Vermeer In Bosnia (2004)

Weschler, who pulled back the curtain on ''Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder'' in 1995, has an unbeatable eye -- and heart and writerly panache -- for human oddity and invention. Much of the nonfiction in this absorbing miscellany first appeared in The New Yorker, including a triptych from his years reporting on Yugoslavia, a prescient 1994 portrait of Roman Polanski pre -- ''The Pianist,'' and a quietly brilliant 1984 appreciation of David Hockney. Weschler writes from an ''I'' so sparkly that even a piece about his adored daughter escapes the traps of ego.