Respected commentator Jonathan Chait traverses the rock and the hard place between the political right and left (320s) in Audacity to make the case for President Obama as a  transformative leader.  The Washington Post called Audacity an “essential  starting point”  for future discussions of this administration.  Cattle Kingdom by Christopher Knowlton (380s) goes beyond the romance of the cowboy (tho there’s some of that to) with a look at how the drives  transformed both the west and the urban markets they fed.  Nothing new this year in the 400s (language) but last year’s In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahri, about the author’s romance with Italian, is well worth a look.