The New York Times December 8, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition CHRISTMAS 1985; NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR SECTION: Section 7; Page 52, Column 2; Book Review Desk LENGTH: 9087 words This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Christmas issue of December 1984. It only suggests high points in the main fields of reader interest. Books are arranged alphabetically under subject headings. Quoted comments are from The Book Review. Autobiography & Biography ALONG WITH YOUTH: Hemingway, the Early Years. By Peter Griffin. (Oxford, $17.95.) A ''wonderful and intimate book'' that ''brings to life the young Hemingway with all his charm, vitality, good looks [and] passionate dedication to writing.'' THE AMATEURS. By David Halberstam. (Morrow, $14.95.) The ''deftly told story'' of the ''quest of four oarsmen to become the United States's single sculler in the 1984 Olympics.'' ANOTHER NAME FOR MADNESS. By Marion Roach. (Houghton Mifflin, $14.95.) ''A devastatingly vivid and touching picture of what it is like to live with a loved one'' suffering from Alzheimer's disease. BEFORE THE TRUMPET: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905. By Geoffrey C. Ward (Harper & Row, $19.95.) This ''multigenerational family saga'' begins ''long before Franklin Delano Roosevelt's birth in 1882 and ends on his wedding night in 1905 . . . and provides a richly evocative description of the cloistered and comfortable existence of the old New York families whose mid-19th-century estates lined the Hudson River.'' BRIGHAM YOUNG: American Moses. By Leonard J. Arrington. (Knopf, $24.95.) ''Replaces older, badly flawed biographies and gives readers as good a picture as they are likely to get of the man who assumed leadership'' of the Mormons in 1844. CAVOUR. By Denis Mack Smith. (Knopf, $18.95.) An ''extraordinary saga of deception, ruthlessness, blunders and turns of fortune in the life of the man who more than anyone else brought about the unification of Italy in 1861.'' CHAIM WEITZMANN: The Making of a Zionist Leader. By Jehuda Reinharz. (Oxford, $29.95.) This first of a projected two-volume biography is ''a massively detailed report on the perplexing vagaries'' of Weitzmann's life up to 1914. CHAPLIN: His Life and Art. By David Robinson. (McGraw-Hill, $24.95.) The Times of London film critic's ''account of [Charlie] Chaplin's career as film maker, actor, director, writer, husband, producer, composer, lover and tycoon is . . . certainly the major biography thus far.'' THE CHIEF: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons. By Lance Morrow. (Random House, $16.95.) The relationship between Lance Morrow, a successful journalist, and his father, Hugh, a top aide to Nelson Rockefeller, is explored with ''clear-eyed candor and writing skill that reveal both passion and confusion.'' THE DANGEROUS SUMMER. By Ernest Hemingway. (Scribners, $17.95.) A posthumously edited version of Hemingway's 1959 account (parts were published in Life in 1960) of a summer-long duel between Spain's two leading matadors. DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD: An Autobiography. By Zora Neale Hurston. (University of Illinois, Cloth, $22.95. Paper, $8.95.) Three chapters have been restored to this edition of the influential black novelist's 1942 autobiography, marked by its ''verdant language and twin voices.'' FDR. By Ted Morgan. (Simon & Schuster, $22.95.) This ''one-volume biography'' provides ''a fascinating three-dimensional portrait'' of ''a great man with human frailties.'' FRANK AND MAISIE: A Memoir With Parents. By Wilfrid Sheed. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) The author's affectionate recollections of ''his ebullient Australian father and his downright and unconventional English mother . . . the leading Roman Catholic publishers of their day.'' THE FRINGES OF POWER: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955. By John Colville. (Norton, $25.) ''The best, and . . . likely to be the last, of the personal memoirs dealing with the direction on the Allied side of World War II at the highest level,'' by Winston Churchill's secretary. GIACOMETTI. By James Lord. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) A ''fascinating'' gossipy biography that shows that the Swiss sculptor was ''one of the few artists of our time to lead a life, rather than to make a career, and to pursue art as a religion as well as a vocation.'' HENRY JAMES: A Life. By Leon Edel. (Harper & Row, $24.95.) A one-volume condensation and revision of the author's five-volume work, ''one of the most ambitious of modern life histories.'' IVY: The Life of I. Compton-Burnett. By Hillary Spurling. (Knopf, $22.95.) Ivy Compton-Burnett, the reclusive British novelist, died in 1969, and this ''voluminous'' biography is ''intelligent, richly detailed, warm and sympathetic.'' LOUISE BOGAN: A Portrait. By Elizabeth Frank. (Knopf, $24.95.) A ''thoughtful'' examination of the life and work of Louise Bogan (1897-1970), ''a turbulent woman whom Auden in the 1940's considered 'the best critic in America' and one of its best poets.'' ORSON WELLES: A Biography. By Barbara Leaming. (Viking, $19.95.) This authorized biography, published before Welles's death in October, ''paints [him] as a sometimes difficult but ultimately dear person, an enormous talent done in by the vicissitudes of [movie] studio economics.'' OUR THREE SELVES: The Life of Radclyffe Hall. By Michael Baker. (Morrow, $17.95.) A ''fine new biography'' of the ''well-regarded middlebrow'' British novelist and lesbian advocate. ROBERT CAPA: A Biography. By Richard Whelan. (Knopf, $19.95.) ''As portrayed in Richard Whelan's fact-packed, fast-paced biography,'' Robert Capa ''was a lovable libertine who became the world's greatest war photographer.'' THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON. By Michael Mott. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.95.) An authorized biography of the influential monk and author written ''in clear and unpretentious and vigorous prose.'' THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF AN ALBINO TERRORIST. By Breyten Breytenbach. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18.95.) The political and literary memoirs of ''the pre-eminent living Afrikaans poet,'' who spent seven years in a South African prison. T. S. ELIOT: A Life. By Peter Ackroyd. (Simon & Schuster, $24.95.) Given the fact that Peter Ackroyd was not allowed to quote from the poet's unpublished works and letters and was limited in what he could quote from Eliot's published works, this is ''as good a biography as we have any right to expect.'' A VIETCONG MEMOIR. By Truong Nhu Tang, with David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $17.95.) This memoir by a ''dedicated nationalist who was never a Communist but was willing to work with the Communists'' is about ''the death of a dream, a dream of an independent, peaceful and democratic Vietnam.'' WALLACE STEVENS: A Mythology of Self. By Milton J. Bates (University of California, $24.95.) A ''comprehensive biological study'' that ''documents how the poet's life ran a soberly determined course worthy of his most stolid Pennsylvania-Dutch ancestor.'' WOMAN IN THE CRESTED KIMONO: The Life of Shibue Io and Her Family Drawn From Mori Ogai's ''Shibue Chusai.'' By Edwin McClellan. (Yale, $15.95.) Mori Ogai's ''Shibue Chusai'' (1916) is the ''chronicle of a scholarly doctor who lived in the last decades of premodern Japan'' and who died in 1858. Edwin McClellan focuses on the life of one character in the book - Shibue Io, ''a remarkable woman'' who was Chusai's fourth wife and who outlived him by 26 years. YEAGER: An Autobiography. By Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos. (Bantam, $17.95.) ''Written in a disarmingly flat, down-home style,'' this story of the famed test pilot ''may read like a boy's adventure fantasy but is plain, documented truth.'' Children's Books BEYOND THE CHOCOLATE WAR. By Robert Cormier. (Knopf, $11.95.) ''Very much a sequel'' to ''The Chocolate War,'' ''a favorite with teen-age readers,'' this book takes up the story of events at the Trinity School, where terror reigns. (Ages 12 and up.) COME SING, JIMMY JO. By Katherine Paterson. (Lodestar/Dutton, $12.95.) ''An engaging fantasy'' about a boy in a family of country singers and what it might be like to become famous. (Ages 10 and up.) ONCE THERE WAS A TREE. By Natalia Romanova. Illustrated by Gennady Spirin. (Dial, $10.95.) A contemporary Soviet ''pro-environmental morality tale,'' containing ''luminous nostalgic landscapes, animal portraits and elegant detailing.'' (Ages 5 and up.) THE PEOPLE COULD FLY: American Black Folktales. By Virginia Hamilton. Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. (Knopf, $12.95.) An ''extraordinary and wonderful'' retelling of Afro-American folk tales, some familiar to a general audience, some not. (Ages 8 to 12.) SARAH, PLAIN AND TALL. By Patricia MacLachlan. (Charlotte Zolotow/Harper & Row, $10.) ''An exquisite, sometimes painfully touching little tale of a lonely, widowed, late-19th-century prairie dweller, his two children and the laconic [woman] from Maine who comes to share their life.'' (Ages 8 to 10.) SEASONS OF SPLENDOUR: Tales, Myths & Legends of India. By Madhur Jaffrey. Illustrated by Michael Foreman. (Atheneum, $15.95.) A book that ''leads us through the Hindu year with a memoir and the cycle of stories told by the elders in Miss Jaffrey's Brahmin household'' in Delhi. Beautifully told and illustrated. (Ages 5 and up.) THE STORY OF MRS. LOVEWRIGHT AND PURRLESS HER CAT. By Lore Segal. Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. (Knopf, $12.95.) ''A brief, enchanting, alarming and funny-profound'' book about chilly Mrs. Lovewright, who ''fails to extract coziness from her cat.'' Wickedly illustrated. (Ages 5 to 9.) WHAT'S INSIDE: The Alphabet Book. By Satoshi Kitamura. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $11.95.) A bewitchingly imaginative alphabet book in which improbable things are revealed in the proper sequence by a Japanese-born artist working in England. (Ages 3 to 5.) WHISKERS & RHYMES. Written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel. (Greenwillow, $13.) A delightful collection of poems, mostly personified by cats, that ''stand a good chance of being . . . sung by generations of children to come.'' (Ages 5 to 8.) THE YEAR IT RAINED. By Crescent Dragonwagon. (Macmillan, $12.95.) A fine novel that faces ''unflinchingly the anguished and so often unsuccessful attempts to get past all the precious but heavy baggage of love between mother and child.'' (Ages 12 and up.) Crime BRIARPATCH. By Ross Thomas. (Simon & Schuster, $16.95.) In his ''typical . . . sophisticated style,'' ''one of the best storytellers around'' sends a Government agent to a small Southern city where a car bomb has killed the agent's policewoman sister. THE DUTCH BLUE ERROR. By William G. Tapply. (Scribners, $12.95.) Brady Coyle, the Boston lawyer for the very rich, enters the world of philately. This ''smooth'' tale provides ''a great deal of fun.'' FLETCH WON. By Gregory Mcdonald. (Warner, $14.95.) ''The Kurt Vonnegut of the mystery story'' recalls the first reportorial triumph of Irwin Maurice Fletcher, foe of sham, hypocrisy and murderers of major donors to art museums. MR. YESTERDAY. By Elliott Chaze. (Scribners, $12.95.) Two believable Alabamians - a newspaper editor and a washed-up reporter, Mr. Yesterday - investigate a murder tied to a nuclear waste dump. An often funny book that ''achieves a bang-up ending.'' PRIMA DONNA AT LARGE. By Barbara Paul. (St. Martin's, $15.95.) In an ''unusually pleasant divertissement,'' Geraldine Farrar, the turn-of-the-century Metropolitan Opera star, figures out who put the ammonia in the French baritone's throat spray. SARATOGA HEADHUNTER. By Stephen Dobyns. (Viking, $13.95.) A jockey planning to expose race fixing in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is beheaded in the home of a nice-guy private eye. For all its ''feeling . . . of small-town quietness,'' the third Charlie Bradshaw mystery has ''absolutely no flab.'' SLEEPING DOG. By Dick Lochte. (Arbor House, $15.95.) Leo G. Bloodworth, 50-year-old specialist in missing persons, joins forces with Serendipity Dahlquist, 14-year-old owner of a missing dog. Mr. Lochte's first novel ''should be in strong contention for an Edgar.'' SWEET JUSTICE. By Jerry Oster. (Harper & Row, $13.95.) ''One of the most brilliant procedurals of the last few years'' begins with the murders of a would-be molester in New York's subways and a beautiful, unscrupulous television anchor. Current Affairs & Social Comment AFRICA: The People and Politics of an Emerging Continent. By Sanford J. Ungar (Simon & Schuster, $19.95.) ''This thoughtful safari through sub-Saharan Africa . . . generally maps out the history and salient modern features of the place with cool clarity and without dogma or pontification.'' BLACK BOX: KAL 007 and the Superpowers. By Alexander Dallin. (University of California, $14.95.) ''Through careful, nonideological analysis of the known facts,'' the author ''reaches the disturbing conclusion that mechanical or human error alone almost surely did not cause [Korean Air Lines flight 007] to stray'' over Soviet territory before it was shot down. BREAKING WITH MOSCOW. By Arkady N. Shevchenko. (Knopf, $18.95.) The ''highest-level Soviet official ever to defect to the West'' offers ''some gems of history'' as he probes the nature of the Soviet Government and its leaders. THE BUTTON: The Pentagon's Strategic Command and Control System. By Daniel Ford. (Simon & Schuster, $16.95.) Drawing ''attention to some fundamental problems of nuclear strategy,'' the author introduces ''the layman to the world of radars, surveillance satellites and nuclear command posts.'' THE CANADIANS. By Andrew H. Malcolm. (Times Books, $17.95.) ''For many Americans,'' this book by The Times's former Toronto correspondent ''will be a helpful, timely and tightly packed introduction'' to our northern neighbors. A CERTAIN PEOPLE: American Jews and Their Lives Today. By Charles E. Silberman. (Summit, $19.95.) An ''interesting and comprehensive but perhaps too optimistic'' study of the remarkable success of Jews in the United States that is ''both an objective and a personal work.'' THE CITY OF JOY. By Dominique Lapierre. Translated by Kathryn Spink. (Doubleday, $17.95.) ''Brilliant reportage'' about ''suffering, sorrow, cruelty and deprivation'' in Calcutta. A COAT OF MANY COLORS: Pages From Jewish Life. By Israel Shenker. (Doubleday, $19.95.) The themes of this ''carefully written book about Jewish survival and the hope of redemption'' move ''from God and the sacred texts through history . . . to the Promised Land.'' DISTANT NEIGHBORS: A Portrait of the Mexicans. By Alan Riding. (Knopf, $18.95.) Those ''who wish to understand the 'many Mexicos' of wealth and poverty, of authoritarianism and democratic experimentation . . . might well begin'' with this book by a New York Times correspondent. ECONOMICS IN THE REAL WORLD. By Leonard Silk. (Simon & Schuster, $16.95.) The economics columnist for The Times is ''very good on the interplay between politics and economics, on the way rational policy gets worn down by rubbing up against political rocks and hard places.'' THE EUDAEMONIC PIE. By Thomas A. Bass. (Houghton Mifflin, $15.95.) The compelling story of ''a group of young men and women associated with West Coast universities'' who, during the 1970's, devised a ''scheme to break the bank in Las Vegas.'' FINAL CUT: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of ''Heaven's Gate.'' By Steven Bach. (Morrow, $19.95.) A ''readable and enlightening'' account of the movie business in general and the $36-million film fiasco in particular, that would itself make a good movie. FUNNY MONEY. By Mark Singer. (Knopf, $15.95.) ''A down-and-dirty look at the people who fed off the boom in oil and gas exploration'' in the late 1970's and the collapse of the Penn Square bank. HOLY DAYS: The World of a Hasidic Family. By Lis Harris. (Summit, $16.95.) A ''beautiful portrait'' of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, told ''with precision and elegance.'' ILLITERATE AMERICA. By Jonathan Kozol. (Doubleday, $15.95.) A passionate yet ''carefully documented'' examination of the plight of ''60 million illiterate and semiliterate American adults.'' THE MANTLE OF THE PROPHET: Religion and Politics in Iran. By Roy Mottahedeh. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) A work of ''reconciliation and reflection,'' this book rises above ''the current feud between Iran and the West [and] leaves open the possibility of a world beyond one of rage and bitterness.'' THE NATURE AND LOGIC OF CAPITALISM. By Robert L. Heilbroner. (Norton, $15.95.) The author of ''The Worldly Philosophers'' ''sees capitalism as having yielded enormous achievements''; he also sees it ''as having fatal flaws.'' NICARAGUA: Revolution in the Family. By Shirley Christian. (Random House, $19.95.) ''Very much a reporter's book,'' this study of what happened in revolutionary Nicaragua by a Pulitzer Prize-winner, now a reporter for The New York Times, focuses on American policy and missed opportunities. THE PENTAGON AND THE ART OF WAR: The Question of Military Reform. By Edward N. Luttwak. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) ''The author, a hawkish advocate of increased defense spending but nonetheless a severe critic of the military establishment, makes a very persuasive case for radical and fundamental reform'' of America's military. THE SCHOOLS WE DESERVE: Reflections on the Educational Crises of Our Times. By Diane Ravitch. (Basic Books, $19.95.) In this collection of 21 essays written within the last decade, Diane Ravitch ''brings to bear a keen intelligence working in the service of a neoconservative educational outlook.'' SECRECY AND DEMOCRACY: The CIA in Transition. By Stansfield Turner. (Houghton Mifflin, $16.95.) A ''short, interesting and highly unusual memoir'' by the director of Central Intelligence from 1977 to 1981. SO FAR FROM GOD: A Journey to Central America. By Patrick Marnham. (Elisabeth Sifton/ Viking, $17.95.) ''A book of travels . . . reflecting the whims and incidents'' experienced by a British reporter ''as he wandered overland down California, through Mexico and into Central America.'' WAITING: The Whites of South Africa. By Vincent Crapanzano. (Random House, $19.95.) This account of the anthropologist author's encounters with white South Africans in a small country town in 1980-81 is ''insightful into the processes of deception and self-deception.'' WITH ALL DISRESPECT: More Uncivil Liberties. By Calvin Trillin. (Ticknor & Fields, $14.95.) A collection of 45 of the author's ''very funny'' satirical pieces from The Nation and one from Vanity Fair. THE ZERO-SUM SOLUTION: Building a World-Class American Economy. By Lester C. Thurow. (Simon & Schuster, $18.95.) In ''seeking to create a new platform for Democrats'' and to build a stronger American economy, the author proposes, among other things, a value-added tax and a $1-a-gallon tax on gasoline. He ''deserves credit for calling it as he sees it: 'No pain, no gain.' '' Essays & Criticism A BOOK OF ONE'S OWN: People and Their Diaries. By Thomas Mallon. (Ticknor & Fields, $15.95.) A study of diaries and their authors that ''shuttles back and forth through the centuries, establishing bonds among all of those solitary figures at their journals.'' CONVERSATIONS WITH AMERICAN WRITERS. By Charles Ruas. (Knopf, $17.95.) In these 14 interviews, Charles Ruas ''displays the essential qualities of any first-rate interviewer: a thorough knowledge of, an irrepressible curiosity about, a profound sympathy for'' writers and their work. EDMUND WILSON. By David Castronovo. (Ungar, $15.50.) This ''account of Wilson's career is concise, lucid and oddly - for an academic book -convivial.'' THE FLOWER AND THE LEAF: A Contemporary Record of American Writing Since 1941. By Malcolm Cowley. (Viking, $25.) A ''splendid'' collection of literary essays and reminiscences. THE FORCE OF POETRY. By Christopher Ricks. (Oxford, $29.95.) ''In this gathering of essays, the eminent English critic . . . looks at poetry over a considerable range [and] assures us through clarifying analysis of its power and force in our lives.'' THE GLORIOUS ONES: Classical Music's Legendary Performers. By Harold C. Schonberg. (Times Books, $24.95.) An ''entertaining survey of vocal and instrumental greatness'' by the former senior music critic of The New York Times. HABITATIONS OF THE WORD: Essays. By William H. Gass. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) The philosopher-novelist William H. Gass's ''large reading and . . . intense, animated philosophical mind'' are on display in his first collection of essays in seven years. MICROWORLDS: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy. By Stanislaw Lem. Edited by Franz Rottensteiner. (Helen & Kurt Wolff/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $14.95.) These essays by the Polish novelist, essayist and ''vigorous opponent of science fiction as currently practiced'' reveal ''a brilliant mind with a hearty appetite for science, philosophy and literature.'' NOT EXACTLY WHAT I HAD IN MIND. By Roy Blount Jr. (Atlantic Monthly, $14.95.) Recent essays that add up to a ''funny and engaging book, with occasional poignant and serious moments.'' OCCASIONAL PROSE. By Mary McCarthy. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $17.95.) ''Everywhere'' in these essays, reviews and reminiscences of writers and friends, written during the last 15 years, ''appear bracing opinions tartly expressed.'' AN OMELETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE. By Elizabeth David. (Elisabeth Sifton/Viking, $18.95.) In this collection of food journalism written during the last 35 years, Elizabeth David demonstrates her ''unparalleled feeling for the social ambiance of a dish.'' OPERA & IDEAS: From Mozart to Strauss. By Paul Robinson. (Harper & Row, $22.95.) A historian places opera ''firmly in intellectual history and [shows] in a more than cursory fashion, how attitudes toward society, culture and politics shape great operatic works.'' PLAUSIBLE PREJUDICES: Essays on American Writing. By Joseph Epstein, (Norton, $17.95.) Irreverent essays from such periodicals as Commentary and The New Criterion contend that ''American literary culture is in bad shape.'' THE REVENGE OF THE PHILISTINES: Art and Culture, 1972-1984. By Hilton Kramer. (Free Press, $25.) The ''account of art's recent past'' in these 84 essays by a former chief art critic of The Times is ''original and complex.'' RHYTHM-A-NING: Jazz Tradition and Innovation in the '80s. By Gary Giddins. (Oxford, $17.95.) These essays by a writer for The Village Voice are marked by the author's ''graceful prose and the breadth and depth of his critical understanding.'' SECRET GARDENS: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature. By Humphrey Carpenter. (Houghton Mifflin, $16.95.) What at first seems ''a series of pleasant and informally presented literary discussions of the classics of British children's literature'' turns out to have ''a stimulating polemical edge that is also . . . fiercely argumentative.'' TABLE OF CONTENTS. By John McPhee. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $15.95.) The author ''is in top form, and his voice fairly constant'' in these ''eight essays originally published in The New Yorker between 1980 and 1984'' that range from bears to small-town family doctors. Fiction THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. By Anne Tyler. (Knopf, $16.95.) ''The ambiguity of family happiness and unhappiness'' is one of the ''persistent concerns'' of Anne Tyler's seven novels, and this is ''one of [her] best.'' ALWAYS COMING HOME. By Ursula K. LeGuin. (Harper & Row, Cloth, $50. Paper, $25.) ''With high invention and deep intelligence,'' this novel, which comes with a tape cassette of songs and dances, ''presents, in alternating narratives, poems and expositions,'' the author's ''most consistently lyric and luminous book . . . an entire ethnography of the far future.'' ANNIE JOHN. By Jamaica Kincaid. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $11.95.) Jamaica Kincaid ''has packed a lot of valuable insight about the complex relationship between mothers and daughters into this slender novel of interrelated stories.'' THE ASSAULT. By Harry Mulisch. Translated by Claire Nicolas White. (Pantheon, $13.95.) This ''parable of war'' is the ''first novel to appear in America by one of the Netherlands' most revered, award-winning novelists.'' THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE. By Carolyn Chute. (Ticknor & Fields, Cloth, $15.95. Paper, $7.95.) ''Startling and original,'' this first novel is about an incestuous family in rural Maine. BETSEY BROWN. By Ntozake Shange. (St. Martin's, $12.95.) ''More straightforward and less idiosyncratic than [Ntozake] Shange's first novel, 'Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo,' 'Betsey Brown' creates a place that is both new and familiar, where both black and white readers will feel at home.'' THE CALL. By John Hersey. (Knopf, $19.95.) In the story of ''a farm boy from upstate New York who . . . undergoes a religious conversion [and] dedicates his life to the task of winning China for Christ,'' John Hersey ''manages to strike universal notes.'' CARACOLE. By Edmund White. (Dutton, $17.95.) ''Shrewdness and self-awareness ooze from every intricate sentence, every linguistic arabesque and hothouse epigram'' in this novel, which is framed around ''a series of sexual encounters in an unnamed capital city.'' CARPENTER'S GOTHIC. By William Gaddis. (Elisabeth Sifton/Viking, $16.95.) The author's third novel in 30 years is shorter, more accessible, ''but as mazily and mercilessly adroit'' as ''The Recognitions'' and ''JR.'' THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. By John Irving. (Morrow, $18.95.) ''By turns witty, tenderhearted, fervent and scarifying,'' this novel, about a New England abortionist who runs an orphanage, is ''an example, now rare, of the courage of imaginative ardor.'' COLLECTED STORIES. By Tennessee Williams. (New Directions, $19.95.) ''Given this chronologically arranged and presumably ultimate collection, any fair account of Williams's fiction must surely agree that six or eight pieces are of an invigorating individual mastery.'' CONTINENTAL DRIFT. By Russell Banks. (Harper & Row, $17.95.) A bleak novel that ''charts, in alternating chapters, the eventually intersecting paths of two people desperately on the move'' - a young man from New Hampshire and a Haitian woman. THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN. By Rudolf Tesnohlidek. Translated by Tatiana Firkusny, Maritza Morgan and Robert T. Jones. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $19.95.) ''The first English translation of Rudolf Tesnohlidek's story . . . with pictures by Maurice Sendak, is a beautiful book to look at and a pleasurable one to read.'' DO LORD REMEMBER ME. By Julius Lester. (Holt, $13.95.) The Rev. Joshua Smith, known to his followers ''as the Singing Evangelist and to one white newspaper reporter . . . as 'The Colored Billy Graham,' '' examines his life in this ''neatly balanced, well modulated'' novel. EQUAL DISTANCE. By Brad Leithauser. (Knopf, $17.95.) This first novel about three Americans in Japan ''is like an update of Hemingway's 'Sun Also Rises' - a revision of the expatriate theme that incorporates what we've learned in a half century's pursuit of disillusionment.'' THE FIFTH SON. By Elie Wiesel. (Summit, $15.95.) ''The experience of surviving the Holocaust falls like a curtain between father and son'' in this novel as the son ''attempts to break through his father's unmerciful emotional veil.'' THE FINISHING SCHOOL. By Gail Godwin. (Viking, $16.95.) In a ''finely nuanced, compassionate psychological novel'' about the friendship between an adolescent girl and a middle-aged woman, the author makes ''a wise contribution to the literature of growing up.'' FISKADORO. By Denis Johnson. (Knopf, $14.95.) This ''startlingly original book is an examination of the cataclysmic imagination, a parable of apocalypse that is always present and precedes redemption in a cycle of death and birth, forgetting and remembering.'' FOREIGN LAND. By Jonathan Raban. (Elisabeth Sifton/Viking, $16.95.) ''Few first novels . . . establish their authors as novelists with such authority'' as this one about ''contemporary England as confronted by an elderly Englishman who has spent his adult life abroad.'' FORTUNE'S DAUGHTER. By Alice Hoffman. (Putnam, $15.95.) ''This novel's great strength lies in its two heroines, who both find themselves drawn, without plans, hopes or full understanding, into the inevitably mythological process of pregnancy and childbirth.'' FOXYBABY. By Elizabeth Jolley. (Viking, $14.95.) In this ''delicious and sustaining'' novel, ''a random collection of human beings find themselves in a remote place and there discover unfamiliar and surprising things, to return to the world changed in some way.'' GALAPAGOS. By Kurt Vonnegut. (Seymour Lawrence/Delacorte, $16.95.) ''The story, sort of, of a second Noah's ark, a 1986 nature cruise . . . that in the wake of planetary catastrophe . . . is fated to land on the Galapagos Islands and perpetuate the human race.'' GLITZ. By Elmore Leonard. (Arbor House, $14.95.) The adventures of a Miami policeman in Puerto Rico and Atlantic City come ''to a smashing and satisfying conclusion.'' THE GOOD TERRORIST. By Doris Lessing. (Knopf, $16.95.) ''Doris Lessing has returned to Earth'' from her ''Canopus in Argos'' novels in this tale of a ''daughter of upper-middle-class parents'' who gets mixed up with leftist radicals. GREASY LAKE & OTHER STORIES. By T. Coraghessan Boyle. (Viking, $16.95.) For the characters in this ''brilliant new collection'' of stories, ''life in contemporary America is . . . filled with peaks of exhilaration and excitement but also fraught with hidden dangers and potential embarrassments.'' THE HARD KNOCKER'S LUCK. By William Murray. (Viking, $14.95.) A fast-paced ''entertainment'' about ''a race track, art thievery and forgery, shoplifting, a melancholy quasi-love affair . . . with a few additional picaresque moments of greed, comedy and melodrama.'' HER FIRST AMERICAN. By Lore Segal. (Knopf, $15.95.) ''In her mix of history, memory and invention, and the ruthless honesty which has always characterized her work,'' Lore Segal ''shows us ourselves, and reveals herself.'' HOME TRUTHS: Sixteen Stories. By Mavis Gallant. (Random House, $17.95.) These ''powerful stories,'' set mostly in the 1930's and 40's, represent some of the ''best work'' by this Canadian writer who now lives in Paris. HONORABLE MEN. By Louis Auchincloss. (Houghton Mifflin, $15.95.) ''In his attempt to come to grips with a longstanding American obsession -how the values . . . of our Puritan forefathers still permeate some of their descendants . . . - [Louis] Auchincloss adds a significant work to his long and considerable canon.'' HOTEL DU LAC. By Anita Brookner. (Pantheon, $13.95.) The author's ''most absorbing novel'' chronicles a single woman's vacation at a hotel on the shore of a Swiss lake. THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS. By Isabel Allende. Translated by Magda Bogin. (Knopf, $17.95.) ''With this spectacular first novel,'' Isabel Allende becomes ''the first woman to approach on the same scale as [male Latin American writers] the tormented patriarchal world of traditional Hispanic society.'' THE IMAGE AND OTHER STORIES. By Isaac Bashevis Singer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $17.95.) Short stories that form ''a world of unruly lust, overwhelming jealousy, love that carries beyond the grave'' and ''take a reader in and pull him along at a fever pitch.'' IN COUNTRY. By Bobbie Ann Mason. (Harper & Row, $15.95.) This first novel about purging the aftereffects of the Vietnam War is ''an exceptional achievement, at once humane, comic and moving.'' LAKE WOBEGON DAYS. By Garrison Keillor. (Viking, $17.95.) A ''comic memoir'' of the author's hometown, ''fictionalized under the name Lake Wobegon, Minn.,'' and popularized on his American Public Radio program ''A Prairie Home Companion.'' LANARK: A Life in 4 Books. By Alasdair Gray. (Braziller, $20.) First published in England in 1981, this Scottish writer's first novel is ''a quirky crypto-Calvinist 'Divine Comedy,' often harsh but never mean.'' LATER THE SAME DAY. By Grace Paley. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $13.95.) The author's third collection of short stories is marked by ''honesty and guilelessness'' and an ''artfully intricate prose style full of surprises.'' LINDEN HILLS. By Gloria Naylor. (Ticknor & Fields, $16.95.) In her ''provocative, iconoclastic'' second novel, Gloria Naylor has adapted Dante's ''Inferno'' for ''a tale of lost black souls trapped in the American dream.'' LONESOME DOVE. By Larry McMurtry. (Simon & Schuster, $18.95.) Larry McMurtry's ''antimythic groundwork - his refusal to glorify the West - works to reinforce the strength of the traditionally mythic parts of [this novel] by making it far more credible than the old familiar horse operas.'' LOVE ALWAYS. By Ann Beattie. (Random House, $16.95.) In her ''most comic novel thus far,'' Ann Beattie ''poses some hard questions about her own art within a structure drolly modeled on the soap opera.'' THE LOVER. By Marguerite Duras. Translated by Barbara Bray. (Pantheon, $11.95.) A novel of ''unremitting intensity'' about the sexual initiation of a young woman living in Saigon in the 1930's. A MAGGOT. By John Fowles. (Little, Brown, $19.95.) A difficult but rewarding ''unconventional'' novel in the Fowlesian tradition. MEN AND ANGELS. By Mary Gordon. (Random House, $16.95.) ''With subtlety and feeling,'' Mary Gordon contrasts ''a moral life, a religious life, an artistic life, a family life.'' These are ''at times mutually exclusive ways of being and of seeing.'' MIDAIR. By Frank Conroy. (Seymour Lawrence/ Dutton, $15.95.) In these short stories, ''as in 'Stop-Time,' [Frank] Conroy writes exceptionally well, often painfully so, about children, especially the relationship between sons and fathers,'' MONEY: A Suicide Note. By Martin Amis. (Viking, $16.95.) John Self, ''a half-American Brit,'' self-destructs in this comic escapade of ''trans-Atlantic urban show-biz patter and smart literary patterns.'' MUSEUM PIECES. By Elizabeth Tallent. (Knopf, $14.95.) An ''engrossing and beautifully expressed'' first novel that examines ''the debris of a marriage'' between an archeologist and a painter. NOTHING HAPPENS IN CARMINCROSS. By Benedict Kiely. (Godine, $16.95.) This novel ''brims with fire, bombs and dead men, much to the pain and woe of [its hero], who was born in the North of Ireland, like [Benedict] Kiely, but who has grown up as an Irish-American.'' THE OLD GRINGO. By Carlos Fuentes. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $14.95.) The author's ''most ambitious novel, the first in which he attempts to integrate all that he knows and call up of history, myth and thought.'' A PERFECT PEACE. By Amos Oz. Translated by Hillel Halkin. (Helen & Kurt Wolff/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $16.95.) In his ''most powerful'' novel, about ''a generational conflict over the meaning of the Israeli experience,'' Amos Oz ''examines the disjunctions of history and the ways in which a people . . . transcend such divisions.'' REASONS TO LIVE. By Amy Hempel. (Knopf, $11.95.) These ''conspicuously contemporary'' stories, ''more than half of which have never been published before,'' exhibit ''a kind of minimalism that robs us of nothing, that has room for the largest themes.'' SELF-HELP: Stories. By Lorrie Moore. (Knopf, $13.95.) A ''funny, cohesive and moving'' collection in which the author ''examines the idea that lives can be improved like golf swings and in so doing finds a distinctive, scalpel-sharp fictional voice that probes . . . the depths of our fears and yearnings.'' A SHORT HISTORY OF A SMALL PLACE. By T. R. Pearson (Linden/Simon & Schuster, $16.95.) Neely, N.C., is the setting of this ''beautiful'' first novel that ''despite being mired in melancholy'' is ''remarkably funny.'' SLOW DANCING. By Elizabeth Benedict. (Knopf, $15.95.) A first novel whose ''strength is in its sympathetic portraits of three well-meaning people more comfortable in their public roles than in their private lives.'' SMALL WORLD: An Academic Romance. By David Lodge. (Macmillan, $15.95.) ''An exuberant, marvelously funny . . . tale of professors on the make'' that ''suggests that despite the depredations of critics, the capacity of art to give pleasure still endures.'' SOLSTICE. By Joyce Carol Oates. (Dutton, $15.95.) This story describing the friendship between two women by a novelist ''never squeamish about looking into the dark places of the soul'' will ''dispel a lot of comforting ideas about the nature of women.'' STANLEY ELKIN'S THE MAGIC KINGDOM. By Stanley Elkin. (Dutton, $16.95.) Seven British children with fatal diseases visit Walt Disney World, and the author ''strips away the sentimentality and replaces it with an honest look at the grotesque possibilities we all carry around and prefer not to see.'' THE STORIES OF MURIEL SPARK. (Dutton, $18.95.) If the author, one of the most ''gifted and innovative'' British novelists of her generation, ''does not consistently impress one as being a short-story writer of the same caliber, it may be because the bold economy of her novelistic technique sometimes seems like a cutting of corners in the more confined space of the short story.'' THINGS INVISIBLE TO SEE. By Nancy Willard. (Knopf, $14.95.) In her first novel, Nancy Willard ''transforms reality into something endlessly magical'' as she ''creates a world in which there is a constant interplay between the living and the dead, between things visible and invisible.'' UNDER THE BANYAN TREE AND OTHER STORIES. By R. K. Narayan. (Elisabeth Sifton/ Viking, $16.95.) A collection of 28 stories by the Indian English-language writer, ''an almost placid, good-natured storyteller whose work derives its charm from the immense calm out of which he writes.'' WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD. By Madison Smartt Bell. (Ticknor & Fields, $16.95.) This second novel ''digs deep into the underside of New York City and comes up with a vision of urban life that is by turns dizzying, real and exaggerated.'' WHITE NOISE. By Don DeLillo. (Elisabeth Sifton/ Viking, $16.95.) A small college town in the Middle West is threatened by an industrial accident in this ''timely and frightening'' novel, which ''succeeds . . . brilliantly'' in documenting modern-day America's ''epidemic evasiveness and apprehension.'' WORLD'S FAIR. By E. L. Doctorow. (Random House, $17.95.) This ''peculiar hybrid of novel and memoir'' about a young boy, very much like the author, growing up in the Bronx in the 1930's, suggests that ''the process of remembering is by definition a process of invention.'' ZUCKERMAN BOUND: A Trilogy and Epilogue. By Philip Roth. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Cloth $22.50. Paper, $9.95.) ''The Ghost Writer,'' ''Zuckerman Unbound,'' ''The Anatomy Lesson,'' plus ''a wild short novel, 'The Prague Orgy,' which is at once the bleakest and the funniest writing Roth has done'' - all add up to ''the novelist's finest achievement to date.'' History THE AIRMAN AND THE CARPENTER: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann. By Ludovic Kennedy. (Viking, $18.95.) Ludovic Kennedy ''assembles facts, disassembles false theories and sweeps the reader inexorably toward the terrible conclusion that a country eager to atone for an unthinkable crime permitted an even worse one.'' BRIBES. By John T. Noonan Jr. (Macmillan, $29.95.) This history of bribery from ancient times to the present is also concerned with ''morals, religious doctrine and literary criticism.'' THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism. By Wm. Roger Louis. (Oxford, $55.) ''Based on a staggering amount of recently released official and private papers,'' this ''magnificent and comprehensive'' book ''unravels with compelling detail the way in which the British 'official mind' engaged in [an] imperial and strategic juggling act, as it sought to preserve national interests.'' THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EUROPEAN JEWS. Revised and Definitive Edition. Three Volumes. By Raul Hillberg. (Holmes & Meier, $159.50.) The author has brought his 36-year investigation to culmination in this massive study that ''marshals a vast array of sources'' and is ''superbly organized.'' The scholarship is ''thorough and careful'' and the writing ''clear, readable, often graceful.'' EAGLE AGAINST THE SUN: The American War With Japan. By Ronald H. Spector. (Free Press, $24.95.) Demonstrating ''depth, breadth and careful scholarship,'' this history is the ''most concise and comprehensive account so far of the Pacific war from the American point of view.'' EXODUS AND REVOLUTION. By Michael Walzer. (Basic Books, $15.95.) With ''care and clarity,'' a political philosopher ''makes the case for the story of Exodus as a continuing metaphor for revolution,'' including America's. THE FALL OF SAIGON: Scenes From the Sudden End of a Long War. By David Butler. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) ''Imitating the format employed . . . in 'Is Paris Burning?' '' David Butler ''presents some extraordinary vignettes from what he aptly describes as the Fellini-like atmosphere'' of South Vietnam as the Communists took over in 1975. GERMAN BIG BUSINESS AND THE RISE OF HITLER. By Henry Ashby Turner Jr. (Oxford, $25.) This ''absorbing'' account of ''the personal and financial links'' between German business and Nazism argues that ''big-business money was of marginal importance to the rapidly expanding Hitler movement.'' HEART OF EUROPE: A Short History of Poland. By Norman Davies. (Oxford, $35.) The author of ''God's Playground: A History of Poland'' has written a work with ''sweep, a rare analytical depth and a courageous display of . . . personal convictions.'' A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE: Settings and Rituals. By Spiro Kostof. (Oxford, $45.) ''A magnificent guided tour through mankind's architecture from prehistoric caves to the extension of Harvard University's Fogg Museum.'' INVENTING THE DREAM: California Through the Progressive Era. By Kevin Starr. (Oxford, $19.95.) The second volume of a ''monumental history of California'' tells ''the story of how Americans of many kinds of background . . . found themselves in the ultimate Garden of the World . . . and then were changed by the myths they themselves had created.'' LAY BARE THE HEART: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement. By James Farmer. (Arbor House, $16.95.) The civil rights leader presents a ''candid and lively'' look at himself and the ''front-line aspects'' of the movement. THE LONG MARCH: The Untold Story. By Harrison E. Salisbury (Cornelia & Michael Bessie/ Harper & Row, $22.95.) An ''engrossing and revealing'' re-creation of the Chinese Red Army's 1934-35 Long March by a former New York Times foreign correspondent. THE LOST SOUL OF AMERICAN POLITICS: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism. By John Patrick Diggins. (Basic Books, $23.95.) An ''often searing portrait'' that ''aspires to explain in historical terms the peculiar amalgam of self-interest and religion, of economic privatism and national patriotism . . . that marks our own ambiguous era.'' THE PARADOX OF HISTORY: Stendhal, Tolstoy, Pasternak, and Others. By Nicola Chiaromonte. (University of Pennsylvania, Paper, $13.95.) In six essays presented at Princeton University in 1966, the Italian critic (1905-72) ''reflects on what he takes to be fundamental notions of the relations of individuals to those historical events that rock the foundations of their societies and overturn whole civilizations.'' PSYCHOTHERAPY IN THE THIRD REICH: The Goring Institute. By Geoffrey Cocks. (Oxford, $24.95.) A ''valuable study'' of how psychoanalysis, the ''Jewish science,'' fared under the Nazis and Hermann Goring's cousin. SOCIALISM AND AMERICA. By Irving Howe. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $17.95.) In this ''stimulating'' and ''learned'' book, ''graced with a princely generosity,'' Irving Howe ''stands between the Old Left and the New'' and examines, among other things, why Socialism has failed in America. SON OF THE MORNING STAR. By Evan S. Connell. (North Point, Cloth, $20; Perennial Library, Paper, $8.95.) This narrative of Custer's last stand is marked by ''elegant'' prose and ''dry wit.'' THE SOONG DYNASTY. By Sterling Seagrave. (Harper & Row, $22.50.) The lives and times of Charlie Soong's three sons and three daughters, who ''carved out a permanent niche in the steamy politics of the Chinese republic in the years from its founding in 1911 to its fall in 1949.'' THE SPOILS OF TIME: A World History From the Dawn of Civilization Through the Early Renaissance. By C. V. Wedgwood. (Doubleday, $19.95.) A fair-minded, ''scrupulous'' and ''straightforward account of how men and women moved from primitive savagery to the comparative sophistication of the Renaissance.'' Poetry THE BRANCHING STAIRS. By John Ash. (Carcanet, $7.50.) The first book by this British poet to be published in the United States is haunted by the ghosts of Eliot, Auden, Proust, Baudelaire and Laforgue. ''This may be the most auspicious debut of its kind since Auden's.'' COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1980. By Allen Ginsberg. (Harper & Row, $27.50.) A complete collection of the poetry of the most celebrated Beat, gathered from the many small-press volumes and magazines in which the works have appeared, with sometimes extraordinary notes by the poet. THE COLLECTED POEMS OF PAUL BLACKBURN. Edited by Edith Jarolim. (Persea Books, $37.50.) The late Paul Blackburn was the most characteristic poet of the 1960's. His work, assembled here ''from ephemeral publications and manuscripts, rescues [him] from a near oblivion that is itself 'very 60's.' [His] work holds an extreme variety of pleasures.'' ETERNITY'S WOODS. By Paul Zweig. (Wesleyan University, $15.95.) The ''one truly essential collection of poems'' by ''one of our most inventive literary critics and biographers,'' who died last year - ''a deeply felt and necessary human work.'' THE LAMPLIT ANSWER. By Gjertrud Schnackenberg. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $12.95.) This poet has an ''intelligent, resonant, sometimes ravishing way with words,'' and her work ''shines throughout with a luminous craft and a wise reflective sense of culture and its claims on human feeling.'' PRAYING WRONG: New and Selected Poems 1957-1984. By Peter Davison. (Atheneum, $18.95.) Twenty new poems plus about three-quarters of those published in past books are here, ''chosen with a connoisseur's detachment. This will unquestionably be the Davison volume to own for a long time to come.'' STATION ISLAND. By Seamus Heaney. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $11.95.) ''A book of poems to be read through rather than dipped into. There is bone and sinew and song here, and an urgency that grabs you by the sleeve - sometimes by the throat - and makes your blood race.'' AN UMBRELLA FROM PICADILLY. By Jaroslav Seifert. Translated by Oswald Osers. (London Magazine Editions, $12.50.) The works in this, the first volume of Jaroslav Seifert's poems to be translated since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year, were written in the 1970's. It is heavily autobiographical and thus especially useful to people who know little of the Czechoslovak poet's life and work, although the translation is somewhat pedestrian. Science Fiction FIRE WATCH. By Connie Willis. (Blue Jay, $14.95.) In her first collection of stories, the author ''deploys the apparatus of science fiction to illuminate character and relationships, and her writing is fresh, subtle and deeply moving.'' FREE LIVE FREE. By Gene Wolfe. (Tor, $16.95.) The author of the four-volume ''Book of the New Sun'' turns to ''that problematic mix of nonscientific lore and dreams of power known as the occult.'' HELLICONIA WINTER. By Brian W. Aldiss. (Atheneum, $17.95.) The final volume of the author's ''masterful trilogy whose theme is nothing less than the interrelationship of all living (and nonliving) things.'' NEUROMANCER. By William Gibson. (Ace, Paper, $2.95.) In this ''freshly imagined, compellingly detailed'' 21st-century world ''advances in computer technology and bioengineering have made it possible to create human beings of preternatural strength and agility.'' ROBOTS AND EMPIRE. By Isaac Asimov. (Doubleday, $16.95.) The author has ''once again turned an ethical dilemma into the basis of an exciting novel of suspense'' in this tale about two intelligent robots. STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND. By Samuel R. Delany. (Bantam, $16.95.) A ''challenging and satisfying'' novel about ''a universe of the far future, which contains more than 6,000 inhabited worlds and a marvelously rich blend of cultures.'' Science & Social Science BRAIN AND PSYCHE: The Biology of the Unconscious. By Jonathan Winson. (Anchor/Doubleday, $16.95.) ''A compelling and well-written book, intriguing both for its view of the brain in light of the computer revolution, and for its attempted revision of certain Freudian notions about the mind.'' CHANCING IT: Why We Take Risks. By Ralph Keyes. (Little, Brown, $15.95.) An ''entertaining writer with a light touch'' divides the risks we take into those involving physical danger and those involving ''commitment, intimacy and self-knowledge.'' THE COGNITIVE COMPUTER: On Language, Learning, and Artificial Intelligence. By Roger C. Schank with Peter G. Childers. (Addison-Wesley, $17.95.) A ''clear, funny and smart'' account of ''the problems involved in trying to get computers to mimic human reasoning.'' CRIME AND HUMAN NATURE. By James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein. (Simon & Schuster, $22.95.) This ''important'' and controversial summary of behavioral science's theories about crime ''will be the starting place for discussions of the subject for years to come.'' THE FLAMINGO'S SMILE: Reflections in Natural History. By Stephen Jay Gould. (Norton, $17.95.) ''One of the sharpest and most humane thinkers in the sciences'' offers a new collection of essays on a variety of scientific topics. FROM ONE TO ZERO: A Universal History of Numbers. By Georges Ifrah. Translated by Lowell Bair. (Viking, $35.) An ''exhaustive . . . history of numerals (number symbols) and numeration systems from prehistoric times to the Renaissance.'' HABITS OF THE HEART: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. By Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton. (University of California, $16.95.) In this ''well-written'' book, the authors conclude that middle-class Americans ''have largely lost the language they need to make moral sense out of their private and public lives.'' HEALING THE WOUNDS: A Physician Looks at His Work. By David Hilfiker. (Pantheon, $14.95.) A doctor's ''brutally honest . . . medical odyssey from idealism to disenchantment and back.'' . . . THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH: A Political History of the Space Age. By Walter A. McDougall. (Basic Books, $25.95.) An ''exhaustively researched, brilliantly conceived and beautifully written'' account of space exploration by the United States and the Soviet Union. IN THE NAME OF EUGENICS: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. By Daniel J. Kevles. (Knopf, $22.95.) In this ''well-written narrative,'' Daniel J. Kevles examines ''the symbiotic relations between the genuine science of genetics . . . and the political programs and prejudices of eugenicists.'' THE KNOWLEDGE MACHINE: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Man. By Donald Michie and Rory Johnston. (Morrow, $16.95.) The authors argue that ''in an increasingly complex world we need all the sources of knowledge we can get, including machines.'' MASKS OF THE UNIVERSE. By Edward Harrison. (Macmillan, $18.95.) A ''provocative'' and ''scholarly review'' of ''aspects of philosophy and theology that border on the scientific enterprise'' that is ''a marvelous piece of historical research.'' MIGRAINE: Understanding a Common Disorder. By Oliver Sacks. (University of California, $17.95.) In this expanded, updated and resubtitled edition of the book (first published in 1970), Dr. Sacks ''describes the various manifestations of migraine and their relationship to mental and physical well-being.'' THE NEW OUR BODIES, OURSELVES: A Book by and for Women. By the Boston Women's Health Collective. (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, Paper, $12.95.) This revised and expanded edition of a 1973 work ''remains an excellent source for a woman evaluating medical care.'' PERFECT SYMMETRY: The Search for the Beginning of Time. By Heinz R. Pagels. (Simon & Schuster, $18.95.) In this ''attempt by a well-known particle physicist to look at the first moments after creation and even to look at the creation event itself,'' Heinz R. Pagels shows he is ''one of less than a handful of active scientists who can write excellent prose about the scientific frontier for a general audience.'' REFLECTIONS ON GENDER AND SCIENCE. By Evelyn Fox Keller. (Yale, $17.95.) In nine ''philosophical'' essays, the author ''analyzes the pervasiveness of gender ideology, investigates how it became established and how it still shapes the course of scientific theory and experimentation and speculates what science might be like if it were gender-free.'' REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE. By I. Bernard Cohen. (Harvard, $25.) A history of physical science from the 17th century to the present day ''carefully documented and told in a straightforward, comprehensive style.'' A SCIENTIST AT THE SEASHORE. By James Trefil. (Scribners, $16.95.) A physicist takes readers on ''a marvelous excursion from the beach to the ends of the solar system.'' STAR WARRIORS: A Penetrating Look Into the Lives of the Young Scientists Behind Our Space Age Weaponry. By William J. Broad. (Simon & Schuster, $16.95.) When a New York Times reporter spent time ''as a neutral observer with the group of scientists who are actually trying to make [''Star Wars''] work,'' he ''was not able to find a single scientist who said to him that [it] would.'' VITAL LIES, SIMPLE TRUTHS: The Psychology of Self-Deception. By Daniel Goleman. (Simon & Schuster, $17.95.) ''By helping us to become aware of how it is that we are not aware,'' this book by a New York Times reporter ''performs a valuable service.'' THE WOODS HOLE CANTATA: Essays on Science and Society. By Gerald Weissmann. (Dodd, Mead, $14.95.) In this ''lively collection of essays'' on medicine and science and their ''socioeconomic context,'' Gerald Weissmann, a physician and researcher at New York University Medical Center, gathers ''an impressive array of literary, historical and sociological sources.'' 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