Paperbacks new and noteworthy

■ “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,” by Imani Perry. (Ecco, 432 pages, $19.99.) Perry’s collection of essays, incorporating history, criticism, journalism and memoir, is full of encounters and self-discovery, traveling across the Southern United States to offer a personal understanding of our national history and identity. Reviewer Tayari Jones called it “an essential meditation on the South.”

■ “Glory,” by NoViolet Bulawayo. (Penguin Books, 416 pages, $18.) Set in a world without humans, Bulawayo’s allegory of the aftermath of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe charts the downfall of one tyrant — an elderly horse — and the rise of a new one in this postcolonial novel. Comparing it with Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” reviewer Violet Kupersmith called this story “a satire with sharper teeth, angrier and also very, very funny.”

■ “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party,” by Michael Kazin. (Picador, 432 pages, $20.) Kazin’s “shrewd and very absorbing” history, as reviewer Timothy Noah, called it, traces the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Democratic Party from its origins in New York two centuries ago to the present and reflects on the party’s long, tumultuous quest for “moral capitalism.”

■ “Heartburn,” by Nora Ephron. (Vintage, 192 pages, $17.) Ephron’s first novel, published 40 years ago, follows Rachel Samstat, a food writer who has yet to find a recipe for a successful marriage, as she becomes aware of her husband’s infidelity from an inscription in a children’s book. Brimming with wit and comedy, this reprint includes a foreword by Stanley Tucci.

■ “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” by Jennifer Raff. (Twelve, 368 pages, $19.99.) In this provocative and accessible account, a genetic anthropologist presents a critical history of the field of archaeology in the Americas and draws on new data from several fields — including archaeology, genetics and linguistics — to argue that the first humans arrived in the Americas by sea and not by crossing a land bridge, as is commonly believed.