Despite the author’s desire for anonymity, our critic Molly Young writes, these pieces provide a good deal of self-disclosure: “For those who wish to burrow gopherlike into the author’s mind, Ferrante has prepared a tunnel.” She talks about how she conceives of the writer and her methods of rereading texts. She doesn’t present writing tips so much as she outlines what she’s learned and how it’s helped her (and by implication, how it might help anyone else). (Europa, $20.) “In the Margins” consists of four lectures Ferrante wrote, in which the pseudonymous author shares her conceptions of writing and reading. Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein. IN THE MARGINS: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, by Elena Ferrante. In this memoir, Yovanovitch “skillfully narrates her life story,” our critic Jennifer Szalai says, from a childhood in Connecticut through postings in Somalia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. But she hadn’t expected officials in her own country to green-light, much less actively encourage, such machinations. She explained that she wasn’t surprised that Ukrainians who had long benefited from corruption had sought to remove her, given that she had made anti-corruption efforts a priority. She went on to provide memorable testimony at the first impeachment of President Trump that November. (Mariner, $30.) Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post as the United States ambassador to Ukraine in April 2019. Gregory Cowles Senior Editor, Books Twitter: FROM THE EDGE: A Memoir, by Marie Yovanovitch. In fiction, we recommend an old-fashioned social novel set in 21st-century India, a sly debut set on a Kentucky college campus and a collection of pandemic-haunted stories by the celebrated Irish author Roddy Doyle. There’s Fintan O’Toole’s history of modern Ireland, filtered through his personal experiences, and William Neuman’s journalistic account of the political crisis in Venezuela a cartoonist’s memoir of midcentury New York and two books on medical topics, one of them a history of surgery, the other a neurologist’s collection of case histories and the lessons they impart. This week’s nonfiction recommendations range widely, from Elena Ferrante’s literary lectures to a timely memoir by America’s former ambassador to Ukraine from a close-up study of tide pools to a history of the North’s huge financial edge in the Civil War.

Ways and Means by Roger Lowenstein