Like any dutiful English major, I spent countless hours in college buried in often dense, occasionally impenetrable literary theory, from formalism to cultural studies to postmodernism to New Criticism. While each school of thought at least partially illuminated the mechanics of great literature, by the end of my senior thesis defense, I was burned out.

When I moved to New York City and started working at Kirkus, most of my attention turned to more popular literature and less esoteric subjects, the mainstream fiction and nonfiction that we review in the magazine. Nonetheless, I occasionally get the itch to really dig into a particular book and flex some of those dormant lit-crit muscles. In that vein, I’m excited about two November books of scholarly criticism about two canonical yet very different works of literature.

Few words these days evoke more sputtering outrage and misunderstanding than socialism or, worse, communism—which is why China Miéville’s new book, A Spectre, Haunting (Haymarket Books, Nov. 1), arrives right on time. In this meticulously constructed investigation of The Communist Manifesto, Miéville deliver what our starred review calls a “passionate argument for [its] continued, urgent relevance.” Though Miéville is best known for his award-winning speculative fiction, he is also a Marxist and expert on international relations. Even if nonscholars may struggle with such terms as fissiparousand imbricated, Miéville’s book is well worth the mental effort.

Our reviewer astutely points out that “his argument is persuasive, pointing to such contemporary phenomena as America’s ‘vicious, racialized carceral regime’ as evidence of capitalism’s ‘excrescences’—and its sinister ‘adaptability.’ ” The author convincingly shows that the Manifesto still has much to teach us, especially given the increasingly deleterious effects of late-stage capitalism and the corruption of the concept of populism in recent years.

Another book that boasts an enduring—and sometimes controversial—legacy is Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. In a new anthology of criticism about its importance, Maus Now: Selected Writings (Pantheon, Nov. 15), editor Hillary Chute “curates a collection that draws on works from around the world (including pieces translated from German and Hebrew for the first time) and different disciplines (journalism, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology).”

At a time when book banning is on the rise—and, indeed, the very nature of truth is under attack—this omnibus investigates relevant questions, according to our review: “What does it mean to translate such a uniquely devastating experience into the form of a comic? What is the relationship between the artist and his subject and between father and son? Is it unseemly for such a work to provide entertainment or even meaning in the wake of the Holocaust, not to mention profit and prestige for its creator? How can the creator re-create something he was too young to experience, despite interviews and extensive research?”

To be sure, there’s some ivory-tower pretension scattered throughout the book. But while “the exhaustive obsessiveness of Maus criticism seems by now to have transcended the Joycean level,” as our reviewer points out, “the contributors present convincing cases that the work can bear such critical weight.” (For readers interested in digging further down that Joycean rabbit hole, make sure to check out Spiegelman’s own Metamaus, as well.) Chute’s book, which contains a generous selection of illustrations, features such luminaries as Ruth Franklin, Adam Gopnik, Marianne Hirsch, Alisa Solomon, and Philip Pullman, all coming together to create “a valuable resource for the cottage industry of Maus research.”

Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.