Critics' Choice: Sep. 4, 1989

TELEVISION

BLACK IN WHITE AMERICA (ABC, Aug. 29, 10 p.m. EDT); THE R.A.C.E. (NBC, Sept. 5 and 6, 10 p.m. EDT). Two networks tackle the difficult subject of race relations. The ABC report is a series of profiles put together by the network's black producers and correspondents; NBC's live two-parter, with Bryant Gumbel as host, features a survey of viewers' attitudes on race.

ALIVE FROM OFF CENTER (PBS, Aug. 30, 10 p.m. on most stations). Meredith Monk transports us to a medieval French village circa 1349 in Book of Days, the penultimate offering of this summer series of offbeat video works.

THE PRESIDENT AND MRS. BUSH TALKING WITH DAVID FROST (PBS, Sept. 5, 8 p.m. on most stations). The British interviewer, last seen on the tabloid show Inside Edition, resurfaces for an hourlong chat with the First Couple.

BOOKS

HARP by John Gregory Dunne (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). Novelist Dunne (True Confessions) fesses up that his own barbed style and snappish instincts have roots in an immigrant Irish heritage in which he learned that writing well is the best revenge.

NICE WORK by David Lodge (Viking; $18.95). A funny, adroit novel about an executive in one of Britain's rust-belt factories and the feminist lecturer who does field research on his old-fashioned methods.

AUGUST 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $50 hardback, $19.95 paper). Since this novel first appeared in English 17 years ago, the 1970 Nobel laureate has added some 300 pages to his fictional but heavily researched saga of Russia's catastrophic involvement in World War I.

MOVIES

COOKIE. English teenager Emily Lloyd brings an acute ear and a fetching presence to her role as a Brooklyn punkster in this comedy about a Mafia don (Peter Falk) with a score to settle and a wayward daughter to raise.

DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES. Three children in a Liverpool family literally sing their way through two decades of air raids, poverty and a father's sere brutality. Prepare to be thrilled, perplexed, horrified, haunted.

SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE. Ann (Andie McDowell) doesn't care for sex; Graham (James Spader) can't have it. They make the perfect posterotic couple in this very funny, poignant psychodrama.

THEATER

PRIVATES ON PARADE. War is hell, and so are high heels, as British forces in Malaysia learn while staging musicals in a campy off-Broadway delight.

MADAME SHERRY. Connecticut's revival-oriented Goodspeed Opera House unearths another musical charmer about love, money and mistaken identity.

INTO THE WOODS. Although Stephen Sondheim's richest, deepest Broadway show is ending its run, the work thrives in a fine national touring version.

MUSIC

MAHLER: SYMPHONIE NO. 1 (Deutsche Grammophon). The young Lenny reintroduced Mahler; maestro Bernstein now leads the Concertgebou Orchestra in a re- examination of the composer's kaleidoscopic genius.

N.W.A.: STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (Priority). Rap that's angry, scary and tougher than the hard L.A. streets it comes from. Lots of beat, lots of truth, and no pity to spare.

EVAN JOHNS & HIS H-BOMBS: BOMBS AWAY (Rykodisc). Stand back and let these boys explode: twelve scruffy juke-joint rock tunes as hot as the peppers at the far end of the bar.