The Obama administration has revived the dream of building high-speed rail lines to rival those of Japan and Europe, but the tracks are littered with political and financial obstacles.
KNUT HAMSUN:
Dreamer and Dissenter.
By Ingar Sletten Kolloen.
Translated by Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik.
Yale Univ. Press. 378 pp. $40
A QUESTION OF COMMAND:
Counterinsurgency From the Civil War to Iraq.
By Mark Moyar.
Yale Univ. Press. 347 pp. $30
AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE.
By Anne C. Heller.
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. 567 pp. $35
GODDESS OF THE MARKET:
Ayn Rand and the American Right.
By Jennifer Burns.
Oxford Univ. Press. 369 pp. $27.95
The fall of the Berlin Wall was a dramatic moment in time. In the minds of many East Germans, it was years in the making.
CIVIL WAR WIVES:
The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimké Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant.
By Carol Berkin.
Knopf. 361 pp. $28.95
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS:
A Life.
By Melvin I. Urofsky.
Pantheon. 955 pp. $40
HOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE:
The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.
By Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas.
Beacon. 239 pp. $26.95
METHLAND:The Death and Life of an American Small Town.
By Nick Reding.
Bloomsbury. 255 pp. $25
A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL:
The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.
By Rebecca Solnit.
Viking. 353 pp. $27.95