A weekly roundup of noteworthy reviews from other sources.

Elizabeth Kolbert reviews several books about the pounds put on in America. “Though weight-loss books will doubtless always be more popular,” Kolbert writes, “what might be called weight-gain books, which attempt to account for our corpulence, are an expanding genre.” The essay also includes this aside: “(According to the standards of the United States military, forty per cent of young women and twenty-five per cent of young men weigh too much to enlist.)” . . . In Lost and Found in Russia, Susan Richards tracks the lives of five people (or couples) over the years when “we all thought the Russians should be celebrating the advent of democracy and freedom, [but] their lives were collapsing around them.” The Guardian says, “Her characters build from being subjects of interest into parts of her life. Friends in the truest sense of the word, they change her.” . . . A question, posed after reading several books published to commemorate the 40th anniversary of literal moonwalking: “Did the moon landings amount to anything more than a spectacular – if costly and dangerous – diversion?” . . . Michael Howard, considering that more than 1,600 books have been written about Winston Churchill, says that “the Churchill story has now been told so often that aspiring biographers need to find something fresh to say if they are to find publishers, and their publishers find readers.” He judges the freshness of two new books about the Prime Minister. . . . Michiko Kakutani reviews Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire, the late author’s follow-up to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Kakutani writes that the “intricate, puzzlelike story line . . . attests to Mr. Larsson’s improved plotting abilities,” but that “[l]ike many thriller writers, Mr. Larsson . . . is overly fond of coincidence.” The final verdict: “it works.”