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*The American Circus: An Illustrated History John Culhane (Henry Holt, $39.95) It's all here: Jumbo the Elephant; pink lemonade; Princess Victoria, the spangled wire walker; the quest for the quadruple somersault; the calliope; Gunther Gebel-Williams.
*The Encyclopedia of Hollywood: An A-to-Z of the Heroes, Heroines, and History of American Film Scott Siegel and Barbara Siegel (Facts on File, $40) A hefty (499 pages) reference book.
*How Town Michael Nava (Harper & Row, $16.95) A third Henry Rios mystery from the award-winning Nava (The Little Death, Goldenboy).
*Kings of Cocaine Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen (Harper, paperback, $4.95) These reporters got , inside the Medellin cartel, which controls 50 percent of the U.S. drug market, but they never penetrated the cartel's powerful benefactors here. In short, only half of the story. C
*Lettice & Lovage Peter Shaffer (Bessie/Harper & Row paperback, $7.95)The comedy that Shaffer (Equus, Amadeus) wrote for actress Maggie Smith; now playing on Broadway.
*The New York Trilogy Paul Auster (Penguin, paperback, $9.95) Three metaphysical mysteries that — together or separately — are as intellectually stimulating as Umberto Eco's dense whodunits. And a lot shorter.
*The Power of One Bryce Courtenay (Ballantine, paperback, $5.95) Courtenay's fictional story of a lonely South African boyhood is the work of a middling stylist — and an amazing storyteller. B
*Prize Stories 1990: The O. Henry Awards Edited by William Abrahams (Doubleday, $19.95) Twenty of the year's best short stories, from old hands (Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Matthiessen, T. Coraghessan Boyle) as well as new ones (Bruce Fleming, Marilyn Sides).
*The Pushcart Prize, XIV Edited by Bill Henderson (Penguin, paperback, $9.95) The best of the small presses — short stories, essays, and poetry. The 1989-90 edition is dedicated to Raymond Carver.
*The Superior Person's Book of Words Peter Bowler (Dell/ Laurel, paperback, $5.95) ''Precise words for vocabular exultation'' — and an invaluable insult tool. ''You napiform varlet!'' (You turnip-shaped scoundrel!) A
*Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education Roger Kimball (Harper & Row, $18.95) More foolish in its fear-mongering than The Closing of the American Mind — and a lot less learned. F
*Unsettling Europe Jane Kramer (Penguin, paperback, $8.95) Four close-grained studies of the new Europe: Turkish workers in Sweden; a communist cell in an Umbrian village; Asians from Uganda in London; the Algerian French, or pieds noirs, back in France. A
