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King succeeds

By now with Stephen King, it's easy to think this is all kind of ridiculous. An invisible dome descending upon a small town in Maine? People trapped inside, trying to figure out what on Earth is going on and - as always in a King story - dying in droves?

This is, after all, the guy who wrote entire volumes about cell phones turning fellow citizens into ravenous zombies, about possessed and murderous 1958 Plymouths and about evil, immortal clowns who live in the sewers and prey upon children. Really, now. How much gimmickry can one writer expect us to stomach?

Those statements are all completely fair and true. Trouble is, when it comes to "Under the Dome" (Scribner, $35), they're also all entirely inaccurate. Because "Under the Dome" is one of those works of fiction that manages to be both pulp and high art.

Exploring Grant

In "U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth" (The University of North Carolina Press, $30), biographer Joan Waugh finds an interesting range of answers to a simple question: Who was President Ulysses S. Grant? She titles her final chapter: "Who's (Really) Buried in Grant's Tomb?"

"The magnanimous warrior who saved the Union?" she asks, or "a greedy, corrupt, lazy militarist who exercised the powers of a despot against the defeated Confederacy?"

She comes down forcefully on the side of Grant's admirers, led by President Lincoln. Southern writers like Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early saw Grant as a butcher who won battles only with overwhelming forces.

Rove info

Karl Rove's memoir has a title, "Courage and Consequence," and a release date - March 9, 2010.

Rove, the mastermind of George W. Bush's two successful presidential runs and a top White House aide, signed in 2007 with Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster that has published best sellers by commentators Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

"Courage and Consequence," according to Threshold, "frankly responds to critics, passionately articulates his political philosophy and openly explains the reasons behind his decisions."

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