Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- With so many books in the stores, we’re often asked for recommendations. Here’s a list of recent nonfiction books.

“The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich,” by Daniel Ammann. Published by St. Martin’s Press.

This biography, written with the cooperation of the infamous multibillionaire commodity trader Marc Rich, is a briskly paced primer on how to get off the hook, a must-read for any businessman facing federal indictment and a guaranteed tear- jerker for the U.S. white-collar prison population. It’s a psychological thriller and a gleeful celebration of asocial justice and why the sound application of money will always beat the odds and embarrass the gods.

“The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President,” by Taylor Branch. Published by Simon & Schuster.

Every page of this book, based on recordings historian Taylor Branch secretly made with Bill Clinton during his White House years, has a new plum. Examples: a report of the first couple “smooching in a doorway”; the name of a body part we all share applied by the First Lady to House minority leader Richard Gephardt. (“‘Well, he is,’ she insisted.”)

Whatever such ephemera lack in historical weight, they suggest the remarkable intimacy of this book; and they help humanize a couple the press got a lot of mileage out of demonizing.

“Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,” by Jennifer Burns. Published by Oxford University Press.

“Ayn Rand and the World She Made,” by Anne C. Heller. Published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

The Panic of 2008 was bad for the economy, good for advocates of big government and great for Ayn Rand, philosopher, novelist and high priestess of individualism, who died in 1982. Two timely, well-researched biographies should complement the renewed interest in her. Burns’s book focuses on Rand’s ideas while Heller’s is a thorough recounting of her life and the forces that shaped her philosophy, known as Objectivism.

“What the Dog Saw,” by Malcolm Gladwell. Published by Little, Brown in the U.S. and Allen Lane in the U.K.

Serial killers, bad dogs, late bloomers, mammograms, the lady who wrote, “If I’ve only one life, let me live it as a blonde!” -- Malcolm Gladwell can write engrossingly about just about anything. His witty, probing articles are as essential to David Remnick’s New Yorker as those of Wolcott Gibbs and A.J. Liebling were to Harold Ross’s. He has collected 19 of them in his new book and they’re uniformly delightful.

Gladwell has a gift for capturing personalities, a Borscht Belt comic’s feel for timing and a bent for counterintuitive thinking. In other words, it would take a real curmudgeon to find fault with this outstanding collection.

“SuperFreakonomics,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Published by William Morrow in the U.S. and Allen Lane in the U.K.

Chicago hookers work overtime around the Fourth of July holiday, suicide bombers should buy life insurance, and capuchin monkeys have learned to use money to acquire Jell-O cubes and sexual favors. All of these curiosities crop up in Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s new book, an intermittently amusing sequel to their bestseller, “Freakonomics.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Lili Rosboch in New York at erosboch@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 10, 2009 15:48 EST