What did the Black Death ever do for us?
A history of the Black Death overlooks its more surprising developments
ByNon-fiction
Discover the latest non-fiction books and must-reads with the New Statesman’s expert reviews. Including biographies, music books, political writing and more.
Living with and without Paul Auster
Siri Hustvedt’s reflections on the death of her husband offer a wise meditation on grief and its many mutations
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The myth of English insularity
Tudor and Stuart England was more a porous nation than a sceptred isle
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Flesh, death and bohemia
Peter Hujar and Paul Thek were at the heart of New York’s 1960s art scene but preferred the fringes
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How cricket bent its rules
The game’s history is full of instances of foul play
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The real work of the working class
The history of the labour movement is less about class struggle than the fight for universal values
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How not to read JG Ballard
This new biography has done a great writer a disservice
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Confessions of a bibliomaniac
As the book appears to be dying off, we might finally be learning to appreciate it
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I read Russell Brand’s unreadable new book, for my sins
The controversial star’s conversion is more cult-like than Christlike
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What we lose when a language dies
Sophia Smith Galer’s book is a rallying cry against linguistic extinction
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AI will dissolve civilisation as we know it
Demis Hassabis has dedicated himself to guiding machine intelligence for the betterment of humanity – but is it listening?
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Private equity’s hostile takeover of Britain
Hettie O’Brien’s The Asset Class reveals how a morally dubious business financing model swallowed the public sector
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Patrick Radden Keefe’s obituary for Britain
In London Falling, the American journalist presents the capital as a dying, amoral city
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Jan Morris’s defiant life
The transgender travel writer was both temperamentally conservative and deeply unconventional
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Gwendoline Riley is haunted by herself
The author’s new novel, Palm House, lacks her usual virtuosity
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The Apple half-century
How the electronics company went from near bankruptcy to global dominance – and changed our lives along the way
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The Whig interpretation of Europe
Roderick Beaton’s spirited history of the Continent cannot square its idealism with the bloody story that it tells
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Surviving forced labour in wartime Berlin
Ian Buruma’s account of his father’s years in a German factory accounts department is moving but limited in scope
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The Rasputin legend
He dazzled the tsar and tsarina with his virile charisma. But, as Antony Beevor shows, he also inspired their demise
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We must love WH Auden or die
The poet was a restless spirit, haunted by his own Englishness
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