William F. Buckley conveys love of sailing in this memoir of a month-long cruise in the Pacific. As with AIRBORNE and ATLANTIC HIGH, the author's previous sailing memoirs, Buckley writes about the joys of navigation, and includes excerpts from journals kept by his mates, including his son, writer Christopher Buckley.

In Saul Bellow's memoir-like and highly autobiographical novel, Abe Ravelstein is a well-known and highly respected professor of political philosophy--a character based on Bellow's good friend, the late Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago. Before Ravelstein dies from AIDS, he asks his friend Chick--a Bellowish novelist--to write his biography. The task poses problems for Chick until he himself comes harrowingly close to death. Then he loses his writer's block and composes the book that is RAVELSTEIN. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

Azar Nafasi formed a book club in Tehran comprised of seven young women who got together to discuss such books as THE GREAT GATSBY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, DAISY MILLER, and, of course, LOLITA--books forbidden by the Islamic government. In this memoir, Nafasi, who was expelled from the country for refusing to wear the veil, writes about those women, the books, and her own career as a teacher of English literature--first in Iran, now (less precariously) at Johns Hopkins.

The author was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war, and was disowned by his grandfather, "Slam" Marshall, a military historian. This family conflict caused a nearly irrevocable rift in the Marshall family; when Slam's reputation was impugned on a national level, Marshall agreed to try and clear his grandfather's name despite their differences.

A humorist ventures into the land of American bad taste and reports on what he sees: Atlantic City, the Broadway musical "Cats", Red Lobster, Sizzler's, John Tesch, Wayne Newton, and movie sequels such as "Children of the Corn III". He takes the expected jabs, but is honest enough to admit that there were some aspects of pop culture for which he began to develop an appreciation.

A humorous and dramatic account of the author's 100-day, 7,000-mile trek across Russia in search of fly-fishing. The former head of the Moscow bureau of the "Philadelphia Inquirer", he sought out the common people, and his sometimes-startling conversations with them bring Russia alive.