Under the Safety Net, Charles Baxter (Viking)....

Under the Safety Net, Charles Baxter (Viking). “Listlessness pervades the world” depicted in this collection of short stories. “In his characters,” Baxter finds “nothing but the clay of which they’re made” (Richard Eder).

Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family, Shirley Christian (Random House). “Christian, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting from Central America for the Miami Herald . . . lets the actors speak for themselves. This makes for lively reading and an intimacy that should help readers, even those not conversant with Nicaragua, to get a feel for the personalities and forces at play in Nicaragua as the Somoza regime tottered and fell” (Lawrence Pezzullo).

The Birth Project, Judy Chicago (Doubleday). The project, 100 works of embroidery symbolizing “the birth process as a metaphor for creation,” is depicted here through illustrations and excerpts from Chicago’s journal. “Painful though confrontation of these ideas and images may be, they shout loudly in protest against issues still unresolved” (Zan Dubin).

White Water, Joyce Reiser Kornblatt (Dutton). “The story of one extended (distended?) family brought together by a wedding, told in five sections from five points of view, ranging from Grandmother to Granddaughter . . . . ‘White Water’ flows pleasantly and contentedly through the waters of memory” (James Kaufmann).

The Woman Driver, Jean Thompson (Watts). “An immensely likable book”; the charm comes not from the plot but from the narrator’s “tart wit and incisive observations” (Roberta Smoodin).

Marxism: Philosophy and Economics, Thomas Sowell (Morrow). “In the writing of Thomas Sowell, scholarship, clarity and genuine information come together as nicely and perfectly as a timeless quote” (David Holmstrom).