This big, elaborate book with more than 500 photographs and drawings is a curiosity that deals with the ways people use their bodies. Pictures and text describe, over and over, how the two sexes are different. Most of the observations are obvious: "In any situation where clothing is reduced to a minimum, it is the 'fig-leaf that covers the genital region." Every chapter leaves the reader with two questions: Why? And so what? Although there are some amusing touches, such exhaustive material without any conclusions makes it all seem puzzling and trivial. (Harry N. Abrams, $16.95)
by John Gregory Dunne
This season three of America's most interesting writers—Thomas Berger, Richard Brautigan and now Dunne—have written their new books in the manner of the old-fashioned hard-boiled detective novel. Berger is manic and surreal, Brautigan is antic and cute, but John Gregory Dunne is absolutely marvelous. L.A. homicide's Tom Spellacy and his brother, Monsignor Des Spellacy, share the telling. The vice squad is preoccupied with trying every vice known to man, and the church prospers from crimes against the poor. A girl the tabloids call "The Virgin Tramp" is murdered. The book is funny, outrageous, cynical and spellbinding. (E.P. Dutton, $9.95)
edited by Jean-Claude Suarès and Seymour Chwast
"Ah! cats are a mysterious kind of folk," wrote Sir Walter Scott. "There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of." More than 70 other writers have felt called upon to comment in poetry and prose about cats and their arcane ways. Among those represented in this handsome paperback are T.S. Eliot, Colette, Hemingway, John Keats, D.H. Lawrence, Cotton Mather, Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson and P.G. Wodehouse. In addition to illustrations by the authors, there are paintings and drawings by such artists as Da Vinci, Renoir, Wyeth and Chagall. Cat lovers will lap it like a saucer of cream. (Berkley Windhover, $6.95)
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
