Shortly before Oprah Winfrey stopped her book-of-the-month club, her publicists asked Jonathan Franzen if he'd like his new book The Corrections to be one of her monthly selections. Franzen scandalized the media by refusing, saying that to accept would be a betrayal of his fans. Most jumped to the conclusion that Franzen was describing his work as "high culture," while implying that most of the novels Oprah reviews--and, indeed, Oprah's show itself--are "pop culture." I was curious to find out if Franzen was as arrogant and his work as pretentious as the media had portrayed. My gut instinct, however, was to cheer: here was somebody with the guts to shun feelgood TV programming and the Oprah publicity steamroller. I decided to read his work.

Instead of diving right into The Corrections, Franzen's third book, I wanted to approach him as his fans had: by reading his first book and then his second. The Twenty-Seventh City (1988) is long and sprawling, owing a lot to Don DeLillo and Salman Rushdie. And like Rushdie's novels, it requires an active reader, has a cast of dozens, and carries several threads of political satire. But with his first novel, Franzen tries to accomplish too much: he wants to paint small, with his biting scenes of a family's disintegration, yet also capture the broad sweep of the political machinations of a city's new police chief. Several large themes interweave through the text, not the least of which is the thin border between reality and public perceptions, and between truth and narrative. It's a messy book, but thoughtful, satirical, and fun.

Strong Motion (1992) is a leaner, finer book. We get the first extended taste of Franzen's brilliance in describing family relationships and the social, economic, and political pressures that produce the "dysfunctional" American family. Franzen's sympathy lies with black sheep, but no one escapes the surgeon's scalpel. Franzen resists the urge to commercialize his work by focusing only on the tiny microcosm of one family, as other American authors--Anne Tyler, for example--have done, and manages to firmly embed a family's struggles within an important context: the crisis in an entire community caused by the depredations of a major corporation. The ending peters out a bit, but otherwise it's an engrossing read. Highly recommended.

After reading his first two novels, I haven't concluded whether Franzen is arrogant or not. I do, however, understand what he meant when he said an appearance on Oprah would alienate his fans. In his case, context is everything. The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion are published by Picador, 175 5th Avenue, New York NY 10010, www.picadorusa.com. They should be easy to find at local, independently owned book stores.--Maria Tomchick

Eduardo Galeano is an extraordinary writer. Historian, journalist and essayist, he looks at our crazy collapsing civilization with the eye of a poet and he chronicles the key moments, events and icons that shape our illusions. In Upside Down: a primer for the looking glass world Galeano writes about the horrors of the conquest, of neoliberalism, while he transmits moments of human dignity, adaptability. He catalogues the degradations that globalization has wrought in his own South America (Galeano is Uruguyan) and elsewhere, yet he illuminates the garbage heap with a rare gleaming light, catching the otherwise unseen clues to our predicament.

The focus of study is laid out in the book's opening passage: "The upside down world rewards in reverse, it scorns honesty, punished work, prizes lack of scruples, and feeds cannibalism." This world's proponents "slander nature, injustice they say, is a law of nature." The pirates who have seized the world's wealth "continue to believe Charles Darwin wrote his books in their honor."

A person needs a special education to survive in a world where the market sees as equal the sale of food or the sale of weapons. Galeano presents his thoughts as a Course of Study in the Looking Glass School. Topics include Lectures on Fear, Master Class on Impunity, and Lessons from the Consumer Society. Counterschool offers insights into seeing the world right side up again.

Originally published in Spanish in 1998, the book has been available in English for a couple years, published by Metropolitan Books.--Troy Skeels