Authentic Folk Art from Melville's World

Ingenious Contrivances, Curiously Carved: Scrimshaw in the New Bedford Whaling Museum (David R. Godine, Publisher) by Stuart M. Frank brings forth creations from eyewitnesses to the world of whaling.

The Greatest of Military Hoaxes

In Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies (Crown), Ben Macintyre tells the story of brilliant trickery.

This Book Is Something

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story (Liveright Publishing) by Jim Holt takes readers on a philosophical tour of big mysteries.

Investigating a Tabooed Universal Practice

With the Hand: A Cultural History of Masturbation (Reaktion Books) by Mels van Driel attempts to understand the many taboos.

A Race Riot in the Capitol

Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (Nan A. Talese) by Jefferson Morley recounts an important episode in race relations.

A Photo Tour of the Grandest Palace

View Versailles (Abrams) by Valérie Bajou if you can't get there yourself

Rock and Roll for the Joy of It

In Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor League Rock and Roll (Lyons Press) Joe Oestreich tells about real-life rocking.

A Horrendous Crime in Old Peking

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin Books), by Paul French, tells of a sensational murder and the unusual way it was solved just before WWII swallowed up the old city.

A Fertile Silence

Kyle Gann takes the silent music seriously in No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33" (Yale University Press).

A New Historical View of Medieval Heresies

R. I. Moore in _The War on Heresy_ (Belknap Press) reevaluates the heretics.

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