Two (big) books of poems by the same poet kick off our list of recommendations this week: a pair of volumes of “The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons,” by a two-time winner of the National Book Award who died at 75 in 2001. You might also want to take a look at two new books about comics (by different authors) — “Cartoon County,” a memoir by Cullen Murphy, the son of the artist behind the strip “Prince Valiant”; and “Why Comics?,” Hillary L. Chute’s wide-ranging look at how and why the medium has become so popular. There’s more, including a novel set during the French Resistance, a memoir of being held captive by the Taliban and the diaries Tina Brown kept during her years atop Vanity Fair.

John Williams

Daily Books Editor and Staff Writer

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF A. R. AMMONS: Volumes 1 and 2, by A. R. Ammons. Edited by Robert M. West. Introduction by Helen Vendler. (W. W. Norton & Company, $49.95 each.) The poet A. R. (Archie) Ammons twice won the National Book Award, in 1973 and 1993. Now his complete poems are collected in this edition of two very large volumes. “It’s a rocking double-wide mobile home of electric American verse,” our critic Dwight Garner writes. “The cube-like density of these books is imposing until you open the screen door. Ammons had a friendly, open, searching style, one that sometimes veered toward the metaphysical but tended to find its grounding in the crunch of wit or a small, superb insight.”

CARTOON COUNTY: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe, by Cullen Murphy. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Murphy’s graceful tribute to his father, John “Jack” Murphy, the artist behind the majestic “Prince Valiant,” knows comics creators are among the most dimly perceived of celebrities. In his review, Garry Trudeau calls the book a “stylishly written and illustrated field guide to the American Cartoonist and his midcentury habitat.”

WHY COMICS? From Underground to Everywhere, by Hillary L. Chute. (Harper, $40.) Chute offers a tour de force of the world of comics, from high-minded graphic novels to Superman, analyzing what exactly makes them a unique and relevant art form right now. The book includes history, content analysis, artist interviews, amusing asides and more than 100 pages of illustrations.