"Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man" by Michael Boulter (Columbia University Press). The author makes the case that nature is a self-correcting system, and mankind is about to be corrected out of existence. A science-fiction scenario? No, a work by a paleobiology professor from a prestigious university press.

"High and Mighty: SUVs - The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way" by Keith Bradsher (PublicAffairs). The longtime Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times explains the "calamitous safety and environmental record" of SUVs, and how as the current fleet of SUVs ages, the problems will only become worse.

"Hold the Enlightenment: More Travel, Less Bliss" by Tim Cahill (Villard). New travel essays in an antic vein, by the author of "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh."

"Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones" by Greg Campbell (Westview Press). Campbell investigates the Sierra Leone diamond trade and how it has fueled that country's brutal civil war.

"Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider" by Brian Cruver (Carroll & Graf). A laid-off senior manager at Enron, "a firsthand witness to the disturbing, surreal, and hilarious moments of Enron's long dance with death," tells his story. Hilarious? A tall order.

"The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics" by Richard Davenport-Hines (Norton). A sweeping portrait of addiction through the ages by a prize-winning British historian.

"In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension" by Jay P. Dolan (Oxford University Press). "How Catholics have met the challenges they have faced as New World followers of an Old World faith."

"Power & Greed: A Short History of the World" by Philippe Gigante (Carroll & Graf). Focusing first on the "rule-makers" of history who laid down the principles of a just society - Moses, Plato, Jesus, Mohammed, etc. - the author proceeds to history's ruthless rule-breakers, with an eye on the warring chieftains, robber barons and superpowers who cause the pendulum to swing the other way.

"Alaska, an American Colony" by Stephen Haycox (University of Washington Press). A historian at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, offers a complex history of the state through its colonial Russian and American phases, and how that history has affected its status today.

"On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy" by Stephen Hawking (Running Press). The physicist-author ("A Brief History of Time") examines the landmark writings of Nicolaus Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler.

"Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before" by Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt). The author of "Confederates in the Attic" retraces the voyages of Captain Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who redrew the map of the world.

"Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision" by Peter Irons (Viking). A professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego charts the progress (or lack thereof) in integrating schools since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision.

"Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam 1862" by James M. McPherson (Oxford University Press). One of the Civil War's leading historians ("Battle Cry of Freedom") looks at the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American history (more than 6,000 soldiers killed) and how it affected the fate of the nation.

"The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film" by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf). An unexpected project by the Canadian novelist ("The English Patient"). Ondaatje draws out film-editor Murch ("The Conversation," "Apocalypse Now," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and, yes, "The English Patient") on the nature of his art.

"Remarkable Trees of the World" by Thomas Pakenham (Norton). The big, the small, the strange and the wonderful. With photographs. By the author of "Meetings with Remarkable Trees."

"The Hydrogen Economy" by Jeremy Rifkin (Tarcher/Putnam). The social critic says the solution to global warming and our worries about terrorism lies at one root - our dependence on oil. The solution: develop hydrogen, a limitless element, as a fuel source.

"Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002" by Salman Rushdie (Random House). An essay collection by the Booker Prize-winning novelist ("Midnight's Children"), including his previously unpublished "Tanner Lecture on Human Values," delivered at Yale University in the spring of 2002.

"The Perfect House: A Journey with the Renaissance Architect Andrea Palladio" by Witold Rybczynski (Scribner). The biographer of Frederick Law Olmsted ("A Clearing in the Distance") turns his attention to the 16th-century Italian architect whose influence can be seen on the design of Monticello and the White House.

"The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria" by Michael Shnayerson and Mark Plotkin (Little, Brown). Mutant bacteria have outwitted modern medicine and pharmacology, and we're all going to die when our skin disintegrates, or of golf-ball sized abscesses. Or something. Shnayerson is a staff writer at Vanity Fair; Plotkin is a well-known ethnobotanist and author of "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice."

"Sibley's Birding Basics" by David Allen Sibley (Knopf). The third volume of bird illustrator Sibley's estimable series about birds. This one focuses on how to identify birds, using clues in their feathers, habitats, behaviors and sounds.

"Vegetarianism" by Colin Spencer (Four Walls, Eight Windows). A survey of the history of vegetarianism, the principles of which date back to 600 B.C., by an English food writer.

"Catfight: Women and Competition" by Leora Tanenbaum (Seven Stories Press). Why, despite the many gains women have made, they are still conditioned to view one another as adversaries rather than allies.

"Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason" by Jessica Warner (Four Walls, Eight Windows). The evolution of the world's first modern drug scare - the embrace in the 1700s of gin by London's working poor.

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"The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World" by Ken Alder (Free Press). How two French scientists set out to calculate the length of the meter, made a mistake and covered it up. Until now.

"The Neanderthal's Necklace: In Search of the First Thinkers" by Juan Luis Arsuaga, translated by Andy Klatt (Four Walls, Eight Windows). A prominent European paleoanthropologist looks at the Neanderthals, a "parallel humanity" that competed with modern humans for thousands of years, how they lived and why they disappeared fifty thousand years ago.

"An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943" by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt). Atkinson, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter and author of "The Long Gray Line," offers the first of three volumes called "The Liberation Trilogy" about the liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich. Volume I covers the war in North Africa.

"Something to Declare" by Julian Barnes (Knopf). Essays by the British novelist ("Flaubert's Parrot"), inspired by his visits to France.

"Tritium on Ice: The Dangerous New Alliance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power" by Kenneth D. Bergeron (MIT Press). How the United States' decision to manufacture tritium, a key component in nuclear weapons, at commercial nuclear plants undermines the U.S. commitment to curb nuclear weapons proliferation but also exacerbates safety concerns at existing nuclear plants.

"They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War" by DeAne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook (Louisiana State University Press). The story of the hundreds (or thousands) of women who assumed male aliases in order to fight as Union or Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.

"Normal" by Amy Bloom (Random House). A first nonfiction book by the novelist and short-story writer ("Come to Me"), about men and women who are in some sense "intersexed": transsexuals, crossdressers and others.

"Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds" by Harold Bloom (Warner). Literature's most voluble opinionator praises the work of Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Tolstoy, Faulkner and 95 others.

"The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education" by Peter Brimelow and Michael Antonucci (HarperCollins). The authors contend that teachers' unions are the biggest stumbling block to education reform.

"Soul of Nowhere: Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land" by Greg Childs (Sasquatch). The author of "The Secret Knowledge of Water" offers essays on fierce places; the Sierra Madre, the canyons of Utah and the White Mountain Apache reservation, among others.

"The Far Side of Eden: The Ongoing Saga of Napa Valley" by James Conaway (Houghton Mifflin). The eloquent journalist-memoirist ("Memphis Afternoons") follows up his 1990 book, "Napa: The Story of an American Eden," with an update on the battles for land, money and power in the legendary California vineyard region.

"The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide" by Richard Coniff (Norton). What defines this socially unique species. Old money, the British aristocracy and Bill Gates explained.

"Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography" by John Ibson (Smithsonian Institution Press). The author recalls, through a photo collection spanning the Civil War to the 1950s, a more gender-segregated era when men showed physical affection for one another without worrying about it being labeled as sexual contact.

"The Emerging Democratic Majority" by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira(Scribner). The authors, one an editor at The New Republic and the other a fellow at The Century Foundation, say the Democrats, who they say are more popular in the most dynamic areas of the country, are going to come roaring back. Brave words for a month before the Congressional elections.

"Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole" by Fergus Fleming (Grove). The author of "Killing Dragons," a brilliant cultural history of Alpine exploration, turns his attention to the North Pole, drawing on unpublished archives and long-forgotten journals.

"The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina " by Uko Goni (Granta Books). An Argentine journalist reveals how many Nazis were smuggled to Argentina, and how this escape operation "relied on the complicity of the Vatican, the Argentine Catholic Church and the Swiss authorities," as well as Argentine President Juan Peron.

"The New Apartheid: AIDS in South Africa" by Zia Jaffrey (Verso). The Indian-American writer ("The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India") argues that AIDS in South Africa, where one in four adults is HIV-positive, "is not simply a health issue but an amalgam of economic, political, and social concerns."

"The Merciful God of Prophecy: His Loving Plan for the End Times" by Tim LaHaye (Warner Faith). The co-author of the Left Behind series opines on what we can look forward to in the "end times."

"Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays" by David Lodge (Harvard University Press). The British novelist ("Changing Places," "Small World") suggests that literature's rendering of human consciousness "may offer a kind of understanding that is complementary, not opposed, to scientific knowledge."

"Glass: A World History" by Alan MacFarlane and Gerry Martin (University of Chicago Press). The history of glass and its effect on Eastern and Western civilizations, and its uses in ornament and instrumentation, not to mention letting the sunshine in.

"The Founding Fish" by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The master nonfiction writer goes after shad, characterized as a heroic American fish.

"Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency" by Philip Melanson and Peter F. Stevens (Carroll & Graf). Billed as the first definitive history of the Secret Service.

"Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard: The Mysterious World of Mushrooms, Molds and Mycologists" by Nicholas P. Money (Oxford University Press). A veritable fungi fest. Stinkhorns, puffballs, death caps and a 2,000 acre fungus in Oregon explained.

"American Normal: The Culture of Asperger's Syndrome" by Lawrence Osborne (Copernicus Books). A frequent writer for the New York Times Sunday Magazine writes about Asperger's, the condition that occurs mostly among boys and is known as "high functioning autism" for the extraordinary intellectual abilities of many children and adults who suffer from it.

"Viewers Like You? How Public TV Failed the People" by Laurie Ouellette (Columbia University Press). Why so many people think they should watch public television, and why so few people do.

"The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" by Steven Pinker (Viking). The author of "How the Mind Works" calls for a re-examination of the politically incorrect concept of human nature.

"Democracy Culture and the Voice of Poetry" by Robert Pinsky (Princeton University Press). The two-term Poet Laureate of the United States contends that "the voice of poetry resonates with profound significance at the very heart of democratic culture."

"The Demon in the Freezer" by Richard Preston (Random House). Smallpox. It's baaaaack. "A true-life medical thriller about the return of smallpox - this time in an even deadlier, genetically engineered form." By the author of "The Hot Zone." Also in October: "Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of People, Parasites and Politics" by Robert Desowitz (Norton). A leading epidemiologist tells the tale of exotic pathogens throughout the world.

"Common Nonsense" by Andy Rooney (PublicAffairs). The "Sixty Minutes" sage asks the big questions, such as: shouldn't a family of four be able to afford a night at the baseball stadium?

"Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by its Stars, Writers and Guests" by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller. An oral history of America's favorite comedy-satire program. Shales is a Pulitzer-Prize winning television critic.

"Winning the Wild West: The Epic Saga of the American Frontier, 1800-1899" by Page Stegner (Free Press). A leading authority on the American West tells the saga of the West's settlement with the help of 400 photographs, paintings and other illustrations.

"Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces" by Wislawa Szymborska (Harcourt). Essays and criticism by the Nobel Prize-winning poet from Poland.

"Deceit and Denial: the Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution" by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner (University of California). Details the attempts by the chemical and lead industries to deceive Americans about the dangers of their products, focusing on lead, as well as an analysis of how corporate control over scientific research has undermined the process of proving links between toxic chemicals and disease.

"Lost in the Arctic: Explorations on the Edge" by Lawrence Millman (Thunder's Mouth). A best-of collection by one of our very best travel writers.

"The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia" by Anna Reid (Walker & Co.). The history of Russia's equivalent of Native Americans, the indigenous tribes of Siberia, by a London journalist.

"A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis" by David Rieff (Simon & Schuster). The story of how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief to a violent world are often faced with a horrible choice: remaining neutral, in hopes of retaining access to victims, or becoming advocates against crimes like ethnic cleansing.

"The New Revelation: A Conversation with God" by Neale Donald Walsch (Atria). The "Conversation with God" author offers his perspectives on the "current global crisis."

"The Caffeine Advantage: How to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Physical Performance and Achieve Your Goals: The Healthy Way" by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer. Finally, some good news - what you thought was an addiction is not just keeping you awake, but enhancing verbal fluency, problem-solving ability and short-term memory. Did we mention that it's an antioxidant that helps combat muscle damage? A triple grande, please!

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"Among the Gently Mad: Perspectives and Strategies for the Book-Hunter in the Twenty-First Century" by Nicholas Basbanes. The author of "A Fine Madness" and "Patience and Fortitude" returns with a third volume on book collecting, offering new guidance on how to use the Internet for searching for rare books.

"The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany" by Michael Beschloss (Simon & Schuster). A leading presidential historian examines how Roosevelt wrestled with the dilemma of what to do with a defeated Nazi Germany.

"Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, Jealousy and the Death of Enron" by Robert Bryce (PublicAffairs). The unraveling of the Enron energy behemoth, by an Austin, Texas-based journalist.

"When Smoke Ran Like Water: Unnecessary Death and Environmental Deception" by Devra Davis (Basic Books). A leading epimediologist casts her unsparing eye on the 300,000 deaths per year in the U.S. and Europe that she says are caused by pollution, and calls for basic changes in approaches to the public's health.

"The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933" by Amos Elon (Metropolitan Books). This book takes the long view on the story of the German Jews, chronicling a golden period of achievement and imagination, and how this minority population came to be viewed by the Nazis as a deadly threat to national integrity. By the author of "Israelis: Founders and Sons."

"Empire: The Rise and Fall of the British World Order" by Niall Ferguson (Basic Books). The British Empire, cast as the "very cradle of modernity," and the lessons its rise and fall holds for us today.

"Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family" by Al and Tipper Gore (Henry Holt). Al and Tipper tell us how the family unit has changed in America, and why we need families more than ever.

"Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer That Defeated the World Chess Champion" by Feng-Hsiung Hsu (Princeton University Press). The system architect of Deep Blue tells the story of its creation, and defends it against charges that only human intervention could have allowed Deep Blue to make its decisive moves in its match against world chess champion Gary Kasparov.

"Measuring America" by Andro Linklater (Walker & Co.). How America ended up with a unique system of weights and measurements, and how it's shaped our country and culture.

"Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History" by Angus McLaren (Harvard University Press). Shades of "L.A. Confidential" - A University of Victoria (B.C.) professor takes on the topic about the practice, which peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, of blackmailing people who engaged in practices (abortion, infidelity, prostitution, homosexuality) considered "deviant" at the time.

"Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy" by Mark Monmonier (University of Chicago Press). A look at the increased use of geographic data, satellite imagery and location tracking by military, law enforcement, market research and traffic engineering; what it can do, what to be worried about. "Is locational privacy a fundamental right?"

"A History of Britain: Volume III: The Fate of Empire 1776-2002" by Simon Schama (Miramax). The third volume in Schama's readable epic of the history of his native land, a companion to the fabulous series on the History Channel, which will continue this fall.

"A Conspiracy of Decency: The Rescue of the Danish Jews During World War II" by Emmy E. Werner (Westview Press). We can use some good news about humanity - here's a dispatch from World War II, when the people of Denmark managed to save almost all of the country's Jewish population from the Nazis.

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"The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs" by Marcus Boon (Harvard University Press). From Homer to "Naked Lunch," this book traces the history of the relationship between writers and specific drugs, and between these drugs and literary and philosophical traditions.

"Factory Fresh: The Big Business of Meat" by David Brubaker (Compernicus Press). An examination of the huge industrial enterprises who furnish the country with its beef, chicken and pork. Brubaker is director of an institute that studies industrial animal production at Johns Hopkins University.

"World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Violence and Global Instability" by Amy Chua (Doubleday). A professor of law at Yale, billed as an "anti-Thomas Friedman," authors a book that contends that "when global markets open, ethnic conflict worsens and politics turns ugly and violent."

"Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands" by Michael D'Orso (HarperCollins). Here's a nasty surprise: The Galapagos Islands, says this book, are under siege from poor South American refugees and corrupt fishing fleets that have brought crime, crowding, pollution and violence to this natural wonderland.

"The National Guard: An Illustrated History of America's Citizen Soldiers" by Michael D. Doubler and John W. Listman Jr. (Brassey's). A survey of the nation's oldest military institution, covering both the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard and including 450 illustrations.

"Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers" by Alissa Quart (Perseus). Why corporations want to get into teenagers' hearts, minds and wallets.

"Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement and the West" by Virginia Scharf (University of California Press). Our restless movement west, as seen through the experiences of women ranging from Sacagaweato rock 'n'roll groupies.

"Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America" by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel (HarperCollins). The author of "Starving in the Shadow of Plenty" revisits the topic of American hunger twenty years later and found things not much improved.

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