In 1981, Philip Norman published Shout!, an exuberant account of the Beatles’ chaotic existence. A 500-page tome that divided fans along the usual lines of Lennon v McCartney, it earned Norman the reputation – largely true – of being “anti-Paul”. This follow-up is a tribute to his bespectacled idol that, at 800-plus pages, expresses his admiration in both words and sheer tonnage.

The Life sets out to be the last [...]

It is fitting that the illustrious house of Wittgenstein – largely remembered for Ludwig’s brilliance as a philosopher – is chronicled by Alexander Waugh. Himself a scion of a very public, larger-than-life dynasty, Waugh traces the lives of Vienna’s most prominent clan with the same candour that made his recent family autobiography such a treat.

Karl Wittgenstein, patriarch of this clan, was an iron and mining magnate well known in [...]

Hampstead, some time in the 1990s: a gruff, possibly hungover thirtysomething who proffers what looks like a pink raffle ticket. "Your membership card," he explains, as he starts to serve the stern-faced Hal Hartley fan who is fidgeting behind you. It's a short climb of the stairs to the sunken seats of the auditorium, above which the barrel-like ceiling looms as if you were in the belly of the biblical [...]

Weaving Faustian parable with Soviet satire, Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel is a curious and daring choice for SelfMadeHero’s new range of literary adaptations. Credited as an early example of magic realism, the novel charts the misadventures of the black magician Woland as he descends upon the resolutely atheistic Moscow of the 1930s. It soon transpires that Woland is, in fact, the devil, and his onstage conjuring tricks are all too real. [...]

Ernie Weiss is a down-and-out magician with a booze problem, reeling from the failure of a disastrous romance and the shadow of his brother’s mysterious death. Weiss is fast approaching the end of his tether. So his reunion with his increasingly senile mentor (who has escaped from his care home) seems like a perfectly natural turn of events: they are two outcasts from a society that has left the magic [...]

Born in Beirut in 1978, Toufic el-Rassi emigrated as a child to Chicago, fleeing the ravages of the Lebanese Civil War. His memoir is a deeply personal indictment of America’s treatment of the Arab world, from Hollywood’s racism to the hypocritical War on Terror.

From a young age, el-Rassi found his identity challenged, beset on all sides by the small-minded prejudices of pop stars, film-makers, classmates and even teachers. “I [...]

Winner of the Best Book prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Blue Pills is a fearless memoir that chronicles the “worries and desires” of a relationship complicated by HIV.

Fred is an artist living in Geneva, where he meets Cati at a house party. First impressions are vague but promising. “I remember wondering if we were actually very alike or very different,” he ponders, thinking little of the encounter [...]

Despite the sentimental overtones, Weller’s account of the lives of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon is a vital record of musicians who, for too long, have stood in the shadow of their male peers.

It is far from perfect. Though its many testimonials from “intimates” and contemporaries lend it an air of credibility, it also creates the impression of a writer gingerly passing the buck. At one point, [...]

Rum is the “demon” beverage favoured by pirates, slavers, buccaneers and, as the French historian Alain Huetz de Lemp once declared, “all the vagabonds who scoured the New World”. The Nation correspondent Ian Williams’s micro-historical journey looks beyond this reputation to uncover a heady past at the very heart of world trade.

From its Caribbean-Creole origins to its significance in Castro’s Cuba, Williams traces the drink’s biography with a connoisseur’s [...]

"It sounded like an operatic cow yodelling in a mineshaft, after falling down the mineshaft." A studio engineer turns up the reverb, but to no avail: the lead singer's girlfriend is killing the best song. "Just because someone can hold a tambourine doesn't mean they can play it. Just because you're fucking someone doesn't mean you should give them a tambourine to hold." And certainly not a microphone. Toby Litt's [...]