Hot Type

The drama, the dresses, the dance numbers! Film critic ROBERT OSBORNE’S 70 Years of the Oscar (Abbeville) celebrates Hollywood’s favorite hootenanny as well as the actors and filmmakers who would possess the exalted golden eunuch. RONALD BERGAN distills the complicated genius behind The Battleship Potemkin in Sergei Eisenstein (Overlook). The prolific photographer and avant-garde filmmaker (imagine the bastard child of Woody and Spike) showcases his gritty oeuvre in William Klein: Films (PowerHouse). The mother of all acting teachers hits her mark in Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov (Knopf), edited by BARRY PARIS.

In honor of national poetry month, a fearsome threesome: Jackstraws (Harcourt Brace) collects the irreverent and heartstopping poems of Pulitzer Prize winner CHARLES SIMIC. In Byron (Knopf), BENITA EISLER uncloaks the dashing poster boy of Romanticism. JAY PARINI’S bio Robert Frost (Henry Holt) is chockablock with across-the-fence details gleaned from friends and neighbors.

Also this month: Chatty ex-Clintonite GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS tells tales out of school in the sure-to-get-their-knees-knockin’ All Too Human (Little, Brown). RICHARD BROOKHISER’SAlexander Hamilton, American (Free Press) makes a case for the greatness of the Founding Father. SALMAN RUSHDIE’S novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Henry Holt) is a rollicking refashioning of the Orpheus myth. In Out of the Ashes (HarperCollins), intrepid brothers ANDREW and PATRICK COCKBURN blow the lid off" how the C.I.A. fumbled operations to destroy Saddam Hussein. According to physicist FREEMAN DYSON’SThe Sun, the Genome and the Internet (Oxford), solar energy, genetic engineering, and the worldwide communication network could distribute the planet’s wealth more equally. A woman’s sudden death sends seismic shivers down the backs of all who loved her in MEG WOLITZER’S novel Surrender, Dorothy (Scribner). In Edward Weston (Bulfinch), THEODORE E. STEBBINS JR., KAREN E. QUINN, and LESLIE FURTH showcase the photographer’s landmark work. Imagine Finding John Cheever, Eudora Welty, and Ernest Hemingway all between the same covers: The Best American Short Stories of the Century (Houghton Mifflin), edited by JOHN UPDIKE and KATRINA KENISON, collects masterworks from literature’s finest. Who says April has to be cruel?

ELISSA SCHAPPELL