What’s new: Toni Morrison’s lectures on race, Doug Stanton’s Vietnam War history, Sarah Miller’s ‘Little House’ retelling

THE ORIGIN OF OTHERS, by Toni Morrison. In the spring of 2016, Morrison delivered a series of lectures at Harvard University on race and literature. Adapted into six essays, they now comprise this slender but profound volume looking at the construction of “otherness” through her own novels (“Beloved,” etc.) and in fiction by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Flannery O’Connor and others. (Harvard University Press, $22.95)

THE ODYSSEY OF ECHO COMPANY: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War, by Doug Stanton. It’s been a vital year for Vietnam War histories, from Mark Bowden’s “Hue 1968” to Ken Burns’ and Geoffrey C. Ward’s “The Vietnam War,” a companion to Burns’ PBS documentary. Now the author of “Horse Soldiers” tells the story of one U.S. Army platoon during the pivotal battles of early 1968. (Scribner, $30)

CAROLINE: Little House, Revisited, by Sarah Miller. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” novels have enchanted generations of young readers with their story of a pioneer childhood on the American frontier. Historical novelist Miller (“The Borden Murders”) here re-imagines the saga of the family’s journey from the “Big Woods” of Wisconsin to the “Prairie” of Kansas from the perspective of “Ma” Ingalls. (William Morrow, $25.99)