This Month
- Opinion
- Visual art
Too many children are being encouraged to follow their dreams
If history has taught us anything, it’s that there are no risks to a young artist giving up on their dreams.
- Ed Cumming
‘If I stand behind Mandela and he gets shot, I’ll take a bullet, too’
In the final years of apartheid in South Africa, a young doctor was asked to prepare for an assassination attempt on current and future presidents.
- Peter Friedland and Jill Margo
July
What it’s really like when you write a bestseller
Bonnie Garmus’ late literary success has been welcome but not as she imagined.
- Theo Chapman
- Opinion
- Publishing
Why influencer publishing is bad for the book industry
Why a new Ebury imprint by the social media entrepreneur Steven Bartlett is bad news for books.
- Sarah Manavis
‘Paris is the perfect place for older women’
Sarah Wilson is living her dream life in a city she says treasures lively arguments and genuine curiosity over wealth and property. This is how she spends her weekends.
- Hans van Leeuwen
Did ‘meme magic’ create the American extreme right?
A new book, ‘Black Pill’, looks at the world of neo-Nazis and the way in which the online world has spilled into the real one.
- Becca Rothfeld
June
How the tech elite went from disruptors to disrupted
Some of the world’s most powerful business executives allowed themselves to be seduced by Donald Trump.
- Kara Swisher
May
China’s curse is to raise hopes and dash them
In her book “Wild Ride”, an American journalist details her life in China as it opened to the world, then regressed back to an oppressive, inward-looking regime.
- Anne Stevenson-Yang
How Reese Witherspoon built a multimillion-dollar empire on books
The businesswoman’s book club may not make money from sales, but it offers an opportunity to option stories that can be turned into TV shows by her production company.
- Elisabeth Egan
Five new business books to read this month
Lessons from venture capital, problems with innovation, and tips and tricks on learning new things.
- Andrew Hill, George Hammond, Leo Cremonezi and Bethan Staton
Famous, poor and gay, this lawyer scandalised her class, and country
Constance Debré left her husband for women. Denied custody of her son, she turned the story into a book that shocked France.
- Claire Allfree
April
This writer packs a lot into her weekends and still finds time to work
Lauren Groff is an athlete, a mother, a best-selling writer and she’s taking on the censors in her home state of Florida. She describes her typical Saturday and Sunday.
- Lauren Sams
Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece
In “Knife”, the author recounts his wounds and recovery in graphic detail, a documentary record which he leavens with humour.
- Erica Wagner
Here’s a puzzle: what is a cruciverbalist’s job?
Should they reflect the linguistic biases of a paper’s readership, or correct those leanings?
- Becca Rothfeld
March
This woman is like ‘the Beatles for children’
You might not have heard of her, but Raina Telgemeier is an author who defines a generation of children’s literature, and whose books have encapsulated a generation’s experience of childhood.
- Jordan Kisner
Why we should revisit the dramas of postwar France
Author Julian Jackson says French history over the last century is full of thrills and spills that have fresh relevance in an era of tawdry politics.
- Andrew Clark
Investment banks’ secrets revealed in insider’s new novel
After 20 years at the likes of Barrenjoey, Deustche Bank, ABN Amro and Jarden, Jill Valentine explores leadership styles, drug-fuelled parties and the dark art of “blue hushing” in her fiction.
- Jemima Whyte
February
Why ‘romantasy’ books are in a sales boom
Readers are devouring spicy tales of dragon riders, beautiful assassins and brooding faerie lords, and say there’s no “guilt” in this pleasure.
- Lucy Dean
Forget the 5am club; this famous author is up at 3am – even on Sundays
Edinburgh-based Sir Alexander McCall Smith writes in the wee hours, and then goes back to bed and starts the weekends again later, with fried eggs and bacon.
- Fiona Carruthers
The expert who unmasked a Hitler forgery and appraised Nixon’s papers
Safeguarding History is a fun read about the life of a history expert who hobnobs with the rich and famous.
- Michael Dirda
