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
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.
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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Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the death of the Hollywood dream
In the 1970s, an ingenious trio of film auteurs conquered Hollywood. But is the renaissance now over?
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The rise of British Muslims
What do two politicians’ memoirs reveal about the changing fortunes of British Muslims in public life?
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Melvyn Bragg’s class act
Was his success “social mobility”, or just good luck?
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Michael Pollan’s hunt for consciousness
We have it. Plants have it. Machines may soon have it. Why do they all need one?
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The breaking of nation-states
Utopian visions of an internationalist future ring hollow in dystopian times
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Gisèle Pelicot is not your hero
In her new memoir, Pelicot rejects the pedestal she has been put on
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Gavin Newsom knows he’s shallow
The California governor is honest about his own ambitions
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Nintendo: the company that consoled the world
The gaming corporation succeeded by shunning the slaughter and darkness that drives so many franchises
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How to turn breast milk into a cash cow
The market for erotic lactation, IVF and surrogacy is a morally complex world of desperation and exploitation
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The violence at the heart of the CCP
Frank Dikötter charts the rise of Chinese communism through its brutality. But does he undervalue the role of ideas?
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Uncovering Russia’s dark soul
The country’s vast woods have been overlooked in our understanding of its violent history
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