DENG XIAOPING AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHINA.
By Ezra F. Vogel.
Belknap/Harvard. 876 pp. $39.95
THE ANOINTED:
Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.
By Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson.
Belknap/Harvard. 356 pp. $29.95
LITERARY BROOKLYN:
The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life.
By Evan Hughes.
Holt. 337 pp. $17
WHY TRILLING MATTERS.
By Adam Kirsch.
Yale Univ. Press. 185 pp. $24
BACK TO THE LAND:
The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America.
By Dona Brown.
Univ. of Wisconsin Press. 290 pp. $24.95
A WORLD ON FIRE:
Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War.
By Amanda Foreman.
Random House. 956 pp. $35
1861:
The Civil War Awakening.
By Adam Goodheart.
Knopf. 481 pp. $28.95
When asked to choose five great books on military aspects of the Civil War, a leading historian was initially thrilled, then perplexed.
THE CIVIL WAR:
The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It.
Edited by Brooks D. Simpson, Stephen W. Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean.
Library of America. 814 pp. $37.50
You can't understand Abraham Lincoln without understanding the country that loved him so.