‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India’

‘Future Babble’

By DAN GARDNER
Reviewed by KATHRYN SCHULZ

We have a deep desire to know the future. But the journalist Dan Gardner argues that forecasts by experts are rarely more accurate than a guess.

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Books About Branch Rickey and Roy Campanella

Reviewed by DAVID OSHINSKY

Jimmy Breslin on Branch Rickey, who laid the groundwork for integrating baseball. Neil Lanctot on Roy Campanella, who helped lead the way.

‘Rodin’s Debutante’

By WARD JUST
Reviewed by STEVEN HEIGHTON

A novel of a Midwesterner’s coming-of-age in a world of art and money.

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‘Witches on the Road Tonight’

By SHERI HOLMAN
Reviewed by JULIE MYERSON

A legacy of mysticism and fear haunts three generations of in Sheri Holman’s novel.

‘Seven Years’

By PETER STAMM
Reviewed by SARAH FAY

The Swiss writer Peter Stamm imagines a man caught between a charming, frigid wife and a plain but devoted mistress.

‘America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation’

By DAVID GOLDFIELD
Reviewed by ANDREW DELBANCO

A historian asks whether the country might have spared itself the carnage of the Civil War.

‘Volt: Stories’

By ALAN HEATHCOCK
Reviewed by DONALD RAY POLLOCK

These eight tales are linked by the suffering that abounds in a small, poverty-stricken town.

‘No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf’

By CAROLYN BURKE
Reviewed by JAMES GAVIN

Edith Piaf embraced life passionately, even at its cruelest; Carolyn Burke’s biography surveys the mayhem with thoughtfulness and respect.

‘Will Rogers: A Political Life’

By RICHARD D. WHITE JR.
Reviewed by JOHN SCHWARTZ

A biography of Will Rogers reminds us that the happy-go-lucky comedian was also a powerful political insider.

‘Red Heat’

By ALEX von TUNZELMANN
Reviewed by TOM GJELTEN

Alex von Tunzelmann reconstructs an era when Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were cold war battlegrounds.

‘A Saving Remnant’

By MARTIN DUBERMAN
Reviewed by J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN

The intersecting lives of two gay Americans who were involved in issues like civil rights and the Vietnam War.

‘The Clockwork Universe’

By EDWARD DOLNICK
Reviewed by ANN FINKBEINER

How the scientific attempt to describe the underlying order of the cosmos played out in the life of Isaac Newton.

‘The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe’

By PETER GODWIN
Reviewed by JOSHUA HAMMER

The journalist Peter Godwin’s latest chronicle of the horrors of Zimbabwe under Mugabe.

‘Funeral for a Dog’

By THOMAS PLETZINGER
Reviewed by LELAND de la DURANTAYE

In this German novel, a children’s book and the dog of the title reflect the tragic history of a menage-a-trois.

‘The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek’

By RICHARD KLUGER
Reviewed by DAVID WALDSTREICHER

How a struggle over land led to war between whites and Indians in Washington Territory in the mid-1800’s.