Tender Offer: The Sneak Attack in Corporate...

Tender Offer: The Sneak Attack in Corporate Takeovers, Dorman L. Commons (University of California). “In . . . 149 fast-paced pages, we experience the minute-to-minute decisions of a 192-hour (takeover) battle, from defense tactics, through negotiations, through merger aftermath, with technical, personal and philosophical elucidations at the right time and in the proper proportions” (Alexandra Reed Lajoux).

On Extended Wings, Diane Ackerman (Atheneum), Plane Crazy: A Celebration of Flying, Burton Bernstein; illustrations by Edward Koren (Ticknor & Fields). “In these books, poet and teacher (Diane) Ackerman and veteran New Yorker writer (Burton) Bernstein delight in the phenomenon of piloting small planes. . . . For each, flying’s synthesis of physics, ethics and aesthetics generates strong metaphors to illuminate our world” (Paul Sonnenburg).

Star Warriors: The Young Scientists Who Are Inventing the Weaponry of Space, William J. Broad (Simon & Schuster). “(William) Broad seems to understand that it is impossible to judge a proposal . . . without knowing the underlying motivation. By revealing the mentality of those selling ‘Star Wars,’ Broad has made an important contribution to the public debate” (Robert M. Bowman).

Eight Sacred Horizons: The Religious Imagination East and West, Vernon Ruland SJ (Macmillan). “Urging people to bring their customary religious practices into contact with horizons where unfamiliar ways prevail, (Vernon Ruland’s) book encourages not the mocking laughter of disillusioned secularity but the liberating joy of spiritual enlightenment” (John K. Roth).

Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision, Kirkpatrick Sale (Sierra Club). “This book is an audacious proposal to transform radically the way mankind uses and lives on the Earth . . . (its) aim clearly is to provoke public dialogue” about organizing communities around bioregions rather than “man-made boundaries that have evolved through political mandate and military conquest” (Robert W. Glasgow).

A Mountain of Names: A History of the Human Family, Alex Shoumatoff (Simon & Schuster). “(Alex) Shoumatoff’s encounters with scholars, native tribesmen, English pedigree chasers, his own family and, of course, the Mormon custodians and statisticians of the ‘mountain of names’ are well-told adventures that incidentally remind us of the extraordinary variety of knowledge available to the modern human being” (Robert Dawidoff).