"The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America," by Margaret O'Mara (Penguin Press)

In her wide-ranging history of Silicon Valley, Margaret O'Mara gets behind the myth of geniuses in garages and uncovers the true origin story. O'Mara, a University of Washington history professor who worked in the Clinton White House, brings sophistication and nuance to her narrative, covering not only the engineer-dominated culture of building products, but also the absence of attention to their implications for the world.

"Maggie Brown & Others: Stories," by Peter Orner (Little, Brown)

Peter Orner has been likened to short-story stars Alice Munro and Raymond Carver, and to Philip Roth and Saul Bellow for his recurring characters. But with this collection of 44 stories and a novella, he displays a capacious talent that should be recognized as uniquely his own. His feats of compression and scope, distilling a vast range of human emotion in a few sentences, are extraordinary and accentuated by his wit. At one point in "Ineffectual Tribute to Len," the cab-driving narrator suggests the limitations of novels and writes to his publisher in defense of stories. "You say stories don't sell," he says. "I've seen the numbers of my story collections and they aren't pretty; I know I'm basically a charity case, but don't you see? It's what Chekhov teaches." That is the influence Orner has made his own.

"What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal," by E. Jean Carroll (St. Martin's Press)

Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll's recent bombshell charge in New York magazine (an excerpt from the book) that Donald Trump sexually attacked her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room led to a media frenzy and efforts to confront, question and corroborate her claims. Fans of her longtime "Ask E. Jean" column in Elle will recognize her original voice and understated style. In the #MeToo era when more than 15 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual assault, Carroll's descriptions of the "hideous men" in her life stand out.

"Chimes of a Lost Cathedral," by Janet Fitch (Little, Brown)

Following Janet Fitch's delicious "The Revolution of Marina M.," in which a young poet rejected her bourgeois, intellectual family for the passion of the Bolshevik Revolution, this sequel catches pregnant Marina as she experiences some of the revolution's ugly effects. In a life of pushing against the powers that restrain her, she takes off in search of her own intellectual identity and in her hardship finds the House of Arts, a collective for intellectuals and literary figures. Against the backdrop of starvation and disappointment in Russia, Marina finds herself embraced and enriched by great writers and the flowering of literary culture in St. Petersburg. Fitch continues to render this period of war-torn, revolutionary Russia with wonderful detail and to invest readers in the particular hardships of Marina, as well as in her captivating determination to be an intellectual in the world.

"This America: The Case for the Nation," by Jill Lepore (Liveright)

Jill Lepore's short, bracing book makes a brilliant case for liberalism. Following "These Truths," her remarkable single-volume history of the United States, the Harvard historian and New Yorker writer responds to the recent resurgence of nationalism, arguing that patriotism and liberalism are a rebuttal to the chorus calling to make America great again. Lepore makes the distinction: "Patriotism is animated by love, nationalism by hatred."

Elizabeth Taylor and Adam Cohen are co-editors of the National Book Review.