Everything you need to know about Columbus

With the inexorable approach of the semi-millennium of his epochal voyage, you’re going to be hearing more and more about him in the months ahead. Here, in brisk Q & A format, is what you’ll need to flesh out half-forgotten facts and purge old myths.

Detroit iron

How confident they look now, those American cars of the 1950s, exuberant with chrome and blatant colors, emblems of an era when nobody in America had even heard the name Toyota. A handsome photographic portfolio surveys the field, while Brock Yates tells what made the cars special.

The business of boxing

When this particular industry experiences a dramatic upswing, it really is dramatic. In a tangy tour Joseph D’O’Brian surveys the pivotal fights that have built the modern sport.

Plus …

The ancient, violent codes of Southern honor that reach back centuries and live on in the inner cities … Theodore Dreiser’s novels showed his era life as it was really lived, and he was not thanked for writing them … and, with harvest plenitude, more.