How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying: Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko’s Fight for Ukraine by Lara Marlowe - nuanced, frank, remarkable
A careful and pointed portrait of sentiment in wartime Ukraine that shows the country is not quite as it is viewed in the West
The Red Emperor. Xi Jinping and the New China: An exceptional Machiavellian operator
A hard-drinking womaniser whose political skills have not been matched by competence in governance?
Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic by Nabila Ramdani – A persuasive case
The author cites the military coup mounted in Algiers on May 13th, 1958, as the source of many of the problems that beset France today
Massacre in the Clouds: it is a fine work and will go some way to restoring this incident to the mainstream of history
The title is a pointed correction of the misnomer ‘the battle above the clouds’, by which the slaughter was known at the time
What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?; Hope and Despair: Israel’s Future in the New Middle East; Hamas: The Quest for Power; Blindness: October 7 and the Left
Oliver Farry on What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh & Hope and Despair: Israel's Future in the New Middle East by Michael A Horowitz; Hamas: The Quest for Power; Hadley Freeman Blindness: October 7 and the Left
The End of Everything by Victor Davis Hanson: Splendid and compulsively readable despite one weakness
Magisterial accounts of four cataclysmic case studies make this a must for anyone with an interest in ancient and premodern history
Private Equity by Carrie Sun: A tale of corporate burnout
Most observers of this condition will sense what lies in store but our narrator has a beatific view of the corporate world
Final Verdict: A Holocaust Trial in the Twenty-First Century review: Deft analysis that takes in author’s family history
Tobias Buck digs into how Germany dragged its feet on denazification and prosecutions for decades after war
Gaza Diaries. Don’t Look Left by Atef Abu Saif - vital testimony from a man who survived ‘only by mistake’
This outstanding book details the privations and inconveniences that beset a population under constant attack, and also the psychological torment the situation engenders
Rebel Island: The incredible story of Taiwan: a brisk narrative related with style and brio
A splendid portrait of layers of identity and resistance in what is no less a settler society than the United States
Our Enemies Will Vanish by Yaroslav Trofimov: An excellent first draft of Russia’s war on Ukraine
This is a much-needed retelling of the first year of the invasion, even as the passage of time seems to favour the Russians
Trapped in History: Kenya, Mau Mau and Me by Nicholas Rankin - Engaging and elegantly written
The former BBC correspondent shrewdly puts Kenya’s history in the context of the wider wave of decolonisation sweeping the world
Four books on the Holocaust: ‘The first thing to wither away is the instinct of disgust’
Cold Crematorium by József Debreczeni; I Seek a Kind Person by Julian Borger; Lovers in Auschwitz by Karen Blankfeld; and One Life by Barbara Winton
Going Infinite: a rush job that’s already dated
More casual readers will find Going Infinite a bit of a slog because it goes into the weeds of the world of cryptocurrencies and presumes prior familiarity with it on the part of the reader
Homelands by Timothy Garton Ash: A tour of Europe with a clear-headed chronicler of the Continent
A fervent supporter of the EU, Garton Ash is still critical of its missteps, and while he has a clear affection for Europe, he is not misty-eyed about it