‘Believing Is Seeing’

‘The Persistence of the Color Line’

By RANDALL KENNEDY
Reviewed by BRENT STAPLES

Candidate Obama had to reassure voters of all colors, Randall Kennedy finds.

• Up Front: Brent Staples
• Excerpt: 'The Persistence of the Color Line'

‘We Others: New and Selected Stories’

By STEVEN MILLHAUSER
Reviewed by JONATHAN LETHEM

Written over the span of three decades, Steven Millhauser’s stories find the weird in the prosaic.

‘This Is Not the Ivy League’

By MARY CLEARMAN BLEW
Reviewed by LOUISA THOMAS

A writer and English professor grapples with her past in this memoir.

‘Sex On Six Legs’

By MARLENE ZUK
Reviewed by ELIZABETH ROYTE

Marlene Zuk shows how the insect world, like ours, can be stunningly complex.

• Excerpt: ‘Sex on Six Legs’

‘Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels’

By JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND
Reviewed by BENOIT DENIZET-LEWIS

Justin Vivian Bond recalls the ups and downs of being a “trans child.”

‘Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic’

By ARTHUR KRYSTAL
Reviewed by MARY JO MURPHY

Arthur Krystal’s essays issue from “reading, study, silence, thought.”

‘Blueprints For Building Better Girls’

By ELISSA SCHAPPELL
Reviewed by JENNIFER B. McDONALD

The heroines of these linked stories tend to be volatile, aggrieved, distrustful and confused.

‘Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness’

By ALEXANDRA FULLER
Reviewed by DOMINIQUE BROWNING

Alexandra Fuller returns to the continent of her birth to write a sequel, or prequel, to “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.”

• Excerpt: ‘Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness’

‘Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength’

By ROY F. BAUMEISTER AND JOHN TIERNEY
Reviewed by STEVEN PINKER

Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney explore what we can do to increase self-control.

‘Luminarium’

By ALEX SHAKAR
Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER R. BEHA

Alex Shakar’s protagonist broods over his comatose brother and joins a neurological experiment that promises “spiritual awakening.”

• Excerpt: ‘Luminarium’

‘The Emperor of Lies’

By STEVE SEM-SANDBERG
Reviewed by DAPHNE MERKIN

In this novel about the Holocaust, the real-life Jewish leader Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski looms large.

• Excerpt: ‘The Emperor of Lies’

‘Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War’

By HAL VAUGHAN
Reviewed by JUDITH WARNER

A biography contends that Coco Chanel was a Nazi agent.

• Excerpt: ‘Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War’

‘Big Questions’

Written and illustrated by ANDERS BREKHUS NILSEN
Reviewed by DOUGLAS WOLK

Anders Brekhus Nilsen’s unsettling comic vision embraces a flock of finches, the injustice of the food chain, and Plato’s cave.

Crime

A Piece of the Action

By MARILYN STASIO

Mystery novels by George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Martin Walker and Sebastian Rotella.

• More Crime Columns