The New York Times-20080127-Editors- Choice- Recent books of particular interest

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Editors' Choice: Recent books of particular interest

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A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER, by Geoffrey Hill. (Yale University, cloth, $30; paper, $16.) Hill lies at the end of a long line of romantic poets with classical reserve -- Coleridge and Eliot stagger through the background of this measured, brilliant book.

COAL RIVER, by Michael Shnayerson. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Shnayerson's narrative of outrage is directed against the coal industry's devastation of West Virginia; fine investigative journalism.

THE POEM OF A LIFE: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky, by Mark Scroggins. (Shoemaker & Hoard, $30.) Zukofsky (1904-78) was the author of an enormous, eccentric poem called A, which is the real focus here.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE. AN AMERICAN LIFE: A Biography, by Elisabeth Bumiller. (Random House, $27.95.) A New York Times reporter casts a keen eye on Rice's tenure as a policy maker, her close ties to George Bush, and her personal and professional past.

GRAND OBSESSION: A Piano Odyssey, by Perri Knize. (Scribner, $27.50.) This account of the author's increasingly feverish addiction to the piano has the pace of a mystery and the pitch of a love story.

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, by Geraldine Brooks. (Viking, $25.95.) In her panoramic third novel, Brooks has invented a turbulent history for a real-life Haggadah, with a manuscript conservator as protagonist.

THE DELIVERY MAN, by Joe McGinniss Jr. (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14.) The hero of this brisk, bleak debut novel, a blocked painter, returns to his native Las Vegas and its temptations.

DAY, by A. L. Kennedy. (Knopf, $24.) Kennedy's excellently written novel dips vertiginously into the inner life of a semi-shell-shocked former R.A.F. tail gunner.

THE DEPORTEES: And Other Stories, by Roddy Doyle. (Viking, $24.95.) In his first story collection, Doyle aims to bring today's prosperous Ireland to life.