Opinion

Required reading

by David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown)

Death and taxes loom large in Wallace’s highly anticipated posthumous novel — assembled from his unfinished work by his “Infinite Jest” editor, Michael Pietsch, after the author’s 2008 suicide. The book is set in 1985 in a tax office in Peoria, Ill., where a group of new recruits attempt to account for their own lives. Among the IRS drones is one named David Foster Wallace. We can imagine the author would have gotten a kick out of his novel’s April 15, Tax Day release.

Bottom of the 33rd

by Dan Barry (HarperCollins)

The April 18, 1981 Pawtucket Red Sox-Rochester Red Wings game may have been minor league, but it turned into one of the most memorable baseball games of all time. The box score alone is an eye-opener. Cal Ripken (yes, that Cal Ripken) went 2 for 13. Wade Boggs (yes) was 4 for 12. Barry recounts the game, which was postponed at 4 a.m. with 20 fans still in the stands and finished two months later, in delightful detail. But he also presents the personalities, like the batboy nicknamed Panic or the player who went on to do missionary work in Africa.

33 Revolutions Per Minute

A History of Protest Songs, From Billie Holiday to Green Day

by Dorian Lynskey (Ecco)

When Billie Holiday first sang “Strange Fruit,” about lynching, at the New York nightclub Café Society, waiters were instructed to stop taking orders so people would pay attention to the lyrics. That’s one of the tidbits this Brit music writer gives us in his expansive, 660-page history. While he focuses on 33 songs, he includes an appendix of 100 recommended tunes for any music lover’s collection.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

by Jason Stearns (Basic Books)

More than a century after Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” shined a light on the Congo, the Western Europe-size country in central Africa remains mysterious to many. With hardly any notice from the rest of the world, Congo has suffered through war since 1996. More than 5 million people have died in a conflict that has included the armies of nine countries and 20 different rebel groups. Stearns, who has worked for the UN in Congo as well as for a Congolese human rights group, writes of the massacres, assassinations, politics and everyday life of the people stuck in this conflict.

Elizabeth I

by Margaret George (Viking)

Will isn’t the first royal to fall in love with a commoner. In her new novel, George (“The Autobiography of Henry VIII”) looks at queenly ancestor Elizabeth I, who famously loved and lost Robin Dudley because the queen-commoner pairing was deemed unacceptable. When Dudley couldn’t marry the queen, he went for the next best thing — Elizabeth’s younger, lookalike cousin, Lettice Knollys, sparking a generation-long family feud.