Are emojis killing language?
Keith Houston’s history of the little emoticons charts how quickly technology has changed how we think and communicate.
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.
The Salt Path and the sins of memoir
We are all unreliable narrators of our own lives.
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Samuel Pepys’s diary of a somebody
Kate Loveman’s history of a national treasure preserves Pepys’s charm while revealing a discomfiting historical world.
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Xi Jinping’s daddy issues
The Chinese president’s concept of power was forged by the suffering of his revolutionary father, Xi Zhongxun.
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Six journeys that changed the world
The 20th century, for better and for worse, was the communist century.
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How to read Morgan McSweeney
Why is the Starmer’s chief adviser turning to Alexander Karp, a Silicon Valley billionaire, for inspiration?
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Ignore the pessimists – we are living through a literary golden age
Literature is booming. Literary culture needs to catch up.
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How terror came home on 7/7
In Three Weeks in July, Adam Wishart and James Nally show how the Islamist bomb attacks of July 2005 changed…
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The endless variety of England’s folk traditions
Lally MacBeth’s attempt to chronicle of-the-people culture in detail is a treasure trove of both British folk memory and new…
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The earworms of Erik Satie
The dapper composer who invented background music was driven by a profound if offbeat religiosity.
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Jacinda Ardern’s unexamined life
In her memoir, the former prime minister seems more concerned with the symbols of politics than the actual politics the prompted…
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Giorgia Meloni’s selective memory
The Italian prime minister’s autobiography revises her and her country’s history. But Meloni’s success is a template for right populist…
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How a Moscow archivist exposed the KGB, file by file
Gordon Corera’s account of the audacious counter-intelligence operative Vasili Mitrokhin is non-fiction that reads like a spy thriller.
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How to do it like a movie star
The lessons an intimacy coordinator is teaching the film industry about real sex apply off screen and on.
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Princess Diana’s kinder Britain
A new biography plays down the royal’s cultural impact – but she softened the hard edges of the Thatcher era.
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The ghost of Muriel Spark
In her work and life the writer was obsessed with biography – but when she authorised her own she loathed…
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English literature’s last stand
Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline finds itself on the margins of modern society.
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How Russia became a franchise of the Wagner Group
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup was the beginning, not the end of a new age of mercenary conflict.
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The People’s Republic of iPhone
How Apple unwittingly assisted China’s global technological dominance.
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Have we reached peak humanity?
Johan Norberg’s history of civilisation is an impressive conceptual achievement – but it has little to say about our own…
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