Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (Oxford, $35). A satisfyingly thorough and probing study of Arnold Schoenberg’s life in America, to which he emigrated in 1933. Even if, like me, you don’t care much for his music, you’ll find it absorbing to read about how this most European of composers came to grips with the strange new world of southern California, which he liked far more than is generally realized. Though Feisst’s prose style is decidedly academic, Schoenberg’s New World tells a story so interesting that–for once–the quality of the writing doesn’t matter (TT).

Pat Metheny, What’s It All About (Nonesuch). A lovely sequel to One Quiet Night, Metheny’s 2009 album of acoustic-guitar solos. This time around the fare consists of pop standards, some likely (“Alfie”), others joltingly unexpected (“Betcha by Golly, Wow”), and all played with luminescent sensitivity. Ideal for wee-small-hours listening (TT).

Dancing at Lughnasa (Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22, extended through Jan. 29). Brian Friel’s 1990 masterpiece, a tragicomic memory play about the coming of modernity to Ireland, has been revived to piercingly enthralling effect by my favorite off-Broadway company. Absolutely not to be missed under any circumstances whatsoever (TT).

Clark Terry, Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry (University of California, $34.95). A pungent, unusually plain-spoken memoir by the celebrated jazz trumpeter and educator. Though Terry, one of the few remaining musicians to have played with both Count Basie and Duke Ellington, is speaking through a ghostwriter (his second wife), Clark sounds like a real person swapping stories after hours, and the results are hugely readable (TT).

Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (Vintage, $17 paper). This splendid 2010 biography of the founder of Time, Life, and Fortune, now available in paperback, is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of American magazine journalism. Though Brinkley isn’t the most scintillating of stylists, he’s got all the facts at his fingertips and sets them forth them in a sober yet eminently readable way. I don’t know when I last read another biography that I wished had been longer (TT).

A Minister’s Wife (PS Classics). The original-cast recording of the Lincoln Center Theatre production of this musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida is a major event. I called it “the most important new musical since The Light in the Piazza” when I reviewed the show in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, and now you can revel at leisure in Joshua Schmidt’s astringent yet tuneful score. If you didn’t see A Minister’s Wife on stage, make haste to hear it on record (TT).

Lemon Sky (Keen Company, Clurman Theatre, 410 W. 42, closes Oct. 22). Lanford Wilson’s 1970 coming-of-age play, like the rest of his prolific output, has faded from view in recent years, but Keen Company’s letter-perfect off-Broadway revival makes a powerfully compelling case for this Glass Menagerie-derived tale of a sensitive teenage boy whose long-delayed reunion with his divorced father proves to be wrenchingly disrupting. How good was Wilson? Judging by this superlative production, it’s time for a full-scale reconsideration of his work (TT).

The Last Picture Show (Film Forum, 209 W. Houston, closes Thursday). Peter Bogdanovich’s classic 1971 study of small-town life in postwar America is now showing at Manhattan’s Film Forum in a brand-new print. Eileen Brennan, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybill Shepherd are all amazingly, even startlingly true to life. Yes, they really did make better movies in the Seventies, and this was one of the very best of the lot (TT).