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David Lipsky says that his favorite comic, Runaways, is both a brilliant reading experience — and an embarrassment festival. The tiny digests by Brian K. Vaughan have been a fount of guilt, awkwardness and grave personal doubts, but he still pulls them out on the subway, because they are just that good.

The writer once said about his fellow Americans, "It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak." Baldwin was African-American and openly gay — but he was not afraid to speak, and his writings challenged black and white readers alike.

Most people strive to be happy, but take a look at the overflowing self-help shelves in bookstores — happiness can be pretty elusive. In her new book, Exploring Happiness, Sissela Bok draws from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and everyday wisdom to explain what we really know about how to be happy.

Henry Clay was a leading 19th century representative, senator, presidential candidate — and slaveholder who condemned slavery. In Henry Clay: The Essential American, David and Jeanne Heidler try to make sense of the statesman's great contradiction.

In Crude World, journalist Peter Maass argues that our relentless pursuit of oil has created a host of problems in the world — particularly in the countries that hold the most deposits. He explains why our dependence on the fossil fuel is not without social and environmental costs.

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

In December 1997, a tiger prowled the outskirts of a small town in Russia's Far East. In his book The Tiger, John Vaillant re-creates the events of that terrifying winter in an environment where man and tiger live side-by-side.

For some, travel is a relaxing break, but not for writer Benjamin Percy. For our books series "My Guilty Pleasure," where authors talk about a book they are embarrassed to love, Percy discusses how he spends his vacations — armed with a travel guide, seeking out the spooky, the scary and the supernatural.

Widely considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Andre Agassi admitted in his autobiography that he hates tennis, "with a dark and secret passion." Always has. He spoke to Terry Gross last November about what he calls the "contradictions" at the core of his life.

The Daily Beast editor chats with Renee Montagne about the best things she's been reading lately. Brown's focus this month: surviving and thriving in adversity, from the challenges of rescuing a major corporation to the difficulties of readjusting to life after wartime.