Brands, H.W. The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War. Doubleday. Oct. 2016. 448p. 9780385540575. $30; ebk. ISBN 9780385540582. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable: Random Audio. HISTORY Twice a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, Brands illuminates the relationship between President Harry S. Truman and the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was eager to duke it out with the Communists. That the highhanded MacArthur might have control of the bomb—Truman slipped once, saying that the military commander in the field was in charge of all weapons use—was an unsettling thought as China entered the Korean War. Truman’s eventual triumph in their face-off defined America’s approach to diplomacy throughout the entire Cold War period. Flagg, Fannie. The Whole Town’s Talking. Random. Oct. 2016. 224p. ISBN 9781400065950. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780399588297. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable: Random Audio. WOMEN'S FICTION Best known for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (made into a movie for which the author, also an actress, adapted the screenplay), Flagg routinely turns out hits; 2013’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion was a New York Times best seller that has sold 405,000 copies across formats. In her new work, the townsfolk of Elmwood Springs, MO, don’t die the way the rest of us do; once buried, they wake up underground and commence to chat with friends and family. Occasionally, one of the dead simply vanishes, and the townsfolk want to figure out what happens. Think of it as a funny, charming, Southern-style Our Town. Lethem, Jonathan. A Gambler’s Anatomy. Doubleday. Oct. 2016. 304p. ISBN 9780385539906. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9780385539913. CD/downloadable: Random Audio. LITERARY FICTION International backgammon hustler Bruno Alexander has been pretty luckless lately, perhaps owing to a chance encounter with slick childhood acquaintance Keith and his hot new girlfriend, perhaps to a blot distorting his vision so badly that he must study the board sideways. Things get even worse at his next stop, Berlin, where a fainting spell lands him in the hospital with a deeply unsettling diagnosis. When Keith offers to fly the nearly broke Bruno to Berkeley for some life-saving experimental surgery, he trembles. Berkeley has troubling incense-spiced, anarchist associations for Bruno, and it’s where he first learned he was psychic. Once more, National Book Critics Circle award winner Lethem makes the weird real, normal, and entertaining. And guess what? There really are backgammon hustlers. Prose, Francine. Mister Monkey. Harper. Oct. 2016. 304p. ISBN 9780062397836. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062397850. LITERARY HISTORY Somewhere Off-Off Broadway, a madcap children’s musical called Mister Monkey has been running for a very long time. Too long, in fact, as Margot, who’s more or less tossed away her career by playing the chimp’s lawyer, surely knows. A letter from a secret admirer and an unsettling encounter mid-performance with 12-year-old Adam, who plays the title role and is restlessly entering adolescence, give Margot food for thought. Meanwhile, the ambitious costume designer, a dissatisfied young audience member, and the hapless novelist on whose book the musical is based all contribute to the sense of witty mayhem. National Book Award finalist Prose, a New York Times best-selling author (she triumphed again with 2014’s Lovers at the Chameleon Club) never does repeat herself. With a 50,000-copy first printing and a five-city tour to Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.