The Feminization of America: How Women’s Values...

The Feminization of America: How Women’s Values Are Changing Our Public and Private Lives, Elinor Lenz, Barbara Myerhoff (Tarcher). “Corporate executives, politicians and political commentators, journalists, sociologists and anyone else who must spot trends to stay on top of a trade should read (this) important new analysis of American society . . . a tonic for tired feminists” (Kay Mills).

Eclipse: A Nightmare, Hughes de Montalembert; David Noakes, translation (Viking). “Sheer poetry.” The author, a visual artist who was blinded after New York City thugs threw acid in his eyes during a mugging, “still paints. He paints words with the surest of strokes, using his sable brush on the canvas of universal grief” (Ingrid Rimland).

Freud for Historians, Peter Gay (Oxford), “is incisive, persuasive, a delight to read . . . a brilliant polemic on the value of psychoanalytic clinical and theoretical sophistication for historians. (It) should spark wide controversy for a long time to come” (Peter Lowenberg).

Odd Number, Gilbert Sorrentino (North Point), is, on one level, “a detective story--a ‘who done it’ in which both the ‘who’ and the ‘it’ remain obscure. This is, however, an unusual detective story. The events and non-events told and retold provide the occasion for (Gilbert) Sorrentino to explore the most mysterious events of all: writing and reading. . . . The magic of Sorrentino’s words casts an eerie spell that lingers long after the book is closed” (Mark C. Taylor).

The Book of Elaborations, Oscar Mandel (New Directions). “This is a book of contemplative essays, published at a time when contemplation is sadly out of fashion. . . . More power to Oscar Mandel for catering to us closet thinkers who find intellectual intercourse a wholly satisfying aesthetic pleasure” (Yaffa Draznin).