'Insectopedia'

'The Possessed'

By ELIF BATUMAN
Reviewed by LIESL SCHILLINGER

An entertaining memoir-cum-travelogue of a grad student’s improbable education in Russian language and literature.

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'Blooms of Darkness'

By AHARON APPELFELD
Reviewed by DAVID LEAVITT

In this novel with echoes of Anne Frank’s diary, a Jewish child is hidden in a brothel during the Holocaust.

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'A Week in December'

By SEBASTIAN FAULKS
Reviewed by GREGORY COWLES

This ambitious, angry novel’s capitalist is more reliably loathsome than its jihadist.

'Silk Parachute'

By JOHN McPHEE
Reviewed by ELIZABETH ROYTE

John McPhee writes on golf and lacrosse, food and fact-checkers, and, this time, himself.

'Voodoo Histories'

By DAVID AARONOVITCH
Reviewed by ROSS DOUTHAT

Paranoia strikes deep in this journalist’s survey of conspiracy theories in Western politics.

'On the Brink'

By HENRY M. PAULSON JR.
Reviewed by ROGER LOWENSTEIN

Henry M. Paulson’s account of his tumultuous term as George W. Bush’s last Treasury secretary.

'The Making of African America'

By IRA BERLIN
Reviewed by KEVIN BOYLE

Ira Berlin reconceptualizes African-American history as the story of a people uprooted and searching for home.

'Occupied City'

By DAVID PEACE
Reviewed by JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT

A real-life mass poisoning in Tokyo in 1948, possibly linked to notorious wartime medical experiments, is the basis for this highly original crime novel.

'The Genius in All of Us'

By DAVID SHENK
Reviewed by ANNIE MURPHY PAUL

David Shenk argues that discipline, not giftedness, is vital to greatness.

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'What We Are'

By PETER NATHANIEL MALAE
Reviewed by FIONA MAAZEL

This first novel gives voice to a “Me Generation” poet of mixed heritage and tortured outlook.

'The Harvard Psychedelic Club'

By DON LATTIN
Reviewed by MARY JO MURPHY

A group portrait of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil and their experiments with hallucinogens in the early 1960s.

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'Keeping the Feast'

By PAULA BUTTURINI
Reviewed by MIKA BRZEZINSKI

A memoir of how cooking helped save the marriage of Paula Butturini and her husband, reporters traumatized by war.

Nonfiction Chronicle

By MEGAN BUSKEY

Memoirs of surviving brain surgery and a difficult childhood, a primer on the art of conversation and a history of a northern slave estate.