Also of interest ... in solving tough problems

The Good Soldiers

by David Finkel

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)

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This soldier’s-eye view of the American military’s surge in Iraq is “one of the finest pieces of nonfiction writing” I’ve come across in a long time, said Colette Bancroft in the St. Petersburg, Fla., Times. Focusing on a single Army battalion from deployment to its return home, the Washington Post’s David Finkel has crafted “a story that is by turns inspiring, terrifying, and heartbreaking.” It doesn’t matter if you support the war or oppose it. Finkel’s compellingly detailed narrative “will show you something you need to know.”

Half the Sky

by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

(Knopf, $28)

Here’s a book about the oppression of women in the Third World that reads nothing like a sermon, said Carolyn See in The Washington Post. Weaving together “sensationally interesting” stories about individual women who are creating successful grass-roots responses to gender-based violence and maltreatment, Half the Sky makes a vast problem seem as if it could be solvable—if only more of us were willing to try. Sheryl WuDunn and her husband, Nicholas Kristof, once won a Pulitzer for the New York Times. Their riveting “call to arms may be “one of the most important books I have ever read.”

The Healing of America

by T.R. Reid

(Penguin, $26)

T.R. Reid’s one-man tour through many different health-care systems around the world “could have been a policy-heavy slog,” said Catherine Arnst in BusinessWeek. Instead, the Washington Post veteran uses his own bum shoulder as a pretense for gathering possible remedies, and thus keeps his study both light in tone and “seriously incisive.” Reid boils down the menu of existing systems to four sensible options, and makes Americans look irrational for putting up with their current “crazy quilt” alternative.

NurtureShock

by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman

(Twelve, $25)

At times, this politely contrarian study of child-rearing techniques reads as if kids might have written it just to “mess with” their parents’ heads, said Lynn Harris in Salon.com. Consulting recent studies, the book’s co-authors conclude that watching PBS can make a child more aggressive than watching Power Rangers, that lying is a symptom of intelligence, and that arguing with one’s parents is actually a form of respect. But don’t worry. NurtureShock never nags, and its recurrent theme is a reassuring one: that our children are doing better than many adults fear.