Books

When actors started to play to the people; a rainforest alive with aliens; the cultural artefacts of childbirth; and Africa’s golden age

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: the continent’s ecosystems have been shaped and reshaped by alien species, says Tom Cameron

People face a daily blizzard of statistics and figures. With his book Millions, Billions, Zillions, Brian Kernighan tries to help them through the storm. Matthew Reisz writes

When authoritarian populists employ the speech forms once deployed to counter totalitarians, how are we to critique what we consider abuses? wonders Deborah Cameron

Robert Gildea on a history of the South Wales mining community that is full of nostalgia but also looks to the future

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Victims, heroes, delinquents: those returning from conflict unsettle society, writes Helena Goodwyn

A thinker revisits democracy’s power to unite in light of populism’s rise, writes Martin Cohen

Book of the week: Rachel O’Neill on a study of how the manosphere cloaks anti-female rhetoric in ancient borrowings

That the market today makes many people vulnerable is clear, but it’s unclear that all would fare better without the market, says Victoria Bateman

Terence Kealey welcomes a superb introduction to a laissez-faire philosophy

Book of the week: Emily Michelson learns that the home and the items in it were the heart of Renaissance religion

The lecturer in international business and strategy and author of Supermarket USA on big books, the ‘Cold War Farms Race’ and jazzed-up propaganda battles

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Duncan Wu admires an effort to dismantle assumptions that those on the spectrum are unable to understand literature

Amid war, intellectual believers worked to imagine a future peacetime society, learns Leo Mellor

Displays, debates, delights; Allied leaders’ letters; big questions answered; and a groundbreaking trial that never was

Book of the week: leaning in self-determinedly sidelines collective efforts to secure equality, says Emma Rees

Ordinary citizens were far more complicit in the Holocaust than one society is prepared to admit, says Giulia Miller

Nick Hillman disputes a narrative that assumes all would be well if ‘experts’ were put in charge

A polemic against the divisive effect of ‘victimology’ puts its author’s prejudices on display, says Joanna Williams

Neil Gregor tracks the power shifts in the wartime relationship between a destructive pair of leaders

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: an intellectual superstar’s work merits more space amid the social history, says Richard Joyner

Do we learn incorrect and harmful lessons from our hard-wired love of narrative? asks Gail Marshall

A primer on the work of the ‘two-headed monster’ teases out the Talmudic and Kubrickian influences on their cinematic universe, says Nathan Abrams

Richard Williams rummages round a versatile site that housed cars, computers, start-ups and more

Matthew Reisz finds much valuable and practical writing advice in Joe Moran’s book, a ‘style guide by stealth’ and ‘a love letter to the sentence’

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A useful critical study shows that George Orwell had a capacity for forcefully expressing views that contradict each other, says Andrew Palmer

Book of the week: A. W. Purdue finds a work that combines military and social history to be gripping and poignant

The political scientist and author of The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity on fictional fascinations, mature reflections and dancing to the music of Powell

David Katz on a compelling and brutally honest memoir of a Jewish peace activist with Ta’ayush, an organisation that works with Palestinians in the West Bank

It’s still a puzzle how we come to care about groups different from us, says Constantine Sandis

Margarita Vaysman finds out why Russian writers use negative images of Christ to explore religion

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Professors shown to be mostly mad and mostly male, scholar claims

Guilty pleasures, the people’s voice examined, toothsome characters and the daily grind, Roman style

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Were some naval powers such as Britain inherently liberal and outward-looking? asks Sarah Kinkel

Ann Hughes samples an account of household recipe creation in 17th-century England

Stuart Schrader is reminded how likely we are to be led astray if we accept state discourse at face value

In recounting their journeys, female writers could talk about themselves, their values, their civic engagement and their responses to contemporary affairs in Britain, writes Abigail Williams

An otherwise strong account of America’s scientific pioneers largely forgets women, says Leslie Kemp Poole

An openness and willingness to question oneself are the foundations of democracy and should be defended robustly, argues Michael Ignatieff, president of Hungary’s Central European University, in a new book

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

The capital value of slaves made it possible for white livelihoods to flourish, writes Martin Myers

Exploring what comes first, religion or politics, can help us understand societal divides in the US, says Angelia Wilson

A grand tour of digital processes culminates with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular

A study of an amazing era of progress is as lively as the minds behind it, says Robert Lambourne

Book of the week: Linnie Blake is taken on an illuminating tour of the thematic evolution and history of the horror genre

Human beings’ need for religion goes far beyond the management of emotions, says Ursula King

Recording the day-to-day during the Holocaust did not restore victims’ sense of self, finds Dan Stone

Book of the week: In dire political times, Lyndsey Stonebridge discovers a welcome example of slow reading

The professor of urban form and society on the books that have inspired and influenced her work on social cartography

Over time, one symbol of dehumanisation has served different purposes, finds Catherine Molineux

Jenny Pickerill argues that we need more practical suggestions on how to tackle institutions’ resistance to decolonisation

This unusual and intellectually invigorating book should be an essential starting point for feeling our way ahead in this field, says Shane O’Mara

Robert Montgomerie is impressed by a novel account of the backbone’s evolution