With one eye on as yet empty Christmas stockings and the other on cold winter’s nights, here is a short list of essential non-fiction titles recently released in paperback.
1) The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
This “biography” of cancer by a New York oncologist whisks readers from the first documented appearance of the disease to modern day battles to find a cure.
What the critics thought:
Alexander Linklater, Observer: “[A] great and beautiful book … The notion of “popular science” doesn’t come close to describing this achievement. It is literature”
Jervoise Andreyev, Spectator: “This is a book about the past not the future. Lots of talk about phenomenal successes in fortunately rare diseases, leukaemia, Hodgkins lymphoma and testicular cancer, but barely a word about pancreatic cancer, where treatment remains dismal. Nor about preventing cancer in the first place”
Published by Fourth Estate at £9.99
2) Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans
A history of ballet, pirouetting from its origins in the 18th century to the crisis its author (a former ballerina) believes is facing classical dance today.
What the critics thought:
Judith Flanders, Sunday Times: “Apollo’s Angels is not so much a history of dance, as a history of dance as an expression of its times … [A] tour de force”
Luke Jennings, Observer: “any analysis of ballet which fails to mention China or Japan, almost certainly the seedbeds of the next classical dance-boom, is wilfully self-limiting”
Published by Granta Books at £14.99
3) Amexica by Ed Vulliamy
A frontline account of the grisly drug war on the US-Mexico border from the award-winning British journalist. (Interesting if irrelevant fact: Vulliamy’s mother is the children’s author Shirley Hughes.)
What the critics thought:
Hugh Thomson, Independent: “a brilliant, rigorous analysis … he refuses to find easy answers to difficult questions”
Tamar Jacoby, New York Times: “Like all good travel writing, Amexica is vivid, colorful and exotic … But when it comes to policy, Vulliamy is an unreliable guide because he has so little interest in it”
Published by Vintage at £8.99
4) A Book of Secrets by Michael Holroyd
The Villa Cimbrone on the Amalfi coast provides the backdrop for this experimental group biography of three women who used to be (slightly) famous.
What the critics said:
Lisa Appignanesi, Observer: “[A] gem of a book … Reading this is a little like walking through a hall of mirrors into the final party of Proust’s great opus”
Mark Bostridge, Financial Times: “[It] soon dissolves into self-consciousness and sentimental abstractions”
Read an extract
Published by Vintage at £8.99
5) The Book of Books
by Melvyn Bragg
Everyone’s favourite bouffanted broadcaster works his popularising magic on the King James Bible.
What the critics said:
David Crystal, New Statesman: “Bragg’s strengths as a novelist yield an account that is personal and imaginative, full of excitement and energy … I have never read an account of the Bible quite so compelling”
Philip Hensher, Spectator: “A little less ‘enthusiasm’, in the 18th-century sense, and a little more detail, would have done his subject justice”
Published by Sceptre at £8.99
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