Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, edited by...

Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, edited by Joseph Frank and David I. Goldstein (Rutgers University). “A well-selected, well-annotated book. . . . If the actual content of Dostoyevsky’s letters does not separate him from others, their omissions tantalize us to speculate about the kind of man he was” (Edward Condren).

Democracy in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, James Miller (Simon & Schuster). An important intellectual history of the New Left. James Miller admires the student radicals, “wants them to succeed, and you get the feeling he wishes the story has a different ending” (Sam Hurst).

Chroma, Frederick Barthelme (Simon & Schuster). “A painterly book. . . . (Frederick) Barthelme is a good listener. He fixes on what he hears and, in a sense, plays it back for us” (Susan Slocum Hinerfeld).

Our War and How We Won It, E. J. Cullen (Viking). The author wrote these 28 sketches, vignettes and diatribes in a “comical and utterly surreal fury. . . . At his best, his wild and parodic vision makes his impassioned bumblers the fools of all our fortunes” (Richard Eder).