Hot Type

How very seductive ... Virginia Postrel reveals how The Power of Glamour (Simon & Schuster) extends far beyond the world of fashion and entertainment, affecting not only how we _ choose to eat and dress but how we invest and vote. A hunky realityTV star turned "writer" and an embittered female book critic lock horns and more in Raw: A Love Story (Grove/Black Cat), Mark Haskell Smith's audacious satire of the cutthroat worlds of the highbrow literary elite and lowbrow entertainment industry. In The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling (Gotham), sportswriter David Shoemaker goes __ to the mat for the spectacular spandexed kings of the ring, promoting the sport as pop-culture performance art and spotlighting superstars, from "Captain Lou" Albano and Vince McMahon to Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan. Bruce McCall and David Letterman land one on the chin of the 1 percent in This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me) (Blue Rider). Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd's misguided attempt to move his young family to Tehran is documented in The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay (Doubleday). From stone tablets to the ether of Google Earth, Jerry Brotton plots the way cartography has been employed to manipulate political, religious, and economic agendas through the ages in A History of the World in 12 Maps (Viking). Gossip columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy dish on their "tabloid romance" with a host of celebs, porn stars, mobsters, fixers, and more in Scandal: A Manual (Skyhorse). Woodson Merrell, M.D/sThe Detox Prescription (Rodale) exorcises toxins, fat, and bad vibes. Disco queen Gloria Gaynor shares fans' stories of overcoming adversity in We Will Survive (Grand Harbor), with V.F. reporter-researcher Sue Carswell. Otherwise normal-seeming writers come out as knitters in the infinitely crafty Ann Hood's anthology Knitting Yarns (W. W. Norton). How hot is that?

ELISSA SCHAPPELL