Reference You'll Want

Let's start with the basics. Awash as we are in ungrammatical blogs and tweets, we need The Chicago Manual of Style (Univ. of Chicago. Sept. ISBN 978-0-226-10420-1. $65) more than ever. The 16th edition boldly addresses the electronic environment and offers more rules than the 15th, which abounded in take-your-pick guidelines that stressed out users. And now in its 17th edition, there's the Atlas of the World (Oxford Univ. Oct. ISBN 978-0-19-975128-0. $80). Sure, it's easier to document boundary and geographic changes in cyberspace, but this atlas is updated annually, and it offers such a gorgeous heft. Speaking of atlases, I'm mightily taken with David Eltis and David Richardson's Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale Univ. Nov. ISBN 978-0-300-12460-6. $50). Drawn from an online database that documents 35,000 slaving voyages between 1501 and 1867, the 200 maps original to this work present the very awful work of slaving in a way that cannot be ignored. Bold, sobering, and unique.

Literary Wish List

Will in the World author Stephen Greenblatt's Shakespeare's Freedom (Univ. of Chicago. Nov. ISBN 978-0-226-30666-7. $24) explores the Bard's penchant for challenging absolutes. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's The Naive and Sentimental Novelist (Harvard Univ. Nov. ISBN 978-0-674-05076-1. $22.95), drawn from Pamuk's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, uses Friedrich Schiller's distinction between naive (i.e., spontaneous) and sentimental (i.e., reflective) poets to expand our understanding of fiction. One of the great poetry critics, Helen Vendler kindly stops to offer incisive commentary on 150 poems in Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (Belknap: Harvard Univ. Sept. ISBN 978-0-674-04867-6. $35). I love that I'll be seeing a first collection of play from the bold, bright poet Sonia Sanchez (I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and Other Plays, Duke Univ. Jan. 2011. ISBN 978-0-8223-4778-1. $19.95). And I love it that Simon Winchester-Simon Winchester-it taking off time from his grand historical/geographical studies to reconsider Lewis Carroll's classics in The Alice Behind Wonderland (Oxford Univ. Jan. 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-539619-5. $16.95). Janeites will want Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition (Harvard Univ. Oct. ISBN 978-0674-04916-7. $35) for an ever richer reading experience. Finally, don't forget the Autobiography of Mark Twain: Vol. 1 (Univ. of California. Nov. ISBN 978-0-520-26719-0. $34.95), already featured in "Prepub Exploded," BookSmack!, 5/20/10).

Thumbs Up on These Acts

Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, having produced reviews for over 40 years for the and biweekly essays for over 15 years. The Great Movies III (Univ. of Chicago, Oct. ISBN 978-0-226-18208-7. $30) is, obviously, his third collection of published pieces, the first two having been issued by a big trade house that now want to trade in only the most commercial stuff. Edited by English professors Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois and with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Anthology of Rap (Yale Univ. Nov. ISBN 978-0-300-14190-0. $35.) is a thoroughgoing collection of 300 rap lyrics ranging from classic like Eric B & Rakim's "Microphone Fiend" to little finds like Jean Grae's "Hater's Anthem." It might be the only academic title that red-blooded American teens will be begging for come fall. But then maybe not. Jon Savage's The England's Dreaming Tapes (Univ. of Minnesota. Aug. ISBN 978-0-8166-7291-2. $78; pap. ISBN 978-0-8166-7292-9. $25.95) offers the complete, uncut transcript of the interviews on which Savage based England's Dreaming, his ground-breaking, ground-shaking history of punk. Finally, Michael M. Kaiser's Leading Roles: 50 Questions Every Arts Board Should Ask (Univ. Pr. of New England. Oct. ISBN 978-1-58465-906-8. $24.95) strikes me as an important library book in these parlous times.

Complicated Men and Women

Yes, Michael Takiff gets credit as author of A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him (Yale Univ. Oct. ISBN 978-0-300-12130-8. $32.50), but it's really a joint effort combining the voices of the 150 friends and not-so-friends of Clinton that Takiff interviewed. The result? Reputedly, broad and balanced. Other important Yale bios of note: Nick Phillipson's Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (Oct. ISBN 978-0-300-16927-0. $32.50), in the work for years; Randy Roberts's Joe Louis: Hard Times Man (Oct. ISBN 978-0-300-12222-0. $30), by a Purdue history professor who's taken on the likes of boxers Jack Dempsey and Jack Johnson-on the page, that is; and Adrian Goldsworthy's Antony and Cleopatra (Sept. ISBN 978-0-300-16534-0. $35), a nice complement to Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, out this November from Little, Brown.

Stay Current on Events

He doesn't know it, but I love Timothy Garton Ash, whose sharp and absorbing writing on the world political scene keeps me glued to the New York Review of Books. His Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name (Yale Univ. ISBN 978-0-300-16117-5. $35) assembles a decade's worth of essays. Jay Weiner's This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won the Minnesota Senate Recount (Univ. of Minnesota. Sept. ISBN 978-0-8166-7038-3. $24.95.) chronicles the election recount that put Al Franken in the Senate-the largest and costliest recount in U.S. history. Former Minneapolis Star Tribune journalist Weiner covered the process daily for the Minn.Post.com. Finally, Judith Armatta's Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Duke Univ. ISBN 978-0-8223-4746-0. $39.95) is, notably, a true eyewitness report. Lawyer Armatta lived in the former Yugoslavia for three years under Milosevic and monitored his trial on behalf of the Coalition of International Justice.

Racial Politics

Fascinated as I was by Martha A. Sandweiss's Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, a 2009 NBCC nominee, I'm even more fascinated by Carolyn Marie Wilkins's Damn Near White: An African American Family's Rise from Slavery to Bittersweet Success (Univ. of Missouri. Oct. ISBN 978-0-8262-1899-5. $24.95)-Wilkins's family story sounds remarkable, and there's real historical import here. Born into Chicago's upscale black bourgeoisie and the daughter and niece of Harvard Law grads, Berklee College of Music professor Wilkins is fair-skinned enough that she has had to fight to prove her racial identity. Through scrapbooks inherited from an aunt, she traces her roots back to a slave great-grandfather who became an inventor-and bigamist. More significantly, she came to understand that her grandfather, J. Ernest Wilkins, the first black assistant secretary of labor, may have been forced out of the administration because of his race. Was it not realized, at first, that he was black.

Not Just for Art's Sake

Edited by David Bindman and the hardworking Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Image of the Black in Western Art (Belknap: Harvard. Nov.) is a major publishing event. So far, it's a three-volume, five-book affair: Vol. 1: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire (ISBN 978-0-674-05271-0. $95), Vol. 2: From the Early Christian Era to the "Age of Discovery," Part 1 (ISBN 978-0-674-05256-7. $95) and Part 2 (ISBN 978-0-674-05258-1. $95), and Vol. 3: From the "Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition, Part 1 (ISBN 978-0-674-05261-1. $95). Yes, there's more to come; this project, begun 50 years ago by renowned art patron Dominique de Menil, has been taken up by Harvard University and the W.E. B. Du Bois Institute, which here provide refreshed editions of the original five volumes. Five more are in the works. Enormous-and enormously exciting; every volume has hundreds of color illustrations. And, on a completely different note, don't miss Brian Walker's Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau (Yale Univ. Nov. ISBN 978-0-300-15427-6. $49.95), highlighted by LJ's Margaret Heilbrun in "BEA 2010: Water-Cooler Takeaways."

Philosophy for Everyone

Philosophy: my great academic love and the reason that being a book critic makes so much sense to me. It all goes back to the Greek distinction between foxes, who know many thinks, and hedgehogs, who know just one big thing. In Justice for Hedgehogs (Belknap: Harvard Univ. Jan. 2011. ISBN 978-0-674-04671-9. $35), the towering Ronald Dworkin, Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University, goes for the big picture, discussing such broad-ranging topics as moral skepticism, artistic and historical interpretation, good and evil, and liberty and equality and arguing that any argument about one of them must work for all of them. Important reading in a niche-fractured world in which moral relativism prevails.