Books

Drunken, bawdy, creative - English character owes much to 18th-century pleasures, says Timothy Mowl

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Les Gofton hitches a very enjoyable ride with a silver surfer heading towards the future

Steven Yearley is beguiled by smart and provocative essays that herald the arrival of profound change

Mary Evans on the politics of corporate crime and its social costs for the poor in the global South

Prince of Darkness or bringer of the light of modernisation? Vernon Bogdanor on Labour's chiaroscuro genius

Too many cheeses can drive society crackers. Slovenian scholar Renata Salecl tells Matthew Reisz about the paralysing effects of the Western ideology du jour: the 'tyranny of choice'

Tim Birkhead appreciates a great science writer's somewhat erratic tour of avian fidelity and infidelity

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

The fate of humans and that of the entire Universe is unknowable but intriguing, finds Simon Mitton

Beneath the political theory, the future: Tim Unwin asks whether it is still too soon to tell what May '68 meant

Lloyd Bradley finds this eclectic trawl through the profession's alleged killers a lot to stomach

Robert Appelbaum savours a small remembrance of gateaux past and is left hungry for more

Darren Paffey finds that the US attitude to bilingualism has been driven by blinkered politics

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Don MacRaild salutes a witty, readable and epic journey through the many-hued past of the Emerald Isle

Robert Eaglestone finds little narrative fire in a gossipy account of a life-shaping relationship

Stephen Bales welcomes a comprehensive challenge to a reductionist reification

Some archive trawling and analysis would have improved this fine narrative, says Andrew Knapp

Has a sexualised net brought democratic freedom or digital exploitation? Alison Adam mulls the issue

Amid the decline of newspapers, Frank Webster finds hope in the rise of the citizen journalist

A team of thinkers roll up their sleeves and tackle the things we've left undone. Les Gofton looks on

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Jules Pretty looks at the changing face of our ecosystems, warts and all

Oxford historian Ruth Harris' career makes her ideally suited to revisit the scandal that tore French society apart in the 1890s, writes Matthew Reisz

Early policemen have long been seen as bumblers. But they were undervalued, finds Stephen Wade