HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

IN BRIEF

John Barth'sThe Development (Houghton Mifflin); Thomas Keneally'sSearching for Schindler (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday); Richard Belzer'sI Am Not a Cop! (Simon & Schuster); Donald Albrecht'sParis/New York (Monacelli); Richard Avedon'sPerformance (Abrams); Christopher Buckley'sSupreme Courtship (Twelve); Elliott Erwitt'sNew York (teNeues); Barbara Fairchild'sThe Bon Appetit Cookbook: Fast Easy Fresh (Wiley); Christopher Plummer'sIn Spite of Myself (Knopf); Gigi Levangie Grazer'sQueen Takes King (Simon & Schuster); Amitav Ghosh'sSea of Poppies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Cast back to the fall of Rome: a political dynasty pillages the economy, enslaves the common folk, and plays "war" with real soldiers. Don't times like these, Cintra Wilson hilariously asks, demand a leader like Caligula for President? (Bloomsbury).

The portraits in the late Marjorie Williams'sReputation (Public Affairs) showcase such Washington insiders as Lee Atwater, James A. Baker III, and Patricia Duff. Sarah Vowell fondly dubs those nutty New England Puritans The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead). For 30 years, photographer Ron Galella has—despite cries of No Pictures (Powerhouse)—crossed the velvet rope of decency, stealing shots of stars such as Jackie O, who struck back in court, and Marlon Brando, who struck Galella's jaw. Diane Johnson'sLulu in Marrakech (Dutton) is an American C.I.A. operative with one eye on Western fat cats passing cash to Islamic fundamentalists, the other on her former paramour.

Grieving the death of her faith, Anne Rice gave life to Lestat. Forty years and a string of family tragedies later, she finds herself Called Out of Darkness (Knopf). A 13-yearold girl, reeling from her sister's sudden death, reaches for that sister's sinisterly appealing boyfriend in Francine Prose'sGoldengrove (Harper). In Deborah Copaken Kogan'sBetween Here and April (Algonquin), a mother is haunted by the discovery that a chum who vanished in childhood was slain by her own mother. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination (Little, Brown) is Elizabeth McCracken's devastating memoir of miscarriage, grief, and recovery.

Two sisters look at their lives through the lens of each other in Julia Glass'sI See You Everywhere (Pantheon). In Words in Air (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton tether the complete correspondence of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. Sharon Olds's cycle of family poems comes full circle in One Secret Thing (Knopf).

Biographer Kim Hastreiter works the life of the inimitable Mr. Geoffrey Beene (Assouline). Diahann Carroll, a pioneer of early Hollywood integration, gracefully declares The Legs Are the Last to Go (Amistad). The peerless Edith Head's classic The Dress Doctor (Collins) gets a makeover (tailoring by Bill Donovan). Al Silverman'sThe Time of Their Lives (Truman Talley) is inside baseball for book-publishing fans. Jonathan Mahler delivers a one-two punch with The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Michael J. Agovino gambles on The Bookmaker (Harper). Keith Frome calmly answers parents' most distressing and vexing questions in How's My Kid Doing? (Crossroad). Mr. Marshal's Flower Book (Viking Studio) is an omniumgatherum of the 17th-century horticulturist's botanical watercolors. George Orwell's critical essays, compiled by George Packer, trumpet AH Art Is Propaganda (Harcourt). Eugene Jarecki characterizes The American Way of War (Free Press) as a jolly combo of "excessive militarism and an imperialist impulse."

What a wonderful world.