Very noticeable in nonfiction publishing nowadays is the book of the moment, a text that hangs on the shirttails of a recent, news-making event (from the anthrax scare to 9/11), hoping to generate sales based on leftover curiosity.

Much less frequently published, though of infinitely more value, are books that go back a few decades and, taking a broader path through history, tie together a whole sequence of related events, helping the reader see significant patterns and gain a rich overview.

Such a work is Clara Nieto's Masters of War, a monumental examination of, as the subtitle reveals, Latin America and U.S. Aggression: From the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years. (The book is impeccably and smoothly translated from the Spanish by Chris Brandt.) By putting in perspective and taking to task the various U.S. political regimes from the 1950s to the 1990s, she shows an inflected continuity in our policies toward the Southern Hemisphere. Nieto indicates, for example, that even our more well-meaning presidents, such as Kennedy or Clinton, who at least supplemented their sponsoring of repression with small development schemes, put most of their money on fighting what they took to be communist subversion and guerrilla warfare -- what was often enough simply revolts by violently starved and brutalized campesinos --  by financing whatever strong man was available.

Yet, given this continuity, there were still real differences. Great as the terror unleashed in the region under presidents like Nixon or Kennedy, once a madman like Reagan or Bush I was put in charge, the U.S. military (as in the Panama invasion) or its proxies (such as the Contras who fought against Nicaragua) ran amok. The disheartening stories she tells about these two episodes are heightened by her descriptions of the incompetence and corruption displayed by the armed forces. 

Her narrative about the Contras, for instance, who made incursions into Nicaragua to harry the progressive government during the 80s, is an incredibly sordid one. Their Marine advisors wouldn't have much to do with them. The Americans were living in segregated and much superior quarters. Meanwhile, their own Contra officers ignored them, because these commanders were so busy drinking and whoring away the sums given them by the U.S. taxpayer. Our invasion of Panama shows some of the same atavistic urges on the parts of the conquerors, revealed in wanton destruction of property and lives.

In either case, as well as in the army repression in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and other nations, it's saddening and sobering to note the wall of bodies piled up by the ultra-violent forces (particularly the death squads) which our government has countenanced and usually paychecked. .

A person who reads a book of the moment, such as one retailing the Enron scandal, will be outraged but also pleased that that the company was finally brought to justice. On the other hand, a reader of a more comprehensive book such as Nieto's will close it with less satisfaction, at least about the self-righting qualities of our government. Struck by a policy that has gone wrong so long, such a reader will probably conclude that only a fundamental change and reversal of our system -- one probably needing to be won in the streets -- is likely to set things right. 

Clara Nieto, Masters of War: Latin America and U.S. Aggression: From the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years  (New York: Seven Stories, 2003), paper, 623 pages, $24.95.  

Robert Gibbons began the sequence of prose poems that make up Streets for Two Dancers  (Six Gallery Press, 2004) when a relocation to Boston brought him a lengthy, daily commute by subway and ferry. He decided to improve the time by writing, and, as could be expected, the poems are filled with sights of the trip: girls on the train, birds on the water. But there's something more.
Husserl argues that every present is flavored by retentions from the most closely settled past, and this is true in a surprising way for Gibbons' descriptions of morning commutes. He depicts the trips and what immediately preceded them, sleep.
The book weaves together evocative descriptions of cities and smokily resonant remembrances of dreams. Seldom has there been such a striking matching of the shards of dreams to the, how shall I say, shards of everyday life. This is done in three ways.
The sense of dreams is captured with rare acuity:

"To the right, a green & white sign for Sudden Street. Not enough recollection of
the dream fragment, though, to erect a city, or even name it."

Moreover, the poet combs his waking life for instants of dream-like fluidity to pair with actual dreams. Thus, the reader can link the moment when Gibbons' wife shows "white estuary flesh" to this:
       
Gently kissing the woman in the dream responds, "I like when my clothes melt off."  

Lastly, he finds incidents in daily life that surely have slipped out of magical sleep:

... outside the stage door of Symphony Hall, the lone, black, high-heel shoe stood
upright on the curb. The laws of gravity demanded it should topple over.

     I don't say this is the only thematic in the book, which includes brilliant, circumscribed portraits of artists; wry reflections on schooling and marriage; and pure, plastic evocations of Boston and other cities, but to me the strongest novelty here is Gibbons' successful depiction of an existence whose brightest moments are quarried from both life and dream.

Dark Desert, Hot River (Xlibris, 2003) begins as the inside story of Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, but then segues into travel writing of a high order as the hero flees the "hot zone" for less dangerous climes.
     In 1990, when William Bryant was teaching in the new city of Jubail, Saddam invaded Kuwait. The author witnessed mounting hysteria as the city emptied of foreigners, guest workers, even naval recruits.
     Bryant hangs tight. It's unclear whether he is a true fatalist or too busy cruising the beaches for Arab boys and stoking himself with booze and drugs to care, but what emerges from his pen is a brilliant portrait of a city that has become a ghost town overnight, awaiting a disaster that fails to materialize.
     However, it is only when Bryant decamps to Egypt and India for the duration that his full authorial powers come into play. These are best displayed in portraying places stamped by history.
     When Bryant depicts such hallucinogenic places as Luxor or Goa, places made doubly mysterious by the absence of tourists, who are frightened off by the war, he effortlessly meshes background data, observations culled from earlier tourists, and his own crisp descriptions into indelible portrayals. The reader will be entranced by his vivid pictures of the carved caves of Elephanta, the poly-erotic sculptures of Khajuraho, and the Luxor necropolis as by his rendering of his comic entanglements, such as with a displaced German yacht builder in Bombay. When he can spare time from his innumerable dalliances -- his sexual appetite is somewhere on the far side of Priapus's -- he gives powerful views of these exotic cities and the touts, tourists, and rickshaw wallahs that populate them.
     The book, then, is something of a hodgepodge, but a flavorful one, containing evocative descriptions of an Arab nation under siege and finely attuned descriptions of Oriental tourist destinations, with a bit of soft porn to round it off.

      6/2/95 (New York: Spuytenduyvil) is a day Donald Breckenridge has plucked from his calendar in order to observe the doings of 15 characters, ranging from a cat to a kid to a Korean deli clerk, many of whom live or gravitate around a block in Fort Greene and all of whom have a story to tell. So, what we get in this skillful novel is a slice of life cut very thin.  
     To make the book the triumph that it is, Breckenridge has to surmount two obstacles.
     First, since his novel covers a wide canvas in a short space, he needs to be able to get inside a head and a plot quickly. This he does with writing that is both grainy and precise, presenting scenes, such as when two kids try to cadge a pack of matches from a drunk or when a single mother eats pizza with her prickly daughter, that are filled with character and incident, yet scaled down to miniaturist proportions.
     The second challenge comes in the need to enliven each portrait with enough drama to engage the reader but not so much to strain credulity. Breckenridge does this with a fine mix of believable fumbles and confrontations. The single mother, for instance, who is finally going to introduce her daughter, age 7, to the father who abandoned her at birth, ends up waiting in vain in the park when he doesn't show. In contrast, the character who is going to beg for his old job back at a liquor store, does connect, showing himself willing to eat enough ... crow to be given his low-paying berth back.
     There is no romanticization here, but rather a tart, decent, unblinking portrait of people who are emotionally or financially "up against it." Or if there is any romanticism, it is only in Breckenridge's affirmation that since each 24 hours has its share of narrow setbacks or small victories, every single day can raise a flag to signal the rest of your life.