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Sixties People By Jane and Michael Stern NonFiction, Knopf, 24.95 We are sixties people. In 1960, we were wide-eyed fourteen-year-olds, twisting like mad to Chubby Checker's hit record. By the end of the decade, we had met at college during a student strike, married, and after graduation lived with a group of long-haired friends, spending our days baking loaves of lumpy seven- grain bread and walking our dog, who sported a hippie-style bandana around his neck.
Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman By Paul Mariani Biography, Morrow, $25.00 From his twelfth year John Berryman was made to understand that the Fates had title to his life. It had not always been so, for his beginnings had been different-safer somehow-when he still had his first name and his first identity, when he was not John Berryman but John Allyn Smith, Jr. But that first world ended abruptly for him when John Allyn Smitked out into a Florida dawn and-allegedly-shot himself. By that one act Smith senior left the way open for his rival, a man named John Berryman, to step in, take Smith's wife, and give Smith's sons a new name and a different identity. As for John Allyn Smith, Jr., now renamed John Berryman, his strategy for surviving would be to try to erase the trauma of that compound theft for as long as he could.
What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era By Peggy Noonan Nonfiction, Random House, $18.95 Every now and then when I worked in the Reagan White House, I would look up * from my notes at a meeting and look at the faces around the table, or, walking the halls, look into the offices and see the young men and women with their heads bent over a report, and think, We are the ones who will walk behind the caisson.
Exes By Dan Greenburg Fiction, Houghton Miffen, $19.95 ''Maggots are my friends,'' said Dr. Chernin, the medical examiner, gazing amiably at the naked corpse on the bed. The short, pudgy body was alive with maggots. A large ''ninety-five'' i.d. tag was tied to its ankle and made out to the morgue. The deceased was Irving Smiley, thirty-three, an executive at Manhattan Cable T.V. Someone had severed the carotid artery in his neck, then bashed his face in.
Mary Reilly By Valerie Martin Fiction, Doubleday, $18.95 It wasn't the first time I'd been shut up in the closet, if closet isn't too grand a word for the little cupboard under the stairs. I was ten and small for my age, but I had to fold myself up into a painful crouch to fit into the narrow, dirty space and that was always part of the struggle, getting me to fit, which was part of his pleasure I've no doubt. That time I didn't struggle but tried to get in place as quick as I could. He was in a rare temper and I feared he'd have my life if I didn't look sharp about doing it as he said.
Hairdo By Sarah Gilbert Fiction, Warner, $17.95 The phones had been ringing at The Celebrity Styling Shop all morning and Ruby McSwain didn't know what to do. She pushed at her stomach, pressed at her updo and said, ''Well now, isn't that something. Going off and having a nervous breakdown just like that.''
