Holiday book guide

Stepping Stones

Interviews with Seamus Heaney

Edited by Dennis O’Driscoll

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18 paper

Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney is our greatest living poet, and here’s a combination for connoisseurs. “Stepping Stones” is a book-length series of linked interviews with the poet conducted by poet Dennis O’Driscoll. It all adds up to an autobiography. When Heaney recently turned 70, Ireland’s national radio had the poet record his readings of his poems for broadcast. You can order that remarkable recording, “Seamus Heaney: Collected Poems,” in a 15-CD boxed set directly from https://www.rte.ie/shop for about $105.

New and Collected Poems

1931-2001

Czeslaw Milosz

Ecco Press, $19.99 paper

Czeslaw Milosz was the great Polish bard of the 20th century’s agonies and anxieties. His fellow Nobel laureate, Joseph Brodsky, thought him the century’s greatest poet, though some of us would hold out for Yeats. In any event, a great two-volume gift can be made of his “New and Collected Poems 1931-2001” as well as “Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations,” edited by Cynthia L. Haven (University Press of Mississippi, $22 paper).

The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth

Copper Canyon Press, $40

The redoubtable Copper Canyon Press did American letters a great service when it published “The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth” in an edition edited by Sam Hamill and Bradford Morrow. Though cosmopolitan in outlook, Rexroth belonged to California in a special way. Savor his extraordinary poems of love and nature and the superlative translations from the Chinese and Japanese.

True Compass

A Memoir

Sen. Edward Kennedy

Twelve, $35

Counselor

A Life at the Edge of History

Theodore Sorenson

HarperCollins, $27.95

It may seem like a journey from the sublime to the slimy, but that’s exactly why these two great political memoirs are worth considering for somebody you’re trying to wean from the 24-hour news cycle. Try, first of all, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s remarkable “True Compass: A Memoir.” It’s a love story, really, filled with heart-felt affection for his family, the U.S. Senate and politics. Also well worth a look is Theodore Sorenson’s “Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.” He was one of JFK’s most trusted advisers and, perhaps, the greatest of all presidential speech writers. Reading his autobiography recalls a moment when public service seemed an act of idealism.

The Invisible Bridge

A Novel

Julie Orringer

Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95

Finally, if you want to give an altogether remarkable first novel, take a look at Julie Orringer’s “The Invisible Bridge.” It’s a beautifully written and realized historical novel of the tragic Hungarian Jewish community just before and during World War II. It was my personal favorite of all the novels I reviewed this year.

[email protected]