My relationship with bugs is probably a lot like yours: antagonistic but resigned to an extended leery détente, with occasional hostilities on both sides. The mosquito buzzes; I swat it aside. But insects also exert a queasy fascination — they’re so alien, and so ubiquitous, that they become ideal subjects for scientific study, and for books. In “Underbug,” one of our recommended titles this week, the journalist Lisa Margonelli takes a close look at termites and the entomologists who love them. Bonus for curious but grossed-out readers: The book includes no photos.

If you like science writing but aren’t ready for termites, you might check out Mimi Swartz’s “Ticker,” about the historical quest to develop an artificial heart. We also recommend not one but two collections of sly meta-essays (by Brian Dillon and Ashleigh Young), along with a survey of the Supreme Court’s role in public education, an account of the true crime that served as a model for “Lolita,” a memoir by an undocumented immigrant, and new novels by Esi Edugyan and Robert Galbraith (or “Robert Galbraith”). And since football season is in full swing, this would be a good time to pick up Mark Leibovich’s new book, “Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times.” If nothing else, it will make you think about the league’s business model, and you’ll wince a little harder each time a player is carried off the field.

Gregory Cowles

Senior Editor, Books

ESSAYISM: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction, by Brian Dillon. (New York Review, $15.95.) Brian Dillon is a “mournful, witty and original writer,” our critic Parul Sehgal says. In this book, he expresses his love for the form of the essay and for the work of those who have practiced it, including Elizabeth Hardwick, Susan Sontag and Montaigne. The “crystalline pieces” of this book, Sehgal says, offer “a sense, never belabored, of the stakes of creating essays and the consolations of loving them.”

DEAR AMERICA: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, by Jose Antonio Vargas. (Dey St./William Morrow, $25.99.) Jose Antonio Vargas came to America from the Philippines when he was 12 years old to live with his maternal grandparents. Now, 25 years later, Vargas’s mother is still in the Philippines and he is still in the United States, an undocumented citizen traveling around the country as an activist filmmaker and a writer. “Vargas came out as gay when he was 16. Coming out as undocumented took longer,” our critic Jennifer Szalai writes. “The moments when Vargas describes how profoundly alienated he feels from his own family are the most candid and crushing parts of the book.”