Toward the end of Jane Smiley’s new novel, “Lucky,” its narrator takes a moment to flip through her mother’s record collection. It’s got a lot of ’60s folk-rock, including, she notes, “the four J’s.” ...

My end-of-year assignment for Salon's staff was simple, perhaps deceptively so. I wanted to know what books we'd read this year that shed light — from some direction, and in some fashion — on the just ...