Hot Type

NEW YORK CENTRAL SYSTEM

Vanities

Hot Type

Warning! Please pardon our testosterone: you are now entering chestbumping, high-fiving, butt-slapping heaven. TODD and BRANT VON HOFFMAN'SBig Damn Book of Sheer Manliness (General Publishing) is a hootenanny of uniquely male pleasures such as WD-40 oil, the mud-flap lady, and watching Spartacus. Other manly publications this month include LARRY FINK'SBoxing (Powerhouse), a knockout collection of photos evoking the majesty and brotherhood of the blood sport. In 1966, 15-year-old RINKER BUCK and his 17-year-old brother became the youngest aviators ever to fly coast to coast;

Flight of Passage (Hyperion) recalls their odyssey and how it shaped them as men. And it seems that even he-manly, rifle-toting writer RICHARD FORD has been touched by this season's novella fever: Women with Men (Knopf) offers up three memorable tales that pack some heat.

Also this month: Stray Dogs (Ballantine) is JOHN RIDLEY'S no/r page-turner about a luckless drifter who Stumbles into a tar pit of trouble in a small Nevada town. You bought the T-shirt, now actually read what the charismatic Latin-American revolutionary was all about in JON LEE ANDERSON'S new biography, Che Guevara (Grove). In Terence Rattigan (St. Martin's), GEOFFREY WANSELL digs into the closet of the legendary English playwright and playboy. JAMES BRADY, the former chief of Women's Wear Daily, Harper's Bazaar, and New York as well as the godfather of East Hampton gossip, sets his catty, celeb-saturated murder mystery, Further Lane (St. Martin's), in Hollywood East—the Hamptons. In CHRISTOPHER DICKEY'S thriller, Innocent Blood (Simon & Schuster), an all-American former army ranger searches for his roots in Bosnia, but finds himself recruited by

a holy warrior who turns him against Uncle Sam. TODD MCCARTHY'SHoward Hawks (Grove) recalls the great director and producer, who was Howard Hughes's partner, Hemingway's drinking buddy, and the maker of such extraordinary films as Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not, Red River, and Rio Bravo. From steam to diesel, C. J. RILEY salutes The Golden Age of the Passenger Train (Friedman/Fairfax). Assistant District Attorney LINDA FAIRSTEIN draws on her bloody background to splatter-paint a murderous tale of intrigue in Likely to Die (Scribner). Back in the Warhol Factory days crossdressing was still transgressive and drag queen Candy Darling ruled; My Face for the World to See (Hardy Marks), edited by her former roommates JEREMIAH NEWTON and FRANCESCA PASSALACQUA, is a collection of Darling's resplendent diaries. PAUL SCHNEIDER maps the history of America's first wilderness in The Adirondacks (Henry Holt). New York socialite LEILA HADLEY'S memoir A Journey with Elsa Cloud (Books & Co./Turtle Point) recalls a jaunt through India with her estranged daughter. STUART STEVENS'SFeeding Frenzy (Atlantic Monthly Press) is a gluttonous romp across Europe wherein our madcap hero reaches for gastronomic greatness by gorging in every three-star restaurant on the continent in just 29 days. High five, darling.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL