Book reviews
Glutton for punishment
With its vast areas of barely explored wilderness, and its heady mix of the sublime, the bizarre and the lushly seductive, South America would appear to have all the ingredients… Read more
A grief ago
The cautionary slogan ‘less is more’ has never been the American writer Joyce Carol Oates’ watchword. The cautionary slogan ‘less is more’ has never been the American writer Joyce Carol… Read more
Sins of the fathers
The trouble about writing a history of the popes is that there are so many of them. Usually elderly when elected, most of them have only lasted a few years.… Read more
The masters in miniature
Jeremy Treglown finds something for everyone in Penguin’s new Mini Modern series It’s a cool silver-grey in colour, weighs two and a half ounces and fits flexibly into your pocket.… Read more
A clash of commerce and culture
Other People’s Money — and How the Bankers Use It by Louis D. Brandeis was a collection of articles about the predatory practices of big banks, published in book form… Read more
Iron in the blood
How curious that such an outsize man, in physique as well as personality, should be remembered today mainly for giving his name to a small fish. For the 19th century,… Read more
A chorus of disapproval
At more than 700 pages including appendices, Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (Faber & Faber, £17.99) certainly can’t be accused of skimping… Read more
Design for living
The first thing to be said about this remarkable book is that it has nothing to do with animal rights. The title is borrowed from the archaic Greek poet Archilochus,… Read more
‘We’ll always have Paris’
The long war between France and the US has its liveliest consequence in the world of film: Hollywood does movies, the French do cinema. In terms of equipment, the Yanks… Read more
Rogues’ gallery
The distinguished writer Brian Masters in his handsomely produced book on the actors of the Garrick Club has set himself a formidable task. Not only, until he reaches the mid-20th… Read more
The missing millions
The collapse of the Soviet Union spawned an entire genre of literature: the Gulag memoir, produced by victims of the USSR’s concentration camps. A few masterpieces were published in the… Read more
Triumph and disaster
The title of this first novel refers to a version of childhood as a magical kingdom where evil can be overturned and heaven and earth remade at the whim of… Read more
Nostalgie de la boue
In the late 1960s I grew up in the London borough of Greenwich, which in those days had a shabby, post-industrial edge. Behind our house on Crooms Hill stood a… Read more
Pastures new
On 20 September 1949, five days after his election as Chancellor of the newly created German Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer addressed the Bundestag: ‘Much unhappiness and much damage’, he told… Read more
Massacre of the innocents
‘La justice flétrit, la prison corrompt et la société a les criminels qu’elle mérite’ — Justice withers, prison corrupts, and society gets the criminals it deserves. ‘La justice flétrit, la… Read more
The family plot
Hisham Matar is a Libyan-American writer whose father, Jaballa — an opponent of Gaddafi — was kidnapped in Cairo in 1990. Hisham Matar is a Libyan-American writer whose father, Jaballa… Read more
A bit of a softie
Tom Bower’s fearsome reputation as a biographer preceded him in the Formula One paddock. Tom Bower’s fearsome reputation as a biographer preceded him in the Formula One paddock. His devastating… Read more
‘This time it will be different’
There used to be two rules of successful imperialism. First, don’t invade Russia. Second, don’t invade Afghanistan. As Rodric Braithwaite points out, invading the latter country itself offers no real… Read more
Ravishing beauty
For a composer who gave so much delight to so many, Ravel occupies a peculiar position in 20th-century music. Stravinsky’s famous description, ‘the most perfect of Swiss clockmakers’, still brings… Read more
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