Books

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Richard Overy discusses the roads to hell that were paved with utopian intentions

Shahidha Bari is touched and troubled by a daughter's efforts to articulate her mother's decline

Lucy Wooding admires the balance of a tome that puts pre-Reformation England's religion on trial

An exploration of the dark side of the neuroscience force leaves Tristan Bekinschtein hungry for more

The popular narrative of US intellectual decay proves wide of the mark, James Wilsdon writes

Sarah Conner is diverted by the idea of a future in which sperm is no longer a reproductive prerequisite

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Deborah Rogers is moved by a feminist scholar’s meditation on the body, medicine and mortality

Christopher Belshaw prefers the style to the substance of this 'alternative' approach to wildlife

Mandy Merck evaluates a surprising study of a US icon's visionary, sometimes cosmic, cinema

The 'lone genius' relies on others, says Jon Turney, our most famous living thinker particularly so

Star who worked hard on understanding herself and others deserves better, opines Mary Evans

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Almost despite himself, Ken Plummer is beguiled by an eloquent elegy for queerdom’s camp old days

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

In Tudor England as now, being paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you, Helen Castor says

Natalie Gold on an attempt to solve the paradox of intentionally acting against one's best judgement

Exploration of neural connections could unlock the workings of the mind, says Nikolaus Kriegeskorte

Sound compression and mobile audio storage are changing how we listen, finds Hillegonda Rietveld

An illuminating guide maps out a fast-track course to a dazzling imperial overview for Ronald Mellor

The absence of the didactic from this study of lone parents makes it all the stronger, says Mary Evans

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Alan Collins lauds a text that strikes a balance between science, literature and reminiscence

A 'memoir of discovery' leaves Tara Smith longing to learn more of the man inside the hazmat suit

We all view our lives through tinted spectacles that shape our recollections, finds Helen Fulton

Barbara Stephens finds few clear pointers for the UK in the sobering tale of American dropout rates

Henry Farrell disentangles his Hitchcock from his super-nodes to reveal a pessimistic world view

Les Gofton reminds us that in popular music as in life, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery