Amazon.com: Editors' Picks

Spotlight Title: Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis

There's no book this year that made people's eyes light up when I told them about it more than Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis's new biography of cartoonist Charles Schulz. (And when they saw the obvious-but-brilliant Chip Kidd-designed cover, their eyes got even brighter.) Everyone, it seems, feels a personal connection to Peanuts (a name, by the way, that Schulz always hated), but few have a sense of the artist whose small troupe of big-headed characters still live at the center of our imagination. If some mystery about the man still remains after reading Michaelis's sharp, engaging, and level-headed biography that's no fault of the biographer--in fact, it's to his credit. Michaelis parses Schulz's particular combination of Midwestern reserve and steely determination and the strip's still-surprising balance of exuberance and misery, and he reminds us what a colossal cultural force it became, especially in the 1960s. But even as he ingeniously finds sources for Schulz's four-panel vignettes in the events of his biography, he recognizes that the true, sometimes inexplicable drama of his life took place when he sat down every day for 50 years to trace Linus's wobbly strands of hair, fill in Snoopy's black nose, and, time and again, letter the words "Good grief." --Tom

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(Not That You Asked) by Steve Almond		20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Steve Almond is a man obsessed--obsessed about candy, Kurt Vonnegut, sex, sexual failure, Fox News, baseball, heavy metal, and--most of all--the many, many varieties of shame. Thank God he is also funny. In turns laugh-out-loud-hilarious, painfully frank, and openly seething, (Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions is consistently smart and observant, marking Almond as a sort of David Sedaris for the original Gen-X crowd (or at least the one Douglas Coupland wrote about). --Jon		Surreal. Riveting. Poignant. Unsettling. Joe Hill's short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, is hard to define, but nothing short of spectacular. Fans of Heart-Shaped Box, his sleep-with-the-lights-on debut novel, will find plenty to keep them scared and happy, but the quirky and unpredictably sweet stories reveal a startling imagination, and expose Hill (despite his best efforts to hide his literary lineage) as the rightful heir to the family throne. --Daphne
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The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman		The Declaration by Gemma Malley
In 2005 Maira Kalman brought a fresh vision to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, filling the pages of the reference classic with her whimsical illustrations. And much like its multi-talented creator--who has illustrated children's books and New Yorker covers and collaborated on fashion projects with Kate Spade and Isaac Mizrahi--her new book, The Principles of Uncertainty, defies easy classification. Is it philosophy? Art? Memoir? Travel? Sociology? The answer is All of the Above (and more). This charming collection of text, paintings, and photography presents a "profusely illustrated" year in a life, with illustrated musings that range from a young Nabokov "sitting innocently and elegantly in a red chair" to two stuffed rabbits in the window at Paris's Deyrolles taxidermy to Kitty Carlisle Hart at home in her "pearly pink palace." Delightful, inspiring, and often very moving, this little charmer is a a book you might find nestled on Wes Anderson's coffee table. --Brad		I've seen a wave of new young adult novels come across my desk this fall, and among them Gemma Malley's The Declaration has captivated me the most. We meet Malley's heroine, Anna, in the year 2170 in a society that's unraveling. One hundred or so years earlier, "Longevity," a new drug granting immortality, took the world by storm, only to lead to an untenable swell in population. Anyone who wants to live forever in this brave new world must agree by law not to have children (thus the eponymous declaration) ... or else. Anna is a "Surplus," a fallout of this decree who ekes out a stark existence (in a neo-Dickensian outpost known as Grange Hall) with the hope of becoming a Valuable Asset to the adults immortal. However, with the arrival of a new Surplus, Peter, who's lived on the Outside his whole life, she discovers a path to the life she might have lived. A world in which children struggle against the adults in charge isn't a new concept, but Malley gives it a provocative twist in a debut that echoes Margaret Atwood, Aldous Huxley, and--most recently--Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go as it explores what happens when you tangle with reproductive power. --Anne
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1776: The Illustrated Edition by David McCullough		Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky
With apologies to your local museum, few collections can match the one-of-a-kind look at the early stages of American independence found in 1776: The Illustrated Edition. Packed with striking replicas of letters, maps, and portraits, this updated version of David McCullough's 2005 bestseller provides readers with unedited first-hand accounts of America's initial steps toward sovereignty. Its engaging narrative blends beautifully with personal notes from figures such as George Washington and helps reveal the determination, bravery, and good ol' blind luck that founded our country. --Dave		As the Nazis advanced on France, celebrated writer Irène Némirovsky composed two final masterworks: Suite Française and Fire in the Blood. The first, smuggled out in a suitcase by her escaping daughters when their mother was taken to her death at Auschwitz in 1942, surfaced more than 60 years later and restored her bestselling status. The other, two pages of which slipped out in that same suitcase, was thought lost--until her biographers discovered the rest of the manuscript in papers given to her editor for safekeeping. A worthy companion to Suite Française, it follows three interwoven stories across two decades, when the hot-blooded affairs of youth threaten the cool calm of middle age. Once it has all unraveled, the last line lodges in your heart like a sliver. If only there could have been more. --Mari
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