Browse books by title with CW new books archive feature.

White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties

Dominic Sandbrook

Few commentators have been prepared to dissent from the prevailing view of the Sixties as a period of exciting change. But Sandbrook revises our opinions about what many still venerate as a cherished myth. Outside the metropolis - or, rather, Chelsea, Mayfair and the West End - how far did Britain swing?

The Black Hole: Money, Myth and Empire

Jan Dalley

For an event which had a quasi-mythological hold on the British imagination, the legend of the Black Hole of Calcutta is shrouded in mystery. This book covers the formation of the East India company in great detail and then deals with the impact of the myth of the Black Hole on the British psyche.

Mandela: A Critical Life

Tom Lodge

Mandela’s life has already been documented so extensively that any potential biographer faces a daunting prospect. This book is not the revisionist account of Mandela’s life that the title might suggest. Where Lodge differs from other biographers is in the attention he pays to Mandela’s background and childhood.

Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It

Sue Palmer

Palmer’s book might be welcomed by teachers, but it does a real disservice to parents by reinforcing the widespread conception, among professionals at least, that they are not up to the job.

Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830

JH Elliott

The British and Spanish empires have both been closely and exhaustively studied separately, but Elliott’s book is an important synthesis. It is also an outstanding example of historical writing that manages to combine serious, rigorous historical scholarship with a style that commends it to the general reader. 

Where the Truth Lies - Trust and Morality in PR and Journalism

Julia Hobsbawm (ed)

What this book fails to address is precisely that which it sets out to explore - what level of effect on journalism does PR have? Does PR compromise or enhance the public’s understanding of the world? And is there sometimes a case to be made suggesting that PR offers a better degree of truth than journalism?

Muhajababes

Allegra Stratton

The book reveals a new type of devout, hijab-wearing girl who wears tight-fitting jeans, follows religious practices and yet loves the stream of pop video-clips appearing on Arabic television. These girls seem to represent the unpredictable fusion of Western commercialism with new-style spirituality.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

Alex Gibney

The explosive growth in risk trading was the result of risk aversion rather than, as the documentary suggests, a gung-ho mentality. The primary impetus for the growth of such financial instruments is as a sophisticated form of insurance rather than straightforward gambling.

An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World

Pankaj Mishra

Mishra deftly situates the Buddha in the context of modern and ancient creeds, quoting many artists, scientists, and philosophers, including ‘Albert Einstein [who] called Buddhism the religion of the future since it was compatible with modern science’.

China Syndrome

Karl Taro Greenfield

The book is about what China’s rash economic boom may unleash upon the rest of us. In every chapter we start afresh along the same formula, a new figure has an epiphany and realises that, yes, we probably are all going to die. Eventually. The laboriousness of the argument gets a little wearing.

Shattered Lives - Children Who Live with Courage and Dignity

Camila Batmanghelidjh

Batmanghelidjh claims to uphold the resilience of her subjects, but simultaneously denies them the agency needed to break free of the destructive cycles of abuse, or the intrusive recall of childhood traumas in later life, to which she insists they are or will be subject.

Human Nature - Fact and Fiction

Robin Headlam Wells and Johnjoe McFadden (eds.)

Two unifying principles inform the collection as a whole: it is time, after decades of postmodern critique, for the question of human nature, and humanism, to be brought back into intellectual sphere; and it is time, after an even longer period of academic specialisation, for interdisciplinary dialogue

Stranger in a Strange Land - Encounters in the Disunited States

Gary Younge

Arranged under four headings - War, Race, Politics and Culture - the collection is desperately in need of a strong editorial hand. Interested parties could probably make a better fist of it themselves: go to the Guardian website, do a search for ‘Gary Younge,’ and copy all the articles which appeal into a Word document. Hey presto! 

European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power

Immanuel Wallerstein

Wallerstein attempts no less than a history of European universalist thought from the sixteenth century to the present day. What emerges is a thin overview that continues to treat ideas as mere epiphenomena of the only logic that matters to Wallerstein: the inexorable expansion of capitalism.

The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950

Avner Offer

Offer provides a comprehensive examination of the problems associated with economic growth. But he confuses association with causation: it may be true both that affluence has increased and that happiness has not, but it does not necessarily follow that one caused the other.