*"Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures." Yale's "Jewish Lives" series is a treat: short, incisive books about major figures in history. I loved Molly Haskell's volume--a brief consideration of the life and work of Steven Spielberg. (In my view, "a brief life" is always a good idea. Who really wants to read four hundred or five hundred pages on a historical figure?) Ben Hecht wrote "The Front Page" and "Notorious," among other classics, and apparently his actual life was as colorful as his writing career. There's another book on Hecht out, but I'll take the short, beginner's-guide volume. *"Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault." Cathy Guisewite wrote and drew the comic "Cathy" for something like thirty years. When she stopped (by giving the title character, "Cathy," a baby), she took a respite from creative expression. But she said the urge to write started to build up inside h...