THIS ROLLICKING STORY of the Lesbian Avengers, a “direct action group” that was founded by six organizers in New York in the early 1990s, shows why historical accounts are best told by eyewitnesses. Kelly Cogswell doesn’t attempt to supply the reader with a full set of organizational records, but she describes a defining moment in radical history in all its messy, colorful complexity.  

GROWING UP in South Africa, journalist Mark Gevisser (b. 1964) was obsessed with maps: in particular, an archaic book of streets and neighborhoods that helped him play a pretend game with himself. It was only many years later that Gevisser realized that segments of his home town of Johannesburg—specifically the neighborhoods in which the city’s poverty-stricken black population lived—were missing from the book.

Lasting City takes its impetus from one of the author’s strongest early childhood memories: the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Playing in the sand on a beach where he’s making a “sand castle” of the Flatiron Building, the author’s work is soon trampled by bullies.

In How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying, [Carol] Leifer shares stories from life at home and on the road, shaping them into a useful (and funny) collection of tips for up-and-comers in any field.

Film historian Matthew Kennedy’s scintillating new book, Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, is brimming with gossip and back stories about studio hubris and outrageous movie star tantrums that resulted in financial and artistic disasters, ending the lucrative roadshow tradition.