Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard...

Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard University, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). “A worthwhile, sometimes passionate, work of political and moral commentary to help stimulate our national debate” (Bryce Nelson).

A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter (North Point). “The story of a highly erotic, exhaustively documented love affair, remarkable in large part because its most intimate details are imagined by our nameless first-person narrator . . . (a) lonely, lustful journey” (Elizabeth Benedict).

Nelson Mandela, Mary Benson, foreword by Bishop Desmond M. Tutu (Norton); Part of My Soul Went With Him, Winnie Mandela, edited by Anne Benjamin and adapted by Mary Benson (Norton). “Nelson Mandela,” sketching the growth over the past four decades of the African National Congress, is “a very readable history-from-within of the struggle against apartheid,” although Nelson Mandela emerges more forcefully, both as a political leader and as a man, in “Part of My Soul Went With Him,” which is based on a series of interviews (Michael Parks).