Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland by 1936 to the world war he launched and his death in 1945. Meanwhile, Kershaw masterfully follows the interplay of Nazism's 'main author' and German society's 'wide-ranging complicity.' (LJ 11/1/00)

Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness. Vol. 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942-1945. Random. ISBN 0-375-50240-8. $29.95.
The first volume of Klemperer's magnificent diaries was revelatory in showing exactly how an erudite Jewish professor of languages and his gentile wife experienced the daily humiliations of early Nazi rule. The second volume is no less an achievement, showing just what people like the Klemperers knew when and culminating in the couple's 'liberation' by the Dresden firebombing and their final escape from 'this nightmare of destruction.' (LJ 2/1/00)

Kneale, Matthew. English Passengers. Nan A. Talese: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-49743-1. $25.
Spanning the globe from the Isle of Man to Tasmania, Kneale's ambitious and original historical novel about a 19th-century quest for the Garden of Eden is narrated by 22 different characters in a dazzling act of literary ventriloquism. From the smuggler Captain Kewley to the aborigine Peevay, each voice is distinct and individual. (LJ 3/15/00)

Langguth, A.J. Our Vietnam: The War, 1954-1975. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-81202-9. $35.
This unsurpassed narrative of the war fluently conveys its long, sad chronology without resorting to easy demonizing. On the 25th anniversary of Saigon's fall, Langguth's portraits of the war's main political actors are worth whole biographical volumes in themselves.

Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. Holt. ISBN 0-8050-2534-0. $35.
The first volume of Lewis's acclaimed biography of NAACP founder Du Bois won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. The concluding volume takes the writer/activist through the rest of his political evolution, from 1919 through the Harlem Renaissance and the early Civil Rights era to his death in Ghana as a self-exile in 1963. (LJ 9/15/00)

Louie, David Wong. The Barbarians Are Coming. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-14603-2. $23.95.
For Sterling Lung, cooking is both a rebellion against his Chinese launderer parents and an act of self-love: by feeding others his continental fare, he feeds himself. With a veteran comic's timing, Louie unravels a turbulent year in Sterling's so-called life, which includes a pregnant American girlfriend, a mail-order bride from Hong Kong, and a terminally ill father. A delectable first novel. (LJ 2/15/00)

Manguel, Alberto. Into the Looking-Glass Wood: Essays on Books, Reading, and the World. Harvest: Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-601265-0. pap. $13.
Books on books can be routine, but not Manguel's; his essays are incisive but affecting, taking just a few quick strokes to get to the heart of the matter. Whether he is extolling Mario Vargas Llosa or cutting through the cant surrounding Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Manguel reminds us why we pass so eagerly through the looking glass into the kingdom of words. (LJ 8/00)

Mark, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen Mark: American Odyssey, 1963-1999. Aperture. ISBN 0-89381-880-1. $50.
For nearly four decades, Mark has been developing a type of photography that blurs the lines between art and documentary, the personal and the professional, the subject and artist. In the process, she has become one of America's most popular photographers, and this retrospective will be welcome everywhere. (LJ 4/1/00)

Martin, Gregory. Mountain City. North Point: Farrar. ISBN 0-86547-594-6. $21.
Life is pretty quiet in the now bust mining town of Mountain City, NV; its 33 residents seem to be just scratching by as Martin (who has roots there) picks up his subtle but humorous memoir of the town's twilight. By the end, the population has dropped to 31, but the arid landscape is still vital with the people and history explored by this excellent new writer. (LJ 5/1/00)

Motion, Andrew. Wainewright the Poisoner: The Confession of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright; Regency Author, Painter, Swindler and Probably Murderer. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40209-8. $26.
Was Wainewright a consummate Romantic, a criminal in dandy's clothes, or both? Whatever the answer, Motion's delightful 'confession' plays with the ideas of the time and the craft of memoir while presenting an entirely ambiguous character. (LJ 6/1/00)

Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. Houghton. ISBN 0-395-82759-0. $35.
By now, even his own granddaughter has admitted that she sees Hearst through the lens of Orson Welles's fictional Kane, but Nasaw (using previously unavailable documents) convincingly reclaims the real man who invented the sports section and 'Yellow Journalism' and became our first great media mogul. (LJ 6/1/00)

O'Gara, Geoffrey. What You See in Clear Water: Life on the Wind River Reservation. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40415-5. $25.
O'Gara's search for a good story in his new hometown of Lander, WY, brought him directly to the source of controversy in today's West: water rights. His balanced telling of the long battle over the Wind River, which found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, dynamically presents the complexity of one rural community's competing interests and historical conflicts. (LJ 10/1/00)

Parakilas, James & others. Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano. Yale Univ. ISBN 0-300-08055-7. $39.95.
This elegantly illustrated, fluidly written social history does justice to its venerable subject, which turned 300 last year. Whether discussing the reasons for its birth, its 'imparting' function at concerts, or its numerous film appearances, this work accommodates both the learned musician and the informed fan. (LJ 3/1/00)

Pelevin, Victor. Buddha's Little Finger. Viking. ISBN 0-670-89168-1. $25.95.
It takes some nerve--and lots of literary talent--to leapfrog one's protagonist from Russia's raging civil war in 1919 to a contemporary Moscow psychiatric hospital. In this dazzling display, celebrated Russian novelist Pelevin manages to encompass the grand sorrows of 20th-century Russian history while asking the simple question: How does one stay sane in an insane world? (LJ 4/15/00)

Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Viking. ISBN 0-670-89157-6. $24.95.
In the early 1800s, the Nantucket whaleship Essex collided violently with a sperm whale in the South Pacific. For three months, the 20 men who escaped floated in small boats, enduring insanity, starvation, and eventually cannibalism. Historian Philbrick has combined accounts of the survivors with recent discoveries and his own theories to create an informed and highly readable narrative of the tragedy that inspired Moby Dick.

Pierpont, Claudia Roth. Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-43106-3. $26.95.
Pierpont, who originally wrote these profiles for The New Yorker, presents 11 cultural icons--from Mae West to Zora Neale Hurston to Ayn Rand--in all their complicated, fascinating humanity. She hurdles past any preconceived notions to find the forces that made each woman's mind catch light. (LJ 2/1/00)

Powell, Padgett. Mrs. Hollingworth's Men. Houghton. ISBN 0-618-07168-7. $20.
Daydreaming while doing her grocery list, Mrs. Hollingworth conjures up long-dead Confederates. Too wacky and too much fun to be called simply experimental fiction, this deceptively small book is a tour de force that must be read to be believed. (LJ 11/15/00)

. Viking. ed. by &Ornolfur Thorsson. ISBN 0-670-88990-3. $40.
Homer. Virgil. Dante. To the epics by these early masters can be added the great Icelandic sagas, written between 1000 and 1500. Here they are vividly rendered in contemporary language, which delivers them fresh to today's readers. There's adventure enough for any jaded action fan, but what makes these sagas great is their heartfelt probing of the human condition. (LJ 3/1/00)

Sciolino, Elaine. Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran. Free Pr. ISBN 0-684-86290-5. $26.
New York Times reporter Sciolino has covered Iran since the doomed 1979 revolution, which resulted in an overthrow of one despotic regime by another. In this insightful report, she skillfully delineates the paradoxes she has witnessed in this fiercely Islamic nation over the past 20 years and pays tribute to present-day Iranian women, who boldly continue to challenge many of Iran's chauvinistic laws. (LJ 10/15/00)

Sibley, David Allen. National Audubon Society Sibley Guide to Birds. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-45122-6. pap. $35.
Sibley sums up a lifelong passion with this expert guide to North American birds. Perusing over 6600 color illustrations--which show silhouettes, different ages and sexes, and defining actions (such as the various swooping patterns hummingbirds can make while courting)--experienced and novice birders alike are clued into 810 species. The result? An incredibly useful celebration of our feathered friends. (LJ 11/1/00)

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. Random. ISBN 0-375-50185-1. $24.95.
Smith's debut sprawls across generations, languages, cultures, and countries with rarefied confidence. An often roaringly funny portrait of two North London families--the Joneses and the Iqbals--it ventures into the thick of the melting pot and reveals how basic human desires often overrule tradition and color lines. Much more than a story of 'the immigrant experience.' (LJ 4/1/00)

Steichen, Joanna. Steichen's Legacy: Photographs, 1895-1973. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-45076-9. $100.
Steichen's widow-cum-archivist has spent decades on this catalog. Rather than delivering a comprehensive chronological compilation, she has grouped more than 300 photos by subject and style in ways that will inspire insights even for longtime fans. The luminosity of the printing as well as Joanna's sometimes quirky text make this the perfect complement to Penelope Niven's biography, Steichen, an LJ Best Book of 1997. (LJ 11/1/00)

Tadié, Jean-Yves. Marcel Proust: A Life. Viking. ISBN 0-670-87655-0. $40.
More than a biography, though it is richly steeped in fact, more than a critical study, though it ably gives context to Proust's magnificant oeuvre, this mighty work is an act of literary illumination. Tadié, arguably the Proust scholar (he has done four works on the author since 1958), scrupulously details the life so that we can understand the work and ends up delivering a masterpiece of his own. (LJ 8/00)

Thubron, Colin. In Siberia. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019543-6. $26.
Thubron's dark explorations of contemporary Siberia take him deep into the heart of a crumbling society and to its outer reaches. In excellent, journalistic prose, he courts the ghosts of Gulag terror and endemic poverty even as he celebrates the living humanity of communities that are not to be forgotten. (LJ 2/1/00)

Tudge, Colin. The Variety of Life: A Survey and Celebration of All the Creatures That Have Ever Lived. Oxford Univ. ISBN 0-19-850311-3. $49.95.
This is no dull, dry textbook on the science of classification, as might be expected, but a lavishly illustrated, engagingly written survey of all living creatures, past and present. A wonderful celebration of biodiversity by a gifted science writer. (LJ 4/15/00)

Visona, Monica Blackmun & others. A History of Art in Africa. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3448-5. $85.
Some of the most important names in the field of African art history have come together to write this unique survey text, which is not only catholic and up-to-date but extremely readable. In addition to bringing together every region of the continent, the book has a final section on art of the diaspora. (LJ 11/15/00)

Ward, Geoffrey C. & Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America's Music. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44551-X. $65.
Jazz epitomizes far more than a musical direction, note the authors of this lavishly illustrated volume, which proudly distinguishes jazz as the product of an all-American culture. Knowledgeable and appreciative, Ward and Burns have put together a comprehensive and informative history that places jazz in its rightful historical as well as cultural context. A companion to Burns's PBS TV series. (LJ 11/1/00)

Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04880-2. $50.
Smithsonian curator Willis's extensive and gorgeously produced catalog of works by African American photographers celebrates the vast range and expertise of a mostly unstudied group of artists. Though her essays only touch on the riches displayed here, we are fortunate indeed to have this ground-breaking study, which will surely form the basis of much exciting scholarship to come. (LJ 7/00)

Wilson, Robert. A Small Death in Lisbon. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-100609-1. $25.
What does the murder of a teenage girl in present-day Portugal have to do with Nazi wartime deals 50 years earlier? Wilson skillfully ties the two story lines together in an intelligent crime thriller that expands the genre's boundaries with its moral depth and complexity. (LJ 8/00)

Wroe, Ann. Pontius Pilate. Random. ISBN 0-375-50305-6. $26.95.
Wroe sets out to find the reality of one of the central figures in Christianity and ferrets out a rich culture of mythology surrounding this infamous but elusive character. The result is this imaginative history of the ideas about him, a 'book about all our Pilates.' (LJ 2/1/00)