Books

Lisa Hopkins enjoys an ingenious analysis of the ways that ‘discourses of mapping’ influenced attitudes to gender

Hetta Howes is impressed by a bold attempt to recover the words of long-forgotten women

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers 

Cait MacPhee enjoys an Antipodean analysis of the ‘heritage’ generated by space travel

Charlotte Jones enjoys an account of a hugely ambitious writer who challenges many of our assumptions about studying literature 

Book of the week: there’s something for everyone in this provocative study of sex, power and conflict, says Joanna Lewis

Book of the week: Jane O’Grady is impressed but not wholly convinced by an attempt to solve one of the most celebrated philosophical challenges

Madawi Al-Rasheed questions certain aspects of a survey of the events that convulsed the Arab world in 2011

Lincoln Allison enjoys a mixed bag of contributions about the wider contexts of sport

The author of The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492 discusses tracing the rises and falls of empires in atlases, understanding the pain of mass displacements and the pleasure of simultaneously reading and listening to music

John Anchor enjoys an account of where business schools have gone wrong

Danny Dorling suspects that class remains as meaningful as it always was 

Our fortnightly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers 

A. W. Purdue is sceptical about an analysis of the great debates about sexual and other freedoms that marked the dawn of a more permissive era

David Bell enjoys a lively overview of an era by ‘the doyen of post-war British history’

Chloe Chard is intrigued by an account of the short-lived fashion for lavishly illustrated hand-coloured travel books

James Stevens Curl is impressed by a detailed account of one of the world’s most celebrated buildings

Book of the week: Andrew Palmer is impressed by a bold survey of literature on both sides of the Iron Curtain

From football to religious intolerance and from witchcraft to Hollywood excess: our reviewers select a book they have recently read and would warmly recommend to others and another they look forward to or plan to read over the Christmas break

Our fortnightly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Suzanne Franks is unconvinced by the latest attempt to fight back against the symptoms of our post-truth world

John Gilbey is impressed by a bold attempt to assess just where AI is likely to lead us

Book of the week: Barnabas Calder applauds a bold attempt to assemble all the world’s architecture under one roof

Matthew Broome considers what psychiatrists can learn from the sheer variety of memoirs about mental illness

Lucy Bolton enjoys a sharp new analysis of getting philosophical about the cinema 

Bryan Cheyette considers an intriguing account of the stories we tell ourselves about slavery

Giulia Miller is intrigued by a little-known episode in early Israeli history

Richard J. Williams is not totally won over to the planners’ view of the world

Mateusz Zatoński is disappointed by an ambitious overview of the development of smoking

The former Sussex vice-chancellor on coming late to reading, his long fascination with India and different interpretations of the colonial era 

Book of the week: Emma Rees praises a brilliantly wide-ranging study of the menopause across the centuries

Catherine Rottenberg is inspired by a major new study of the great French feminist  

Gail Marshall applauds an intriguing study of the relations between Charles Darwin, George Eliot and Charles Dickens 

David Longman urges us to pay closer attention to the changes educational technology is bringing down the line

Richard Joyner enjoys a striking collection of testimonies that should help students settle on a suitable career path

Book of the week: Robert Eaglestone is fascinated by a bold attempt to break down the barriers between literary critics and ‘ordinary readers’

Our fortnightly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Jonathan Mirsky is fascinated by a book that calls into question some of the unexamined received wisdom about China under Mao

Sarah Kinkel is very impressed by a detailed account of how navigators learned their skills

Matthew Reisz is intrigued by a gentle stroll through the byways of the periodic table

David Lehmann assesses a journalistic account of clerical abuse in Central America

Lennard Davis is intrigued by an exceptionally wide-ranging account of the many things on which humans get high

Ann Hughes applauds a compelling analysis of the ways that Tudor England was open to the world

Rivka Isaacson is fascinated by an adventurous journey along the frontier between arts and science

Eleanor Lybeck explores the striking links between ‘textual overproduction’ in the 19th century and today

Jeff Ferrell is thrilled by a street’s eye view of the adventure of graffiti writing

Peter J. Smith enjoys a vivid, if perhaps idealised, account of life in one of the world’s great breweries

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers 

Book of the week: Deborah D. Rogers and Howard P. Segal find that the old ideals of meritocracy have been squeezed out of American higher education

Hugh Miall praises a bold new programme for putting an end to war

Nathan Abrams would have liked a wider range of examples in this study of how America’s most traumatic war was represented in the cinema

Book of the week: Mihir Desai wonders whether a wide-ranging account of the stories economists tell risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater

Kalwant Bhopal finds that the brave progressive new world technology enthusiasts have promised us is just as tainted by racism as the familiar analogue world

Ellen T. Armour applauds a powerful account of the role photography played in the struggles over slavery

Martin De Saulles appreciates a subtle analysis of consciousness and what it means for artificial intelligence

Richard Joyner considers a lively overview of all things solar

Benjamin Ivry is disappointed by an uncritically enthusiastic account of the great Broadway composer

Sophie Read enjoys a vivid account of how four women who met at Oxford before the First World War went on to forge lives and careers for themselves

Book of the week: Angelia Wilson applauds a bold new analysis of how the Republican Party’s determination to appeal to patriarchal, racist and religious voters reshaped politics in the US

The author of The Fire Is upon Us on childhood obsessions, racial identity and the power of primary sources