As Russia shakes off the torpor of the ’90s and resumes its place as an economic power, a new thriller by Brent Ghelfi returns readers to the seedy underbelly of post-Soviet society. In Volk’s Shadow—a sequel to Ghelfi’s 2007 book Volk’s Game—the grim, battle-hardened anti-hero of the first story returns, this time in search of a Faberg egg that turns out to be a red herring in a deeper plot concerning atrocities carried . . .

In 1961 Allen Ginsberg, who proclaimed just about everything to be holy in his seminal poem “Howl,” left America for India. What he brought back would become essential to American counterculture. Deborah Baker’s A Blue Hand: The Beats in India (Penguin) is exceptionally detailed regarding what happened and what did not. In the tradition of the Beats, if something did not happen, it still did. In Blue Hand, Baker found a rare path to biography, paying close attention to Ginsberg’s 15-month quest for enlightenment in India, using what might have been his own way of writing the book, had he done so. Blue Hand is a well-researched, elegant biography written in Ginsberg’s tradition of an open field of composition, where everything counts as long as it can be accounted for in one sitting and with no revision.

Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov wanted to feed the world, but died of starvation in the Soviet Gulag. British journalist Peter Pringle reconstructs Vavilov’s attempts to revolutionize agriculture by breeding hardier crops through plant genetics. Pringle paints the dapper, courageous Vavilov as a real-life Indiana Jones . . .

The economic validity of culture-led regeneration has been at the heart of a polemical debate in recent years, especially in Europe, where municipal authorities in cities such as London, Bilbao, Rotterdam and Dublin have invested in their cultural infrastructure to drive urban regeneration. American cities, too, are seeing the benefits of branding themselves as creative centers: We need only to look at the fact that it’s an art museum that has become Milwaukee’s defining landmark . . .

Roxy Music was too slippery and evasive to comfortably fit into any of the usual niches of their time or ours. They flirted with glam and skirted art rock without fully committing themselves to the conventions of either. They were avant-garde and pop. The voice of Bryan Ferry was at once ironic and romantic. American audiences were baffled, at least until a touch of Roxy seeped into the mainstream through their influence on The Cars and other new wave acts...

The clash and convergence of cultures has always been a theme in the life and writing of Salman Rushdie. In his latest novel, a fair-haired Italian, claiming to be the ambassador of Elizabeth I, arrives in Mughal India and presents his dubious credentials at the court of Akbar the Great. The Italian is a trickster and a conjurer; Akbar is a monarch who lives in dreams and wonders if a better world is possible. The novel...

A decade ago The New Yorker magazine hired Peter Schjeldahl as their visual art critic. What a coup for a chap who spent his early years in the small towns of Minnesota and South Dakota, dropped out of college and existed on the ragged edge while writing five books of poetry between 1967 and 1981. He’s taught at Harvard and received a Guggenheim fellowship. Come fall, he’ll add the 2008 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing.

It could be worse. At least Suze Rotolo is a likable writer. Near the end of her memoir we finally get the story behind the famous album cover of Rotolo walking alongside Bob Dylan for the folk singer’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. A Freewheelin’ Time could have revealed something about the folk-blues revival of the early 1960s and its most enduring artist, but instead spends most of its pages on Rotolo’s artwork (including baubles that hang from ladies’ boots, rejected by Bloomingdale’s at the time) and politics (hanging out in Cuba back in the day and treating Dylan as a fan treats Dylan). We have a charming but boring person on a record jacket writing a book as though she was part of the album’s music. Credit Rotolo for her voice . . .

We’re all familiar with the agonizing scenario: the family dining table that serves as a battleground; the television set (and, increasingly, the Internet) that serves as a palliative and the drugs, alcohol or infidelity that serve as emotional props. American popular culture and literature is resplendent with memorably dysfunctional families, whether it’s through the writings of Eugene O’Neill and Raymond Carver or animated TV hits like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy.” The success of shows like “The Osbournes” reveals the delight that viewers take in seeing other people’s dirty laundry aired in public.

Jim Walsh’s The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting—An Oral History (Voyageur Press), published to coincide with Rhino Records’ first installment of Replacements reissues, wisely lets those who were there tell the tale. History, by its nature, allows the winner to write the story, and rock ’n’ roll mythmaking is as much about refraction as it is reflection. Walsh’s anecdotal style depicts a Minneapolis music scene built around a few record stores and clubs hip enough to evolve into the post-disco era. Guitarist Bob Stinson, his 14-year-old brother bassist Tommy and drummer Chris Mars were jamming in the basement to Yes’ “Roundabout” when songwriter Paul Westerberg talked his way into the group. As midwived by Peter Jesperson and his girlfriend . . .