Fourth batch. Mostly just picked books from topics not featured in the first three batches (history, economics, politics), providing a pretty scattered bag of nonfiction. Still more to come.

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Gustavo Arellano: ¡Ask a Mexican! (paperback, 2008, Scribner): Orange County Weekly columnist, fields questions, sprays them to all fields. No idea how useful or informative or, for that matter, funny, this is, but what do I know?

Philip Ball: Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (paperback, 2006, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Lots of basics on physical laws with interesting tangents into the social sciences.

Russell Banks: Dreaming Up America (2008, Seven Stories Press): Historical novelist -- author of The Sweet Hereafter, Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, most recently The Reserve -- writes a short essay on the self-conception of America over the years.

Jason Socrates Bardi: The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time (2007, Basic Books): It is well known that Newton and Leibniz independently discovered calculus. This goes into the history and the dispute over primacy, for whatever that's worth.

Jason Beaird: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (paperback, 2007, SitePoint): Short, pricey primer, looks like it might be inspirational but somehow none of those web design books have ever nudged me into becoming a better web designer. Part of a series, including Jonathan Snook: The Art & Science of CSS and Cameron Adams: The Art & Science of JavaScript.

Allan M Brandt: The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America (2007, Basic Books): Definitive, or at least long enough (640 pages) to be, with major sections on advertising and public health politics.

Bill Bryson: Shakespeare: The World as Stage (paperback, 2007, Eminent Lives): One of my favorite writers -- humorist, traveler, archeologist of the English language -- knocks off a short book on a subject obviously up his alley. I've read almost everything he's written, but lately fallen behind, barely conscious that his memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is now out in paperback.

Frank Büchmann-Møller: Someone to Watch Over Me: The Life and Music of Ben Webster (2006, University of Michigan Press): Career-spanning biography, one of the all-time tenor sax greats, started in Kansas City and wound up in Copenhagen.

Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking (paperback, 2007, Vintage Books): Two deaths in the family, survived by one of the premier essayists of our times. One of those books to read just for the magic of it all. Also note that the rest of her nonfiction has been collected as We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction, part of "Everyman's Library."

Timothy Egan: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (paperback, 2006, Mariner Books): In 1935 a single dust storm stretched from Amarillo TX into the Dakotas, one of the signature events of the Great Depression, a piece of ecological and economic disaster that rivals the worst of the Soviet Union. Egan has a number of books on the northwest, including a Seattle travel guide, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, and Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West.

Gretchen Cassel Eick: Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72 (2001; paperback, 2007, University of Illinois Press): Events I lived through -- not that I can claim to have paid sufficient attention at the time, but going back they ring true and the detail is recognizable. A good study of the civil rights movement in a medium-sized northern city that saw an influx of both white and black southerners, most to work in the WWII aircraft factories.

Steve Ettlinger: Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats (2007, Hudson Street Press; paperback, 2008, Plume): Not sure if he goes beyond the Twinkie ingredients list, but that may well suffice for 304 pages.

Stuart Ewen/Elizabeth Ewen: Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality (Revised Edition, paperback, 2007, Seven Stories Press): Popular history/culture critique, pointing out the obvious once you see it. Stuart Ewen has written a bunch of books in this vein: Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture; All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture; PR! A Social History of Spin; and others. Elizabeth Ewen previously wrote Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened, and jointly they wrote Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness.

Ian Frazier: Lamentations of the Father: Essays (2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Scattered short pieces, presumably humorous. Author has written some of the better nonfiction books of the past decade -- the three that I've read are Great Plains, Family, and On the Rez.

Misha Glenny: McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (2008, Knopf): Journalist, started covering the wars in Yugoslavia then backed up and wrote a very good history, The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999. Back to the present here, covering organized crime, especially in the former Soviet Union.

Jerome Groopman: The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness (paperback, 2005), Random House: Author of the more recent How Doctors Think, and several previous books along the same lines.

Andy Hamilton: Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (paperback, 2007, University of Michigan Press): I find interview books fascinating, besides which Konitz has always been such a thinker's saxophonist, with 50+ years on the creative fringe. Foreword by Joe Lovano. Next related book I ran across is the next one you'd want to see: Jason Weiss, ed: Steve Lacy: Conversations.

Dorothy Hamilton/Patric Kuh: Chef's Story: 27 Chefs Talk About What Got Them into the Kitchen (paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): Foodie book: wonder if it goes much beyond the usual "my first taste of paté was better than sex" yarns.

Robert L Harris: Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference (paperback, 2000, Oxford University Press): An extensive catalog of ideas for presenting data graphically. Not splashy like Edward R Tufte's books, and pricey to boot.

Brian Hayes: Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape (paperback, 2006, WW Norton): Large format illustrated book, lots of pictures and explanations of the technology that ties us together, especially the electrical system. Author also wrote a recent volume of math essays: Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions.

Nick Hornby: The Polysyllabic Spree (paperback, 2004, McSweeney's): A short book about reading books, done on the cheap. I have a soft spot for meta-books, but this may be a little too soft to bother with.

Peter Kaminsky: Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them (2005, Hyperion): Essential reading for porkalicious fans.

Neal Karlen: The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews (2008, Morrow): Another book on Yiddish as language and culture -- Paul Kriwaczek: Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation; Michael Wex: Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (and others); David Katz: Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish; Miriam Weinstein: Yiddish: A Nation of Words; as well as things like Yetta Emmes: Drek! The Real Yiddish Your Bubbe Never Taught You and Lita Epstein: If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Say It in Yiddish: The Book of Yiddish Insults and Curses.

Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007; paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): Can't vouch for her well-regarded novels, but I've dabbled in her essay collections -- barely, evidently: I missed Small Wonder: Essays and High Tide in Tucscon: Essays From Now or Never, probably others. Another tantalizing food book from a year full of them. Some people (and I'm one of them) eat when faced with stress. Reading food books is almost as comforting.

Bakari Kitwana: Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (paperback, 2006, Basic Civitas Books): Strikes me as true, at least to a significant extent, even if not majority true.

Steve Lake/Paul Griffiths, eds.: Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM (2007, Granta): Big coffee table book, with cover illustrations and miscellaneous info for some/most/all[?] of ECM's 2000 or so releases -- jazz with a pastoral or chamber bent/classical music for new agers. Important label, possibly the most important of the last 40 years.

Kimberly Lisagor/Heather Hansen: Disappearing Destinations: 37 Places in Peril and What Can Be Done to Help Save Them (paperback, 2008, Vintage): Travel guide to fascinating spots around the world, considered in peril for one reason or another. Similar, with more spots and more pictures but fewer words, is Alonzo C Addison: Disappearing World: 101 of the Earth's Most Extraordinary and Endangered Places.

Robert Matheu/Brian J Bowe, eds: Creem: America's Only Rock 'N' Roll Magazine (2007, Collins): Coffee-table book culled from the 1969-88 Detroit-based rock rag. My impression is that it's long on trashy features but short on criticism. I read it for the reviews, and would have written for it if Lester Bangs hadn't quit too soon. Afterwards it wasn't the same.

Donella H Meadows/Jorgen Randers/Dennis L Meadows: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (paperback, 2004, Chelsea Green): 30th anniversary update of the 1972 Club of Rome report. Where the original report was a warning of finite limits ahead which would derail growth, this one argues that we've already overshot those limits. An important piece of model-building in trying to get a grasp on what we are doing to ourselves, never mind the planet or its nature.

Peter Menzel: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (paperback, 2007, Ten Speed Press): A photojournalist -- Faith D'Aliuso looks to be the writer, although her credit gets buried -- romping around the planet, checking out what different people eat. Co-author of Material World: A Global Family Portrait, a picture book of households around the world, and Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects.

Lisa Jean Moore: Sperm Counts: Overcome by Man's Most Precious Fluid (2007, NYU Press): Everything you ever (or never) wanted to know.

Russ Parsons: How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table (paperback, 2008, Houghton-Mifflin): Author previously wrote a pretty good science-in-the-kitchen book: How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science. Here he delves into the search for flavor in produce, complicated and often frustrated by agribusiness.

Tim Pilcher: Erotic Comics: A Graphic History from Tijuana Bibles to Undergound Comix (2008, Abrams): With help from Gene Kannenberg Jr and foreword by Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Basic coffee-table art book. Pilcher seems to be a prolific sex and drugs kind of guy, but I can't say he's graduated to rock 'n' roll yet, co-author of A Hedonist's Guide to Life.

Gene Rizzo: The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time: Ranking, Analysis and Photos (2005, Hal Leonard): I'm a sucker for list books, even though they're bound to be arbitrary (hence wrong). Key example here is the #5 ranking for Monty Alexander (after Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Bud Powell, Art Tatum). Amazon's readers preferred Robert L Doerschuk's 88: The Giants of Jazz Piano.

Pamela C Ronald/RW Adamchak: Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food (2008, Oxford University Press): Given that one focus of genetic modification of plants is pest-avoidance, the fit between GM plants and organic farming may be closer than generally recognized. That seems to be the drift here, promoting science and more industry as the fix that allows us to ignore population limits.

Jonathan Rosen: The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature (2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux): A book about birdwatching grows into a meditation on diminished nature.

Michael Ruhlman: The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen (2007, Scribner): Intends to be the "Strunk & White" of cooking, a slim compendium of all the basic rules of the craft.

Mark Schapiro: Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (2007, Chelsea Green): No big surprise that many toxic chemicals are in the environment and in our bodies -- book mentions 148 on a US CDC list, or that politics has something to do with it. Author co-wrote a previous book: Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People in a Hungry World.

Ben Shapiro: Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House (2008, Thomas Nelson). Looks like an amusing ramble through presidential campaign history, including a scheme to rate candidates by trivial traits. Beware that the author is right-wing hack, having previously penned Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth and Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Youth. Ann Coulter has nominated Shapiro for the Supreme Court (at age 21 -- she's thinking long term for once).

Lynn Spencer: Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11 (2008, Free Press): Author is commercial airline pilot, taking a close look at how civil and military air forces responsed to the 9/11 hijackings.

Shelby Steele: A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win (2007, Free Press): Maybe an afterword is in order now that he has won. Now that Obama has secured the Democratic Party nomination, the question has changed, becoming one of two individuals, Obama and McCain. The probability wave has collapsed.

Jeffrey Tayler: River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny (paperback, 2007, Mariner Books): In your travel section, another book on somewhere you'd best only read about. The river is the Lena, 2400 miles from near Lake Baikal through Yakutsk to the Arctic Ocean, remembering the cossacks who've gone before him, accompanied by an Afghan War veteran who's not always the best company. Other Taylers: Facing the Congo: A Modern-Day Journey Into the Heart of Darkness ; Siberian Dawn: A Journey Across the New Russia; Valley of the Casbahs: A Journey Across the Moroccan Sahara; Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat, and Camel; and Glory in a Camel's Eye: A Perilous Trek Through the Greatest African Desert.

Peter Thall: What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business, Revised and Updated Edition: The Myths, the Secrets, the Lies (and a Few Truths) (2006, Billboard Books): Previous edition 2002. Many details on the business side of music, as if that matters. If I wanted to go there, and I might if I snagged a serious music blog gig, this would be one of my first investments.

John Thorne/Matt Lewis Thorne: Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite (2007, North Point Press): More pieces from the author's "Simple Cooking" samizdat, probably as scattered, engaging, and delightful as his other collections -- Serious Pig: An American Cook in Search of His Roots is the one that first caught my eye.

Giles Tremlett: Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past (2007; paperback, 2008, Walker): A travel-history, one way to dig under the skin of modern Spain to see what lurks beneath.

Edward R Tufte: Beautiful Evidence (2006, Graphics Press): Another book on information graphics design from the author who put it all together: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; Envisioning Information; Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative.

Larry Ullman: PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide (paperback, 2007, Peachpit Press): I use PHP for my websites, and while I can hack my way around it, I've never gotten to the point of feeling of really mastering the language (like I had with C and C++). Peachpit's Visual Quickpro guides seem to be generally well done, useful even when there's little obvious benefit to the graphics. Ullman has written a bunch of these, including PHP for the World Wide Web (2nd edition; 3rd edition later this year) and PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites. Can't swear they're the answer, but I'm always in the marke for one. Also in the series is Tom Negrino/Dori Smith: JavaScript & Ajax (sixth edition), which addresses an even bigger void in my skill set. (On the other hand, I have the big O'Reilly books and others on these subjects, so maybe the problem is me, something a new book won't help.)

Kurt Vonnegut: Armageddon in Retrospect (2008, Putnam): Twelve previously unpublished war pieces by the late, great novelist.

Sarah Vowell: Assassination Vacation (paperback, 20006, Simon & Schuster): American history through the prism of presidential assassinations, set up as a travelogue moving from artifact to artifact. Guess that's one way to do it. Author also wrote The Partly Cloudy Patriot and Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World.

David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (paperback, 2007, Back Bay Books): Collection of essays from the well known novelist, McArthur genius, etc. -- certainly a fine prose craftsman. Most relevant here is a piece on John McCain campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina in 2000. Sympathetic piece -- I suspect Wallace got snowed, but a more skeptical reading might be useful.

Spencer Wells: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (paperback, 2004, Random House): One of several books trying to track the spread of humans through their genes, this one hanging onto the Y chromosome (i.e., the boys). Concludes Adam came from Africa 31-79 thousand years ago.

Susan Wicklund: This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor (2007, Public Affairs): Book puts what she's infamous for into the context of what she does everyday, which is to provide vital health care services to people who need it.

Paula Wolfert: The Cooking of Southwest France: Recipes from France's Magnificent Rustic Cuisine (2005, Wiley): I have several of Wolfert's cookbooks, although nothing on France, which I recall was her original specialty before moving toward the east end of the Mediterranean.

Clifford A Wright: Little Foods of the Mediterranean: 500 Fabulous Recipes for Antipasti, Tapas, Hors d'Oeuvres, Meze, and More (paperback, 2003, Harvard Common Press): Wright previously wrote A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs, with More than 500 Recipes, a history book with recipes, one that I was impressed enough with to buy but have never managed to cook from. One of my business ideas is to have a buffet restaurant with a wide range of cold tapas and meze from all over the Mediterranean, with hot dishes and main dishes optional. This seems like a basic resource, but I wonder how much of it isn't in cookbooks I already have.