e look at thousands of books each year in the book department - sometimes it seems like thousands in a week - as well as Himalayan piles of promotional ''literature'' with its breathless blurbs and catch phrases. Publishers tell us that each book is great, to be sure, but we have also noticed that they are intent upon persuading us that a book is not original; rather, that it is just like some other book (always a bestseller) with which we are bound to be familiar. Hence every family memoir is ''in the tradition'' (and what a debased word that is!) of Mary Karr and Frank McCourt, and every biography reflects the best of Doris Kearns Goodwin and A. Scott Berg. No publicity letter will ever say, ''Lucky you! The book you hold in your hands is unlike any other you have ever read.''
Nevertheless I am always attracted, as I suppose most readers are, by the book which is not in some ''tradition'' - which is original in some way: subject matter, style, theme, or structure - and I have sought such books in putting together this list of the best nonfiction books of 1998. As usual, I have to plead incompetence to choose the absolute best of the scores of fine books published in a year; however, I have tried to cite books that I or reviewers I respect have praised.
We begin with two books about Africa. The first, '' Leopold's Tomb: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa'' by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin, $26), reveals the rapacious career of Belgium's King Leopold II. In the 1880s and '90s, Leopold set up colonial ''trading'' stations in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and inaugurated a reign of plunder, slavery, and murder, all the while maintaining a benign public image. As usual in the imperial world, the ''white man's burden'' was borne mostly by dark-skinned people. The Globe's Robert Taylor called this book ''Spellbinding ... the first comprehensive account in English for the general reader.''
The second book, unfortunately, is no less grim. In ''We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda''(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25), Philip Gourevitch reports on the mystery of the 1994 genocide that wracked that central African country. The Globe's book editor wrote that the book ''is absolutely revealing in its detailed accounting of the nationwide massacre - the social and political background, who did what to whom, the aftermath - yet as with all such events, the horror is outside the pale of comprehension or articulation.''
Every year, it seems, is rich with biographies, and so was 1998. It is a feat to take a familiar face and reveal its different expressions and complexions, but Thomas Maier did just that in ''Dr. Spock: An American Life''(Harcourt Brace, $30). It seems the great man's bedside manner was confined to his classic book, ''Baby and Child Care.'' The Globe's Richard Knox wrote, ''Maier's writing is always workmanlike and his documentation meticulous and thorough. The book's most original contribution ... is its unsparing dissection of Spock's tragic personal life.''
In the category of ''Why-have-I-never-heard-of-this-person?'', there was ''Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull'' by Barbara Goldsmith (Knopf, $30). In America's Gilded Age, Woodhull was a self-made spiritualist, mesmeric healer, businesswoman, women's rights advocate, and candidate for president. Her career was so bizarre, and touched so many famous names, that it would be hopelessly implausible in fiction. Mary Loeffelholz wrote in the Globe that ''Other Powers'' explores ''not only Woodhull's racy biography but several other interlocking narratives of Gilded Age high finance, political corruption, and sexual scandal'' - a book that ''is never less than fascinating.''
The great Samuel Johnson is best known in literary folk culture, so to speak, for his witty sallies as reported by James Boswell. But Lawrence Lipking, in '' Samuel Johnson: The Life of An Author'' (Harvard University Press, $35) tells the story of Dr. Johnson's life by focusing on his literary works. ''In straightforward and compelling sequence,'' wrote reviewer Christopher Ricks, ''Lipking attends to the supreme achievements'' - including Johnson's Dictionary, his life of Savage, and his edition of Shakespeare. ''We are shown,'' Ricks wrote, ''with humane precision, how Johnson steeled himself with the help of the ancient prescription, `preemptive dejection.' Great expectations? Ungreat ones may prove to be wiser.''
Two strong entries on the subject of race in America are ''Slaves in the Family'' by Edward Ball (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30) and '' Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow'' by Leon F. Litwack (Knopf, $35). The former won the National Book Award for nonfiction last month. In it Ball tells the story of his South Carolina family's slaveholding past, adding to the tale his own extraordinary search for descendants of his ancestors' 4,000 slaves. Douglas Egerton wrote, ''Historians and the general public will find it fascinating reading. There is simply nothing like it in print.''
If slavery was a misery, for millions of African-Americans the ''freedom'' of the Jim Crow regime was little if any better. Litwack's book, wrote reviewer Ray Jenkins, ''makes an important contribution by laying out the full horror that black Americans endured during the time of ritualized cradle-to-grave subjugation.''
Another unusual book of history is''The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity'' by Jill Lepore (Knopf, $30). We associate white-Indian conflict with the Wild West, but the first and still probably the most violent such war occurred here in New England in 1675-'76. ''Its fate,'' reviewer Barry O'Connell wrote, has been ''to go unrecognized for what it was: one of America's first civil wars. To acknowledge it as such would be to acknowledge that Indians (like, eventually, African-Americans and others) are members of the complicated family of Americans. ... The delights of Jill Lepore's prose are enough by themselves to make this a book for anyone who loves good writing.''
An on-the-whole happier chronicle is Roy Porter's ''The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity''(Norton, $35). Globe reviewer George Scialabba called the book ''a remarkable achievement ... brisk without being breathless, comprehensive without being tedious, rigorous without being obscure, judicious without being jejune.''
On the subject of religion, one of the more original books of the year was ''The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own'' by Cullen Murphy (Houghton Mifflin, $24). Murphy, the executive editor of The Atlantic Monthly, explains that for centuries the Bible was interpreted mostly by male scholars, but in this book he reports on how that has changed. Calling the book ''provocative and lucid,'' reviewer Michael D. Coogan wrote that Murphy's approach is ''a kind of intellectual history by way of biography. Each chapter features one or more women scholars, and as he discusses their backgrounds and work, Murphy also provides an accessible review of mainstream biblical scholarship generally - how it incorporates languages and history, texts and scrolls, shards, seals and archeological strata into the ongoing interpretation of biblical traditions.''
In science and culture, one of the most unusual books this year is ''The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture'' by Frank R. Wilson (Pantheon, $30). Wilson is a neurologist who specializes in hand disorders among artists, and his thesis is that human intelligence resides in the hand as well as the brain, and that both organs influenced the development of the other. Using physiological analysis as well as case studies of such handy people as musicians, jugglers, and rock climbers, Wilson persuades us that our hands are more astonishing than we imagined. In his review, the book editor wrote, ''Wilson is a fine, clear writer, with the same combination of wit, plain speaking, and erudition as MIT's Steven Pinker.''
Finally, a pure work of art. It always seems strange to call poetry nonfiction, but then Ted Hughes's book of poems about his tormented life with Sylvia Plath, ''Birthday Letters''(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $20), defies easy categorization, even in belles lettres.
For more than 30 years, Hughes refused to talk about his first wife, who took her own life in 1963, even though he was often vilified for his behavior as her husband. These 88 poems represent a poignant reflection on a tragic relationship whose story was long famous, but half-told at best. Hughes published the book only eight months before his own death in October. Poet, editor, and publisher Peter Davison wrote, in his Globe review, ''Though `Birthday Letters' illuminates the life of Sylvia Plath, it is a book of poems by Ted Hughes, not a shadow biography. Who touches this touches a man. ... Hughes does Plath the honor of respecting her demons as profoundly as she did herself - and of evoking his own demons with unsparing consistency.''
None of these books, I believe, is ''in the tradition'' of any other. Each is original, and by some mystery, such books continue to be published. We should hope that they help to make us all, at the close of another year, deeper, wiser - and yes, more original.
David Mehegan is the book editor of the Globe.
