A weekly roundup of noteworthy reviews from other sources.

Tom Bissell writes a terrific review of Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America by Elizabeth Fraterrigo, a book he calls dry but careful and wide-ranging: “Fraterrigo has given us the most laudably sober and analytically rigorous book ever written about an adult magazine. While her prose strays into occasional thesisese, her research is phenomenally thorough and her conclusions are bold enough to be interesting and modest enough to be feasible.” . . . Leo Robson elegantly recommends Frank Kermode’s new book about E.M. Forster. . . . Christopher Hitchens admires the work of J.G. Ballard, “our great specialist in catastrophe.” . . . Jad Adams assesses a new biography of Thomas de Quincey, “the first – and still the finest – literary dope fiend.” . . . David Ulin says that Robert Stone’s new collection of stories “may not represent a complete return to form, but it’s far more satisfying” than his previous two books and “brilliant in places.” . . . Jessica Loudis believes that Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas “should be required reading for anybody considering a PhD in the humanities.”