Editors" Choice - NYTimes.com Riverhead, $27.95. A guerrilla theater troupe's tour in an unnamed South American country occasions a provocative look at war culture and public roles in Alarcón's vibrant second novel. EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, by Jung Chang. Knopf, $30. Chang portrays Cixi as a proto-feminist and reformer in this authoritative account. PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR: An Adventure, by Artemis Cooper. New York Review Books, $30. The British wayfarer and travel writer is the subject of Cooper's affectionate, informed biography. Random House, $35. Why did the peace fail, a Canadian historian asks, and she offers superb portraits of the men who took Europe to war in the summer of 1914. CATASTROPHE 1914: Europe Goes to War, by Max Hastings. Knopf, $35. This excellent chronicle of World War I's first months by a British military historian dispels some popular myths. BENJAMIN BRITTEN: A Life for Music, by Neil Powell. John Macrae/Holt, $37. An objective portrait of the brilliant 20th-century composer's gifts, flaws and complex personality. O MY AMERICA!: Six Women and Their Second Acts in a New World, by Sarah Wheeler. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26. How a half-dozen intrepid 19th-century Britons reinvented themselves. THE INTERLOPER: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union, by Peter Savodnik. Basic Books, $27.99. An incisive study of a pivotal sojourn. KEHUA!, by Fay Weldon. Europa Editions, paper, $17. Women in a London family are nudged by Maori spirits in Weldon's charming 34th novel.