.Quick Picks … for Metrosexuals and Hicks

Artificial sweeteners, slovenly bodies, and more in this month's quick picks.

A shipping container wields “all the romance of a tin can,” admits economist Marc Levinson in his surprisingly engaging history of these world-altering containers, The Box (Princeton, $24.95). … He invented the sugar packet and SweetN Low, got immensely wealthy, then disinherited some of his descendants — including Rich Cohen, whose irresistibly arch true-life American saga Sweet and Low (Farrar Straus Giroux, $25) is much more than a biography of his Grandpa Ben. … A J-shaped tendril, an O-shaped hole: For Discovering Nature’s Alphabet (Heyday, $15.95), Krystina Castella and Brian Boyl photographed flora, fauna, and bits of geology that look like letters. … Mud snickers and talks, hookers sell “their slovenly bodies green as turnips,” and jail doors close in the visions of Ko Un, Korea’s pre-eminent poet. New from the Buddhist ex-monk and political prisoner is The Three Way Tavern (University of California, $16.95), translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg. … Fog, full moons, tugboats, and rooftops in Fred Larson’s color photographs with text by late columnist Herb Caen could make even a robot sentimental: It’s Mystical San Francisco (San Francisco Chronicle, $29.95).

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