IN SHORT

Simon Winchester salutes The Men Who United the States (Harper). Rebecca Eaton recasts her 25 years at PBS Making Masterpiece (Viking). Dorothea Johnson and granddaughter Liv Tyler grace us with Modern Manners (Potter Style). Anita Elberse blows up the business of making Blockbusters (Henry Holt). Lori Goldstein proclaims that Style Is Instinct (Harper Design). Stephen Jimenez digs up more dirt on the Matthew Shepard case in The Book of Matt (Steerforth). Lauren A. Rothman preaches the Style Bible (Bibliomotion) Peter Baker smokes out the snakes in Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (Doubleday). Hallelujah! It's Fifty Years of American Interior Decoration, by Mario Buatta (Rizzoli). Jung Chang bows before the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi (Knopf). Rich Cohen recalls the 1985 Bears, Monsters of the gridiron (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Geordie Greig treats us to Breakfast with Lucian: The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britain's Great Modern Painter (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Robert Hilburn gets inside the head of Johnny Cash (Little, Brown). Steely Dan front man Donald Fagen shares tales of life amongst Eminent Hipsters (Viking). Luella Bartley presents Luella's Guide to English Style (Fourth Estate). David Laskin traces his ancestry in The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century (Viking). Potter Adam Silverman reshapes the world of Ceramics (Skira Rizzoli). Marie Colvin's collected journalism is amassed On the Front Line (HarperPress). Pat Conroy brings his tumultuous relationship with his father to a close in The Death of Santini (Nan A. Talese). Howard Schatz shoots actors Caught in the Act (Glitterati) of acting. Critic Wendy Perron presents her finest work in Through the Eyes of a Dancer (Wesleyan University Press). Mark Shaw and Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni celebrate Dior Glamour: 1952-1962 (Rizzoli). Alexa Chung is It (Penguin). And heeeeere's Henry Bushkin'sJohnny Carson (Houghton Mifflin).