HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

Crazy Christian fundamentalists, gung-ho military types, blabbermouth babysitters, heroic spin doctors, self-obsessed fiftysomethings, and imploding mega-stars! Welcome to America, darling.

After the publication of Hollywood nanny Suzanne Hansen's memoir, former employer and hardballing Uber-agent Michael Ovitz might swear bitterly: You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again (Crown). In Eric Dezenhall's Turnpike Flameout (St. Martin's), a star-wrangling spin doctor tries to vindicate an aging rocker accused of murder. For boomers in denial about the heft of their nest egg, yet invested with a grandiose

sense of "lifestyle entitlement," Lee Eisenberg's The Number (Free Press) provides precious accounting. At the request of The Atlantic,Bernard-Henri Levy re-traced the footsteps of another great French thinker, Alexis de Tocqueville; now his dispatches are collected in American Vertigo (Random House). My Fundamentalist Education (Public Affairs) is Christine Rosen's chronicle of her Florida childhood, where the ABC's were the apocalypse, the Bible, and Christ. Peter Schechter's new novel sniffs out a terrorist group's Point of Entry (HarperCollins). Max Hastings decodes some military folk uniquely wired to become Warriors (Knopf).

A mythological rise to stardom and a spectacular fall into disgrace—Margo Jefferson muses On Michael Jackson (Pantheon).

Swiftly: Ayelet Waldman ponders Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (Doubleday). Siri Hustvedt's essays utter A Plea for Eros (Picador). John Loring throws open the doors to Tiffany's Palm Beach (Abrams). Famed photographer Paolo Roversi welcomes the curious into his Studio (D.A.P.).

Arthur & George (Knopf) is Julian Barnes's newest. Amanda j Mackenzie Stuart gilds the lives of Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt (HarperCollins). Margaret Atwood's The Tent (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) enfolds glittering mini-fictions and micro-dramas. Anita Brookner's heroine discovers the joys and sorrows inherent in Leaving Home (Random

House). David J. Clayton, M.D. (with Laura Vanderkam), prescribes The Healthy Guide to Unhealthy Living (Simon & Schuster) as a way to survive your bad habits. Now, that's American!