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Two heavyweight contenders in this week’s nonfiction Briefly Noted: “Darwin’s Armada,” by Iain McCalman, and “The Inheritance of Rome,” by Chris Wickham. The former is a “geographically expansive account of the rise of evolutionary theory” and the latter a book that reconsiders the European era from A.D. 400 to 1000 “using only a slender and unreliable documentary record and no narrative crutches.” The good news? They’re both winners, according to our reviewers: McCalman “supplies a fresh, antipodean perspective,” and Wickham’s “wide net catches some striking comparisons.” Then our attention turns to two stellar female fighters: “After the Fire, a Still Small Voice,” which is a début novel from the British writer Evie Wyld. The book is about three generations of tormented men, living in Australia, and “has a feel both for beauty and for the ugliness of inherited pain.” And Kate Christensen, who won the PEN/Faulkner award in 2008 for “The Great Man,” presents her fifth novel, “Trouble,” which our reviewer calls “a stylish, even occasionally suspenseful story of middle-aged sexual awakening and female friendship.”

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