A world built on sand
Ed Conway’s Material World shows that despite our digital lives it is rocks and minerals that power the global economy.
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.
Susan Sontag’s women problem
In the feminist thinker’s essays of the 1970s, members of her sex are portrayed as political pawns rather than human…
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The ultra-processed food swindle
Engineered to trick our taste buds and appetites, artificially produced food is ruining our health and damaging our children. But…
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The Jewish vaccine pioneer forgotten by history
Simon Schama wants the post-pandemic world to learn from the case of Waldemar Haffkine: a tragic story of how prejudice…
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A life in books and why prizes matter
Also this week: the art of rejecting authors and how all the best stories are true.
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How germs shape history
Jonathan Kennedy’s Pathogenesis reveals how diseases have built and broken empires and economies.
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From the war in Ukraine to the life of Roger Deakin: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Anna Metcalfe’s Chrysalis and Octavia Bright’s This Ragged Grace.
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Be more tree
We admire trees for their solitary strength, but it is their remarkable facility for collaboration and sharing that provides lessons…
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Soldiers in love
Men at War, Luke Turner’s tender account of servicemen’s transgressive private lives, transforms our understanding of the Second World War.
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The brutality of ballet
Alice Robb’s Don’t Think Dear reveals how the elite world of dance exerts a terrible physical and mental toll.
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Is a feminist marriage possible?
A new history takes in everything from ancient Roman weddings to Don’t Tell the Bride to ask: can we redefine…
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From Amy Key to Tom Clark: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Eve by Claire Horn and A Stranger in Your Own City by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
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George Eliot’s marriage plot
In her work, the novelist developed a radical philosophy of relationships. In her life, she put it into practice.
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Where are all the good books on sex?
Polly Barton’s “oral history” of porn shows the myopia of cultural criticism drawn from personal experience. We desperately need a…
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Now that I have cancer, how should I live?
Once a death sentence, my diagnosis has proved a weird limbo of scattered treatment and blurred identities.
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The new politics of time
How should we spend our hours in the age of burnout? Arguably not by reading Jenny Odell’s frustrating new book,…
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Adam Gopnik’s pursuit of the perfect sentence
The New Yorker journalist’s latest book, The Real Work, sheds light on a career spent obsessively attempting to master the…
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Nigel Biggar’s whitewashing of empire
The historian is right that Britain’s colonial legacy is morally complex. So why is his defence of it so simplistic?
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The best non-fiction books for 2023
From politics and Big Tech to history and identity, the essential books for the year ahead.
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Why we need the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction
We might be tempted to see prizes for women as less necessary with each passing year – but non-fiction is…
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