Raymond Carver’s Life and Stories

'Memoir: A History'

By BEN YAGODA
Reviewed by JUDITH SHULEVITZ

A history of memoir, from St. Augustine to James Frey.

'My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran'

By HALEH ESFANDIARI
Reviewed by LAURA SECOR

A love of Iran underlies a scholar’s memoir of surreal interrogation and solitary confinement in Tehran.

'Typhoon'

By CHARLES CUMMING
Reviewed by JAMES FALLOWS

In this novel, British and American spies clash in the buildup to the Beijing Olympics.

'There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby'

By LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA
Reviewed by LIESL SCHILLINGER

Stories rooted in horror, fable and fairy tale, by the Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

'Devil’s Dream'

By MADISON SMARTT BELL
Reviewed by BRENDA WINEAPPLE

A historical novel about the ferocious Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest and the slaves who followed him.

• Excerpt

'¡Obámanos!'

By HENDRIK HERTZBERG
Reviewed by JONATHAN FREEDLAND

Collected columns denouncing the Bush wars and tax cuts and recounting the fits of nerves that President Obama coolly overcomes.

'A Country of Vast Designs'

By ROBERT W. MERRY
Reviewed by SEAN WILENTZ

A thorough, well-wrought political history of James K. Polk’s presidency and the triumph of Manifest Destiny.

• Excerpt

'The Remains of Company D'

By JAMES CARL NELSON
Reviewed by ELIZABETH D. SAMET

A writer revisits the 1918 battle that left its mark on his grandfather.

'Reading Jesus'

By MARY GORDON
Reviewed by BENJAMIN ANASTAS

Questions for, quibbles with and tributes to the sometimes inscrutable protagonist of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

'Twisted Tree'

By KENT MEYERS
Reviewed by DON WATERS

In this novel, a girl’s disappearance sets off ripples of grief in a small South Dakota town.

• Excerpt

'Liver: A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes'

By WILL SELF
Reviewed by GEOFF NICHOLSON

The lives — as well as the livers — of the characters in Will Self’s beguiling linked stories are in very bad shape indeed.

Books of The Times

'Eating Animals'

By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Reviewed by MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Jonathan Safran Foer uses his literary gifts to give the reader some very visceral, very gruesome descriptions of factory farming and the slaughterhouse.

• Sunday Magazine: An Essay Adapted From ‘Eating Animals’