HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

Head-over-heels hopeful and deliciously satirical, The Future Dictionary of America (McSweeney's) congregates more than 150 of America's most visionary writers, including Paul Auster, Kurt Vonnegut, and Diane Ackerman, to create a Utopian lexicon for a time when the Bush administration is a distant memory. All proceeds are going to groups "working for the public good."

Just in time for Election Day! The Cato Institute publishes smart, slipin-your-pocket-size editions of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, just in case you need reminding of what the country is really built on. Seamus Heaney proffers a re-envisagement of Sophocles' Antigone in The Burial at Thebes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), in which the rights of the individual clash swords with matters of state security. Another reason to play Canadian—the great Alice Munro, with her newest revelation, Runaway (Knopf), proves again why short-story writers bow down to her. William T. Vollman's Rising Up and Rising Down (Ecco), a vast meditation on what justifies violence, is the result of 23 years of trips to war zones, probing the minds of philosophers, tyrants, warlords, and pacifists. V.F. contributor David Rose exposes the Bush administration's secret rules of conduct and shocking human-rights violations inside the prison camp of Guantanamo (New Press). Barry Miles salutes Zappa (Grove), bedeviller of Republicans, original Mother of Invention, and maker of gloriously incendiary music.

Also this month: For 40 years the pinups of The Pirelli Calendar (Rizzoli) have left skid marks on the hearts of men. In the truly wonderful Serena, Food and Stories (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), Serena Bass and photographer David Loftus spoon out recipes to go with Bass's charming slices of autobiography. You don't have to be a Lord of Discipline in the kitchen to master the recipes in The Pat Conroy Cookbook (Doubleday). Robert Gottlieb is on pointe in George Balanchine (HarperCollins), a recital of his early days with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, his collaborations with Stravinsky, and his founding of the New York City Ballet. In 1908, after knocking out his white opponent, boxer Jack Johnson became the most admired African-American of the time; Geoffrey Ward recalls the government's mission to destroy him for the dangerous crime of Unforgivable Blackness (Knopf)Mary Morris paints a compelling tale of two women's obsession and the blackest Revenge (St. Martin's). Every espionage gadget you could ever long for (yes, including Maxwell Smart's shoe phone) is in evidence in Danny Biederman's The Incredible World of Spy-Fi (Chronicle). Michael Roberts's Snowman in Paradise (Chronicle) dons surf shorts and gorges on bananas. In his new society-defining novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 20th-century Dickens Tom Wolfe crashes the culture of college campuses, coining a new vernacular, including "dormcest." Kelly Killoren Bensimon captures American Style (Assouline). In Women I Have Dressed (And Undressed!) (Scribner), fashion legend Arnold Scaasi dresses up and dresses down such iconic glamour-pusses as Jackie Kennedy, Sophia Loren, and Lady Di. From the fantastic fortress of Jonathan Lethem, a new short-story collection, Men and Cartoons (Doubleday), emerges. The poet James Tate constructs astonishing enchantments in Return to the City of White Donkeys (Ecco). Barnes & Noble Books presents James Balog's Tree: A New Vision of American Forests. Trees—they're not just for books anymore_Tommy Hilfiger's New England (Rizzoli) is a giddy tour of lighthouses, lobsters, and weather vanes. Mark Feeney intertwines the history of the film industry with that of cinephile Tricky Dick in Nixon at the Movies (University of Chicago). Stanley Crouch is nobody's fool; in The Artificial White Man (Perseus), he takes on the notion of authenticity—what does it mean to be real, and why does it matter? The haunting images from unknown photographers that Robert Flynn Johnson puts forth in Anonymous (Thames & Hudson) are full of mystery. Clear Hugh Pearman's Airports (Abrams) for takeoff. You are not alone, Sam Stall, Lou Harry, and Julia Spalding: The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures (Quirk) compiles 1,001 things we hate to love, from General Hospital to Cheetos to David Hasselhoff. Vote, or guilty pleasures will be the only ones left...