IN SHORT

Alex Hammond and Mike Tinney's The Secret Life of the Pencil (Laurence King) is the No. 1 book about the No. 2. Alan Bennett elicits literary laughs in Keeping On Keeping On (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Alec Baldwin and V.F. contributing editor Kurt Andersen pay taunting tribute to Trump with You Can't Spell America Without Me (Penguin Press). Charles Bukowski brews a Storm for the Living and the Dead (Ecco). Latin-American legend Eduardo Galeano is a Hunter of Stories (Nation Books). Will Friedwald croons for The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (Pantheon). Henry Louis Gates Jr. revisits 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro (Pantheon). Lawrence O'Donnell catches politicians Playing with Fire (Penguin Press). Joshua Greene uncovers The Essential Marilyn Monroe (ACC Editions). Franklin D. Roosevelt (Viking) wheels and deals in Robert Dallek's biography. A monarch gets meddlesome in Deborah Cadbury'sQueen Victoria's Matchmaking (PublicAffairs). Reza Aslan delves into divinity in God (Random House). David Hallberg is en pointe with A Body of Work (Touchstone). Nicholas Hytner pulls back the curtain in Balancing Acts (Knopf). Gregory Maguire squeezes the Nutcracker in Hiddensee (Morrow). Jefferson Morley eyes an agency spy in The Ghost (St. Martin's). Activism is far from static in Bill McKibben's Radio Free Vermont (Blue Rider). Photographer Jack Pierson (Damiani) pictures 1980s America. John Banville paints a portrait of Mrs. Osmond (Knopf). Madness ensues in Matthew Weiner's Heather, the Totality (Little, Brown). Juli Berwald inspects invertebrates in Spineless (Riverhead). There's always room for Joan Silber's Improvement (Counterpoint).