Next month brings the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth. And his two sons have each marked the occasion with a book on Dad. “My Father at 100” by Ron Reagan (Viking) is a more personal and chronological look at “Dutch,” beginning with a family tree of sorts, going back to a 10th-century Irish warrior king. It also suggests that Reagan was beginning to suffer from Alzheimers while in office. “The New Reagan Revolution” by Michael Reagan (St. Martin’s Press) is more political, starting with a blurb from Rush Limbaugh and a forward by Newt Gingrich. It talks about his father’s legacy and what today’s politicians can learn from the conservative icon.

Burial for a King

by Rebecca Burns (Scribner)

Five days after Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis, Atlanta gave the slain civil rights leader an appropriate homecoming. Historian and journalist Burns delves into that sad day in 1968, when 150,000 people turned out for the funeral. Concerned with a threat of violence, which swept cities across America, Atlanta officials and Washington conferred. Burns brings us inside those deliberations, talks with King’s family and his inner circle, as well as volunteers drawn to Atlanta, including people like the rabbinical students tasked with finding mules to carry King’s coffin.

Chinaberry Sidewalks

by Rodney Crowell (Knopf)

Last year, Crowell’s ex-wife, Rosanne Cash, came out with her memoir, “Composed,” an introspective and interesting read about her family, life and career. She included Crowell, a successful singer-songwriter-producer, but didn’t dwell on him. His own memoir, also a great read, is the love story of his parents, who met at a 1941 Roy Acuff show in Tennessee. The book opens at a 1955 New Year’s Eve party at the Crowells’ tiny ragged Texas home, with 5-year-old Rodney grabbing his dad’s shotgun and pulling the trigger to break up the drunken revelry sure to result in no good.

Inventing George Washington

America’s Founder, in Myth and Memory

by Edward G. Lengel (Harper)

We can’t tell a lie. George Washington did not chop down that cherry tree. And he wasn’t baptized in a frozen river either. America was a young country when its foremost founding father died in 1799. And it needed heroes. Thus, posthumous lore and legend grew around the nation’s first president. The legends, explains Lengel, author of “This Glorious Struggle” and “General George Washington,” changed over the course of 200 years to suit the times and needs.

Death and the Virgin Queen

Elizabeth I and the Dark Scandal That Rocked the Throne

by Chris Skidmore (St. Martin’s)

It was a scandal that makes Showtime’s “Tudors” look tame: Queen Elizabeth I and the married Earl of Leicester were so close that tongues were wagging across Europe. When the earl’s wife was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in 1560, speculation that the earl had killed his wife and would marry the queen nearly toppled the monarchy. Skidmore, a sitting member of the British Parliament and the author of “Edward VI: The Lost King of England,” attempts to solve the mystery using a long-lost coroner’s report.