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A random sampling of current books received at this magazine

Born in the U.S.A: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition, by Jim Cullen, lecturer on history and literature (HarperCollins, $23). A serious-minded, engagingly written exploration of the cultural significance of the life, words, and music of a rock megastar. You know, the one who sounds like he's being throttled. Cullen devotes chapters to such matters as Springsteen the good conservative, Springsteen and the burden of Vietnam, Springsteen's masculinity, and Springsteen and American Catholicism, and concludes that Springsteen is a symbol of what's right with America.

The Writer's Home Companion: An Anthology of the World's Best Writing Advice, from Keats to Kunitz, edited by Joan Bolker '60, Ed.D. '75, cofounder of Harvard's Writing Center (Holt, $14.95, paper). Fun to read. Helpful if heeded. See a manuscript page from Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession for a powerful lesson in revision. See B.F. Skinner to learn "How to Discover What You Have to Say"--always a good first step.

A Firing Offense, by David Ignatius '72 (Random House, $23). Aptly called "a thrilling novel, a genre-breaker" by one reviewer, this satisfying yarn by Washington Post executive Ignatius concerns a reporter in cahoots with the CIA who crosses the ethical line between reporting news and making it.

A Legacy of Excellence: The Story of Villa I Tatti, by William Weaver, with photographs by David Finn and David Morowitz (Abrams, $49.50). A good- looking book about a lovely place. When art historian Bernard Berenson, A.B. 1887, died in 1959, he left I Tatti, near Florence, the superb artworks it houses, its prodigious library, and its gardens and olive groves to Harvard, which, after years of playing hard-to-give, had agreed to accept these things and maintain I Tatti as a center for Renaissance studies. Weaver portrays the life of the place under the Berensons and today, and Finn and Morowitz augment historical photographs with new ones of treasures and grounds.

Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds, by J.C. Herz '93 (Little, Brown, $23.95). In the past 15 years, videogames have grown into a $6-billion-a-year industry. Herewith a popular history and critique of the Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Doom phenomenon.

Above all its other first-evers, I Love Lucy stands out because its superstar was a woman. ARCHIVE PHOTOS

Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We Are Today, by Steven D. Stark '73 (Free Press, $25). Reporter and political commentator Stark asks, What has TV done to us? He describes the power of what he considers television's most important shows, arguing, for instance, that there may never have been a TV series as relentlessly unrespectable as Howdy Doody, that the popularity of Dallas presaged the Reagan era, and that network coverage of NFL football games guided the presentation of news from the Gulf War.

A Wild, Rank Place: One Year on Cape Cod, by David Gessner '83 (University Press of New England, published in cooperation with the Center for American Places, $19.95). A young writer--who teaches creative writing at the University of Colorado--confronts life in the aftermath of testicular cancer, the death of his father from lung cancer, and literary ancestors, specifically Thoreau, during a year spent writing in his family's summer cottage on Cape Cod. "'Cancer books don't sell,' an agent told me the other day," writes Gessner. "I wonder whether he's right, and, if so, why. There is the obvious answer that we don't want to hear about it. But since one out of three families is affected you'd think plenty of people would be curious. I think disease is the modern adventure, the one almost all of us face."

Making Miracles Happen, by Gregory White Smith, J.D. '77, Ed.M. '81, and Steven Naifeh, J.D. '77, A.M. '79, G '84 (Little, Brown, $22.95). When Smith was 34, his doctors told him that a benign brain tumor had turned malignant and that, according to the odds, he had three months to live. Ten years later, he and his partner tell how we all can try to beat the odds by finding the best medical care and maintaining the right attitude.

The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life, by Alexandra Johnson (Doubleday, $22.95). Beautifully written portraits of seven women writers (Marjory Fleming, Sonya Tolstoy, Alice James, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Anaïs Nin, and May Sarton) as they invent themselves within their diaries. Johnson teaches memoir-writing in the Harvard Extension School and at Wellesley.

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