Baby, it’s cold outside. (Read a book)

Our latest book reviews:

• Always Looking: Essays on Art, by John Updike, review by Joanne Latimer

• The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War, by Richard Lingeman, review by Jaime J. Weinman

• Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us, by Donald K. Yeomans, review by Kate Lunau

• The Illicit Happiness of Other People, by Manu Joseph, review by Martin Patriquin

• Heat: Adventures in the World’s Most Fiery Places, by Bill Streever, review by Charlie Gillis

• Soldier Of Christ: The Life Of Pope Pius XII, by Robert A. Ventresca, review by Brian Bethune

Plus, an excerpt from Tim Cook’s Warlords, the third in our five-part series with The Charles Taylor Prize nominees.