Also of interest... in American ingenuity

Pappyland

“No bourbon lover should miss this book,” said Ray Isle in Food & Wine. But in telling the story of the family behind Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve, author Wright Thompson does more than explain what goes into creating a bourbon so prized that it sells for $2,500 a bottle. Starting with the brand’s 1930s origins and tracing its unlikely revival decades later, the book becomes “a deeply felt, nuanced look at family, and particularly at the relationships between fathers and sons.”

Singular Sensation

(Avid Reader, $28)

“Reading Michael Riedel has long been mandatory for theater insiders,” said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. The New York Post columnist’s “sinfully entertaining” tone enlivens every page of this chronicle of Broadway’s 1990s commercial revival. Though Riedel remains “more attuned to box office grosses than creative value,” he is “supremely adept” when, as is the case with Julie Taymor’s The Lion King, he “wants to paint a portrait of theatrical brilliance.”

The Company I Keep

(Harper Business, $ 32.50)

The man who built Estée Lauder into a global behemoth doesn’t share much about himself in his new memoir, said James Tarmy in Bloomberg.com. Instead, his book details “one of the most dazzling corporate success stories in the history of the United States,” starting with how his mother, a daughter of immigrants, launched her cosmetics empire. Though Leonard Lauder largely created his own fortune, it seems heartfelt when he says, “Never make an important decision without a woman at the table.”

The Glorious American Essay

(Pantheon, $ 40)

Skip “the powdered-wig section” of this centuries-spanning collection, said John Williams in The New York Times. Past that sluggish opening lie 800 pages of “mostly delight” as Hawthorne, Mencken, and Baldwin share space with such unjustly forgotten figures as nature writer Mary Austin. Though only a few entries are recent, the book becomes a history of America, one that conveys “not just the sweep of our centuries but the dialogical nature of our grandest ideas and most persistent struggles.”