BLOWOUT: CORRUPTED DEMOCRACY, ROGUE STATE RUSSIA, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow (Crown). Well, she doesn't sugar-coat. Maddow is, of course, the MSNBC news star. People who hate her thinking tend to hate her, but then are more inclined to just rail against her than to engage with her arguments. And her facts? Well, the vast and deep research that always underlies her arguments tends not to crumble when poked at; you might decide that Oxford wasn't kidding with that doctorate. And she's a great story-discoverer, a gatherer and arranger of histories and facts into clear narratives. Her voice is just detectable in this big, serious business history, but her joy in the work does come through, not flaunted but a softly humming undertone. And there's news, here—not just opinions, history, and its effects and side effects. And even if you kind of trust American corporations that are richer and more powerful than most entire nations, your hair will rise on the back of your neck when the pack of maneaters surrounding Vladimir Putin pad softly into view. Russia has more oil, and less conscience, than almost anybody ever in history. The book will debut on national bestseller lists this coming Sunday, at #1.

DEATH IN FOCUS by Anne Perry (Ballantine). This is a brand-new series being launched, no Pitts, no Monk; historical, too, but not Victorian—set in the 1930s. Elena Standish is British, as is also to be expected, but she and this series seem inclined toward restlessness—she will find herself in Germany with Hitler on the rise before this one's over. She's a person a bit out of balance when met, with some failures in her past. The mystery and the historic atmosphere are as sound and clearly worked out as ever, but in the long run the reason (as if we needed one) to follow Perry here is going to be this interesting woman.

FAIR PLAY: A GAME-CHANGING SOLUTION for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) by Eve Rodsky (Putnam). A how-to book—sensible and practical systems for couples to better manage and share domestic duties—but also a head-clearing cool breeze of commonsensical—but not simple-minded—social philosophy about domestic relations, unafraid of questioning how both domestic and to some extent breadwinner responsibilities came to be distributed so mindlessly by gender, and how some of those distinctions are beginning not to apply so neatly. The practical tips really are both practical and shrewd, sensitive to the realities of home-making and child-rearing (not only of well employed or even what we might call well-off families, but the basic assumptions seem to me pretty middle-class and, I guess the term might be, urban/suburban). The social philosophy is bracing. Don't walk past this one in the bookshop without a browse. Men and women, both.