Goodwin Revisits Lincoln, Doctorow Follows Sherman: Paperbacks

Goodwin Revisits Lincoln, Doctorow Follows Sherman: Paperbacks

By Edward Nawotka

Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Doris Kearns Goodwin's look at Lincoln's political circle, E.L. Doctorow's powerful novel about Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and John Berendt's adventures among Venice's eccentrics highlight this month's crop of new paperbacks.

``Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln'' by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster). In this penetrating look at Lincoln's presidency, the popular historian argues that Abe's savviest move was to load his cabinet with political opponents, including William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates.

``The March'' by E.L. Doctorow (Random House). This recreation of Sherman's fiery march through the South at the end of the Civil War is told from the multiple perspectives of a pampered Southern lady, a sadistic surgeon, a freed slave and the grizzled general himself.

``Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street'' by William Poundstone (Hill & Wang). The story of how Ed Thorp applied the ``Kelly criterion,'' developed by Bell Labs scientist John Kelly, to compute optimal bets while playing blackjack and, later, the securities markets.

``The City of Falling Angels'' by John Berendt (Penguin). The author's picaresque adventures during his on-again, off-again eight-year residency in Venice, where he was ostensibly investigating the fire that destroyed the historic Fenice opera house in 1996 but spent most of his time mingling with the city's eccentric aristocrats and artists.

``Melville: His World and Work'' by Andrew Delbanco (Vintage). Combining history and criticism, this compact, engaging biography shows how the writer's life and work reflected a rich era in the U.S.

``Teacher Man'' by Frank McCourt (Scribner). The Irishman continues the memoir mining he began with ``Angela's Ashes'' in this third outing that covers the nearly 30 years he spent teaching in New York City public schools.

``The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq'' by George Packer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Packer, a self-described liberal hawk who initially favored invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, documents his growing dismay as he witnesses mismanagement, incompetence and ignorance at home and abroad.

``Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945'' by Tony Judt (Penguin). An encyclopedic and readable survey covering six decades of history across 34 countries, from Europe's painful postwar recovery to the expansion of the European Union into formerly communist countries in 2004.

``A History of the Jews in the Modern World'' by Howard M. Sachar (Vintage). This tome of more than 800 pages by an eminent scholar covers the past 400 years and chronicles the many roles Jews played in the development of modern civilization.

``Four Quarters of Light: An Alaskan Journey'' by Brian Keenan (Broadway). Irishman Keenan, who spent more than 1,500 days as hostage in Beirut from 1986 to 1990, takes his family to live in Alaska for a summer and revels in the freedom of its wide-open spaces.

``Bonjour Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay'' by Corinne Maier (Vintage). Frenchwoman Maier became a cult hero after writing this little Gallic shrug of a book that warns against selling your soul to the corporation and suggests cultivating ``active disengagement'' at work, which is both practical and subversive.