A STRANGER IN THIS WORLD, by Kevin Canty, Vintage Contemporaries, $10.
Many of the characters in these 10 stories act impulsively, letting their futures melt away in the heat of a moment. In 1994, reviewer Catherine Bush called this collection a "superb debut," offering "sharp, distilled intelligence, mingling recognition with surprise."
A JOURNEY THROUGH ECONOMIC TIME: A Firsthand View, by John Kenneth Galbraith, Houghton Mifflin, $11.95.
The author has directly observed most of the 20th century, and he traces it here, noting the influence of events on world markets. Continuing his reputation as an iconoclast, he believes in both internationalism and the salutary effects of government on economic inequities. Galbraith is "destined to endure long after his peevish peers have faded from footnote status," Alan Abelson said last year, praising this work as "a first-rate book and a rewarding one." Houghton Mifflin has also reissued Galbraith's MONEY: Whence It Came, Where It Went ($13.95), first published in 1975. This revised edition incorporates discussion of the economic policies of the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations. While disagreeing with many of Galbraith's conclusions, our reviewer, Eugene D. Genovese, commented that the author "has admirably demonstrated that respect for the English language provides everything necessary to demystify economics." THE SOCIAL MEANING OF MONEY, by Viviana A. Zelizer (Basic Books, $14), was reviewed here last year by Galbraith. Examining the forms that currency has taken and the means employed to control it, her study is "an interesting and informative book," he said.
THE SILENT ANGEL, by Heinrich Boell, translated by Breon Mitchell, Picador USA, $12.
This is the Nobel Prize-winning author's first novel, rejected by German publishers in 1950 and only published in his native country posthumously in 1992. It focuses on a German soldier who exchanges his coat with that of a man facing execution, and then must rebuild his own identity in the ruins of postwar Cologne. It is "a rich novel, one still pertinent to our own hunger for the bread of meaning," Peter Filkins said in the Book Review in 1994. Another writer's first novel has also been rescued from obscurity. TESTIMONIES, by Patrick O'Brian (Norton, $11), has nothing to do with the seafaring life the author has made famous in his Aubrey-and-Maturin fiction. It is the tale of an Oxford don who falls in love with a married farm woman in Wales. Writing in The New York Times in 1952, Pearl Kazin described it as "rare and beautiful . . . never faltering in the unobtrusive skill of its poetry."
WHO WE ARE: A Portrait of America Based on the Latest U.S. Census, by Sam Roberts, Times Books/Random House, $13.
This analysis reveals some surprising facts, among them that Hoboken, N.J., is the nation's most densely populated community and that three-quarters of adults 25 and over have finished high school. Written by an editor at The New York Times who was formerly the paper's urban affairs columnist, it employs "a style that is always professional, at times buoyant and even jaunty," Cullen Murphy said last year.
CHINA WHITE, by Peter Maas, Pinnacle, $5.99.
The title refers to an extremely pure form of heroin exported from Asia to the United States. Tom MacLean, a former prosecutor turned attorney, and Shannon O'Shea, a former nun turned FBI agent, follow its trail. In 1994, our reviewer, Robert Nathan, observed that the author's first thriller "proves once again there is little he cannot achieve with the written word."
RAISING THE DEAD, by Richard Selzer, Penguin, $9.95.
The author, a former surgeon, developed Legionnaires' disease in 1991 and was pronounced dead, only to inexplicably revive 10 minutes later. "What is most remarkable about `Raising the Dead' is the foray it makes into uncharted autobiographical territory," Michael Vincent Miller said in 1994.
THE DEVIL'S OWN WORK, by Alan Judd, Vintage, $9.
Satan infiltrates literary circles as a young British author unwittingly makes a Faustian pact: As long as he keeps a mysterious ancient manuscript close by, he writes badly but successfully. Judd "has availed himself of a wealth of culturally charged energy," Robert Grudin wrote in the Book Review in 1994.
INTERVENTION! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917, by John S.D. Eisenhower, Norton, $14.
President Woodrow Wilson was all too ready to invade Mexico, the author argues, but once there, he faced ever-changing regimes and friends who turned out to be foes. This is a "good narrative history," Edward M. Coffman said last year, that "could well serve as cautionary reading for policy makers today." Contemporary conditions are explored in MEXICAN LIVES, by Judith Adler Hellman (New Press, $11.95), which consists of interviews conducted with 15 people, from a magnate to a maid. In 1994, reviewer Martha Brandt wrote that the book "goes a long way toward explaining why a country where burros share the streets with luxury cars will not speed into modernity."
LAST GO ROUND, by Ken Kesey with Ken Babbs, Penguin, $10.95.
The scene is the Wild West, where a 17-year-old country boy, a black bronco buster, and a Nez Perce Indian battle for the first world championship as cowboys. In this fictional re-creation of a 1911 event, "the most striking thing Kesey has done is to use the dime-novel formula to deal with issues of race," Janet Burroway said last year.