Tony Scherman, who wrote this month’s story on the rise and fall and rise of country music, recommends in his sidebar on page 53 the following all-time great recordings as part of a basic library of country music: Jimmie Rodgers’s First Sessions 1927-1928 (Rounder CD 1056, $17.98, CODE: BAT-16 ) and The Early Years (Rounder CD 1057, $17.98, CODE: BAT-17 ); Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys Anthology (two CDs, Rhino R2-70744, $27.98, CODE: RHR-12 ); The Essential Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys (two CDs, Columbia/Legacy C2K-52478, $22.98, CODE: BAT-18 ) and The Music of Bill Monroe (four CDs, MCA MCAD4-11048, $49.98, CODE: BAT-19 ); Hank Williams’s The Original Singles Collection (three CDs, Mercury 847194-2, $46.98, CODE: BAT-20 ); George Jones’s All-Time Greatest Hits, Vol. I (Epic CD EK-34692, $11.98, CODE: BAT-21 ); Merle Haggard’s More of the Best (Rhino CD R2-70917, $11.95, CODE: RHR-13 ).

For further reading on the history of country music, try the revised edition of Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA (University of Texas Press, 562 pages, $17.95 soft cover, CODE: UTX-1 ), which is regarded as the definitive general reference on the music’s history, stars, and styles. Also, the Country Music Foundation has produced a new, oversized history, Country: The Music and the Musicians (Abbeville Press, 432 pages, $45.00, CODE: ABL-1 ) with four hundred illustrations. Cecelia Tichi’s new High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music (University of North Carolina Press, 318 pages, $39.95, CODE: UNC-5 ) considers the music thematically, with chapters on “Pathos,” “Home,” “Road,” and the “Wild Wild West,” and comes with its own twenty-three-track CD sampler.

Ronald L. Numbers, who in this issue is interviewed by Benjamin McArthur on the meanings of creationism, expounds on this and other subjects in The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (Knopf, 458 pages, $27.50, CODE: RAN-26 ). Edward J. Larson’s Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Creation and Evolution (Oxford University Press, 254 pages, $9.95 soft cover, CODE: OUP-8 ) provides detail on the legal battles over the issue in this century.

Neal Gabler’s portrait of the gossip mogul Walter Winchell is adapted from his immense but consistently fascinating brand-new biography, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity (Knopf, 728 pages, $30.00, CODE: RAN-27 ).

Bernard Weisberger’s The La Follettes of Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin Press, 364 pages, $29.95, CODE: UWS-2 1)—the subject of Geoffrey Ward’s “The Life and Times” column this month—follows the career of the fiery Progressive governor and senator and his troubled clan.