Books

From Lehman Brothers to La Leche League via disaster capitalism and 'the new retirement': new academic books worth adding to your reading list

Book of the week: A shared sense of precarity is at the heart of recent disparate mass protests, says Mary Evans

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A small tax hike for the cream of 1 per cent could fund college for the poorest, says Danny Dorling

A search for shared motifs in folklore and Classics is impressively broad-ranging, says Barbara Graziosi

Marianne Franklin on a guide to help people escape the attentions of public and private bodies capturing and capitalising on our online actions

Wageningen University president and author of Hamburgers in Paradise: The Stories Behind the Food We Eat on her appetite for good books, from Primo Levi to Claudia Roden.

Steven Yearley finds merit but not proven mileage in putting CO₂ on ice to arrest global warming

How does a dandy pay for his lifestyle? Clare Brant follows a rake’s descent into crime, dissolution and disrepute

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Beneath a bourgeois veneer is a secret history of defunct jobs and fascinating lives, says Paul White

Through a series of ‘creation stories’, E. Stina Lyon hears how individuals are breaking ground as they form families

From Saudi Arabia’s religious rebels to TTIP's unknown unknowns: new academic books worth adding to your reading list

The rich case study detail is akin to an engrossing chat with a psychiatrist friend, says Amy L. Milton

Lindsey Moore on a study of film and video from the Arabic-speaking world

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Ethics aside, no useful information is to be gained from ‘coercive questioning’, says Steven Rose

An intellectual tag team helped to steal workers’ time, bodies and then souls, Philip Roscoe learns

Marcus Chown on a brief, critically important guide to economic literacy

A Welsh town’s Boiz, Geeks and Emos are in urgent need of new scripts, finds John Field

Duncan Wu on a study of marriage and motherhood

Scary puddings, the art of succinctness and First World War myth-making: perspectives from the author of Have Bacteria Won?

A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past, by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy

Cait MacPhee on personal accounts of gender trouble in the sciences

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Book of the week: Brace yourself for unusual keepsakes in a study of our attachment to corpses, says Deborah Lutz

This study of Muslim relationships between hosts, guests and religion is timely, says Tehseen Thaver

James Stevens Curl on an architect who designed some of the great Victorian buildings but was unjustly maligned

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Vladimir Tismaneanu praises a study of the key players in East-West relations in the late 1980s 

Interpretation of what we are feeling should never be reduced to mere physiology, says Jane O’Grady

From the University of Chicago to ancient Rome via the ‘palaeo diet’ and China’s Three Gorges Dam: new academic books worth adding to your reading list

The responses to a UK-wide survey show how life chances are diverging, argues Danny Dorling

Deborah Longworth salutes the range and reach in Everything to Nothing

The history of a sanctuary where science meets art is an emotionally charged work, says Timothy Mowl

Howard P. Segal on a brilliant study exploring the conflict between free speech and instruction guides that may be used for violence

Vespucci, French military glory and recondite legal strategies: bibliographic confessions from the author of A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change – and the Limits of Evolution

A. W. Purdue on a study of the disparate groups in a movement often thought of as a united force

Caroline Osella on a fieldwork-based study of the attachments that develop among those in shanty towns

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Richard Murphy praises a bold effort to halt tax-dodging by the 1 per cent

Ruth Richardson on the capital city’s great mists and smogs that have inspired, harmed and killed

Robert Gellately on the truth behind how the Gestapo operated on a routine basis

Fred Inglis on the innumerable shows and figures from 50 years of popular culture

Janet Sayers on a study of the emergence of a new way of thinking about our inner world

Danny Dorling sees how bricks and mortar became part of the arsenal with which the US fought the Cold War

Helen Bynum lauds an exploration of the moral and social aspects of science through the evolution of a leading publication

Lara Cook lauds a study of the comrades who kept the Man of Steel company for 30 years

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Researchers must tell a good tale about their work without skewing the science, Cait MacPhee says

A highly readable study traces how both women became part of cultural and political networks that shaped the 20th century, writes Ulrike Zitzlsperger

The question of whether fictional representations of the past can offer as much insight as scholarly histories is tackled with verve, says Philip Kemp

Inequality in income lowers the life expectancy of everyone in society, says Marcus Chown

Richard Joyner on a remarkable but forgotten chemist

Lisa Hopkins on a defining time in the Bard’s career

From living rent-free to Madoff’s fraud, a study of scams forces us to face our sins, says Dick Hobbs

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

The Nazi leader aimed to convey taste and moderation with his interiors, says Neil Gregor

Anne Carter on the complex workings of our canine companions

Jonathan Mirsky on the treaties and extraterritoriality imposed on China in the decades after the Opium Wars