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Isolationist superpower or still ‘the world’s policeman’? Two books explore the competing impulses in US politics
. . . but getting the messaging correct is not always child’s play
Is the term ‘white privilege’ doing more harm than good? Three insightful books look at anti-Semitism, migration and class amid the battle to end racism
Two books encourage us to look at life afresh — via the senses and cultivating a sense of wonder in our day-to-day lives
What can the age-old discipline of inquiry teach us about how we live our lives?
From Genghis Khan to Caesar, Simon Sebag Montefiore’s entertaining new take on the history of the world is told via some rather troubling relatives
Three books examine the challenges — from schoolyard to workplace — faced by boys and men as they adapt to their changing status in the modern world
Sixteen years after The Road, the arrival of two new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, marks a major literary event
A century after its demise, the effects of the end of empire are still being felt
America’s higher education leads the world — yet at home it feeds social inequality and economic stress. Can it be fixed?
Two books — by Matthew Hollis and Robert Crawford — mark the centenary of a landmark in literature, one of the most admired and imitated poems ever written
The economist who predicted the 2008 crash warns of disturbingly plausible calamities, from climate to currency and debt crises
Two new books — by Anna Arutunyan and Samir Puri — do a fine job of placing the hostility in its larger historical, geopolitical and social contexts
An economic history of the last century recalls a period that improved and redefined the lives of billions — yet also enabled war and environmental destruction
Alison Bashford explores the ideas of two generations of a scientific dynasty
Ian Kershaw’s essays explore whether 20th-century leaders seized power through sheer force of personality or were mere opportunists
Two new books celebrate a group of towering intellects who helped shape today’s views of self and freedom
Three books offer insights into New Delhi’s relationship with the US and China — and ask where the rising nation will go from here
Rich in detail and deeply researched, Keith Fisher’s history covers oil from Mesopotamia to the first world war
Four books look beyond the clichés of the property boom to examine the precarious reality of those forced to rely on an overgrown private rental market
Former Fed chair Ben Bernanke and historian Edward Chancellor offer conflicting perspectives on the crisis in central banking
Three books argue for a better understanding of the continent’s demographic and social diversity
Two books, one by the ex-governor and another by professor Ho-fung Hung, offer insights into China’s savage repression of the former British colony
The Antigua-born, African-American writer on the ‘nightmare’ legacy of colonialism, the importance of finding truth in fiction — and her garden as a source of inspiration
Can agriculture solve the problems it helped to create? Three books suggest ways to sustain humanity without destroying the planet
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