Gardens, Holly Prado (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) looks...

Gardens, Holly Prado (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) looks at “three women facing the end of an era in their personal lives . . . . An exploratory story, gently told, with a strong sense of place and a respect for human yearnings” (Sharon Dirlam).

The Color of the Air: Scenes From the Life of an American Jew, John Sanford (Black Sparrow). “This autobiography is written as a series of compressed vignettes; few more than 1,000 words, others as short as 200. . . . The distinctive, elegiac style proves highly versatile, relaxing for humorous or personal incidents; tightening like a vise around crucial events and pivotal personalities” (Elaine Kendall).

The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing, Thomas Hauser (McGraw Hill) “is the first book I know about to give outsiders a close-up look at the machinations of the business of boxing, as well as its dubious and controversial status as a major contemporary sport. (Thomas Hauser) does this by following closely the evolution of a single bout: the Nov. 3, 1984, super-lightweight championship fight between Billy Costello and Saoul Mamby” (Fred Moramarco).

Alexander Pope: A Life, Maynard Mack (Yale/Norton) “pictures Pope as one of the last poets who tried to conceive of themselves as integral to the workings of their society, poets who shared the concerns and the cultural preconceptions of the ruling class, who were consulted and whose opinions counted, and who translated a fundamentally social vision into a poetic language read and understood by those whose business was running the state” (John Hummel).