If you missed the weekend's big book reviews, no need to fear: you can catch up with the highlights below!
"Innocent," Scott Turow
The New York Times
"Innocent" is a meticulously constructed and superbly paced mystery, full of twists and surprises and the sort of technical arcana on which the genre thrives. The reader will learn quite a lot about toxicology screening, e-mail shredding software and the peculiar properties of MAO-inhibitor antidepressants. The book's real distinction, though, is its stubborn, powerful undercurrent of regret, mostly felt by Sabich but also, to a lesser degree, by everybody else in this murky world, where even the bright light of the law can't show people, or their desperate acts, as they truly are.
"War," Sebastian Junger
The New York Times
Sebastian Junger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "The Perfect Storm," spent months shadowing an American infantry platoon deployed in the valley between 2007 and 2008. The result is "War," his absorbing and original if sometimes uneven account of his time there.
"The Sandbox," David Zimmerman
The Los Angeles Times
"The Sandbox's" climax involves apocalyptic violence and the specter of that evil, unnamed general. But this book's most searing episodes take place in the minds of these men, in their raging speech and sleepless nights. By ultimately rejecting these appealing but uncinematic notions, an obviously gifted writer has made a more screen-ready novel, but not a better one.
"The Carrie Diaries," Candace Bushnell
The Los Angeles Times
Helping the 17-year-old Carrie navigate the hallways and mores of Castlebury High are three best friends. No, not those three best friends. Although if you're a devotee of "Sex and the City" -- the TV series and the movies, the latest of which is due in theaters May 27 -- it's impossible to not think of them.
Part of the fun of "The Carrie Diaries" is trying to assign the Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha parts to Lali, Maggie and the Mouse (who's formally Roberta, but, really, the Mouse'll do).
"The Promise," Jonathan Alter
The San Francisco Chronicle
"The Promise: President Obama, Year One" is not a campaign rehash, but a well-informed chronicle, sometimes sober, often raucous. Other books will be written about Barack Obama's time in the White House; this snapshot of 2009 will be a durable, well-thumbed guide.
"The Pregnant Widow," Martin Amis
The San Francisco Chronicle
Unfortunately, Amis can't resist embellishing his traditional morality tale with a number of distracting pet obsessions and unconvincing metafictional smoke screens. The end result is an often frustrating hybrid of fiction and tipsy, maudlin pontification.
"Wolf: The Lives of Jack London," James L. Haley
The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Haley concedes--it feels grudging--that he has no solid evidence for London's homosexuality, yet he insists on keeping the theme alive throughout the book. That misguided decision mars "Wolf" (as does, in a minor way, the author's maddening misuse of the word "disinterest"). But this is still a valuable London biography. It surpasses Irving Stone's 1938 "Sailor on Horseback," giving us a well-delineated picture of a singular, complicated figure, a socialist who signed his letters "Yours for the revolution, Jack London" but who traveled for decades--often first-class--with an Asian servant who was required to call him "Master."
"The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy," Bernd Heinrich
Salon.com
Bernd Heinrich, a renowned naturalist and emeritus professor of biology at the University of Vermont, argues in his eye-opening new book, "The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy," there's little reason to suspect birds don't fall in love just like we do. Love, Heinrich writes, is an adaptive feeling that many animals share, one that causes them to act irrationally for the sake of reproduction. He suggests monogamy among birds evolved in a similar way, as a sexual strategy for rearing young in demanding environments.
"Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law," Gabriel Schoenfeld
The New Republic
Schoenfeld is too scrupulous an intellectual to be a successful polemicist. His nuanced historical account constantly undercuts his argument that the government should prosecute journalists who publish leaks. The fact is that, even with the benefit of hindsight, and the opening of archives, it turns out to be difficult to show that intelligence breaches caused much harm.