The Lively Audience, Russell Lynes (Harper &...

The Lively Audience, Russell Lynes (Harper & Row). “(Russell) Lynes is both optimistic and generous, a rare combination of qualities in a field overrun with carpers, cavilers and viewers-with-alarm. . . . While others swoop and devour, Lynes soars and samples; a golden eagle among the culture vultures” (Elaine Kendall).

Bloomsbury/Freud, the Letters of James and Alix Strachey 1924-1925, edited by Perry Meisel and Walter Kendrick (Basic). “The letters are revealing and gossipy. Neither James nor Alix were especially good writers, nor were they particularly witty. They had the sharp Bloomsbury eye, however, and its sharp tongue” (Richard Eder).

Recombinations, Perri Klass (Putnam’s). “Perri Klass takes us from her heroine’s bed into her laboratory and into her mind. The accounts of the biologist Anne’s sexual activities are often gratuitous, but the setting and her reflections make ‘Recombinations’ more than a description of the joys of sex” (Bettyann Kevles).

Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Being Awake & Aware in Your Dreams, Stephen LaBerge Ph.D. (Tarcher), “gives scientific validation to what many people know from personal experience: It is possible to remain conscious while dreaming. . . . (LaBerge) moves well through the scientific procedures, and when he encounters a transpersonal experience during a lucid dream, his work takes off and soars as spontaneously as a character in one of his dreams” (Marilee Zdenek).

Daughters of Yemen, Mishael Maswari Caspi, translator (University of California), “offers the reader a wonderful glimpse into the poems recited by the Jewish women of this long-isolated community, now transplanted to Israel. . . . Constrained by far more than their illiteracy, they burst their bonds in song” (Howard Kaplan).

American Samurai: Captain L. L. Janes & Japan, F. G. Notehelfer (Princeton University). “Leroy Lansing Janes, although not formally a missionary, became the most influential advocate of Protestant Christianity in Japan in the late 19th Century. . . . (F. G. Notehelfer) focuses on the central paradox of Janes’ career: How could a man who repeatedly failed in the United States become such a success across the Pacific. . . ? (Notehelfer) shows how the Japanese transformed the captain into their kind of hero--a noble failure” (Roger Dingman).

All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man, Horst E. Richter; Jan van Heurck, translator (Hunter House). A best-seller in Germany when it first appeared in 1979, this book “offers much more food for thought than the typical ‘pop-psych’ book on our best-seller lists” (Hannah Lerman).

Eternity’s Woods, Paul Zweig (Wesleyan University). Paul “Zweig’s is a poetry of the self, Whitmanesque, though in the instance darker, for the overriding theme of this collection is death--of love, marriage, family, and finally, of self. . . . ‘Eternity’s Woods’ grows in power and beauty as it builds to its melancholy end” (David Rodman Smith).