Gun Crazy

A small but perfectly formed black-and-white masterpiece of flash and trash, writes Peter Bradshaw

What the Victorian artists did for us

Review: Victorians by Jeremy PaxmanAN Wilson finds much to admire in Jeremy Paxman's typically bracing overview of a once-neglected era of British art

20th Century Boys

It's odd how quaint the pre-millennium angst in this wearing adaptation of a popular sci-fi manga feels now, writes Cath Clarke

Sketching in the details of the Gardner heist

Ulrich Boser's retelling of the greatest art theft in modern times doesn't provide a solution but captures the dedication required to build up an art collection - and to steal it

As powerful in death as in life

Review: Khomeini's Ghost: Iran Since 1979 by Con CoughlinDominic Sandbrook enjoys a revealing biography of an unlikely icon of modern history

A love affair with a boorish boy

Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel by Edmund WhiteWhite demonstrates a felt affinity with the subject of this short and flawed book, writes James Purdon

Bourbon guerrilla

Who is the real Tom Waits? Graeme Thomson admires the finest attempt yet to unpick family man from boho myth

The Superior Civilization

Ants are so much a part of our everyday lives that unless we discover them in our sugar bowl we rarely give them a second thought, writes Tim Flannery

American Prometheus

This monumental biography offers the definitive portrait of J Robert Oppenheimer, says PD Smith

We’re all aliens now

Review: UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu GuoMaya Jaggi detects echoes of 9/11 in a story of Chinese totalitarianism

A Dream Within a Dream by Nigel Barnes

Review: A Dream Within a Dream by Nigel BarnesThis biography makes unusually good use of the author's letters, says John Dugdale

Danube blues

Review: Street Without a Name by Kapka KassabovaYou will know and feel for Bulgaria much more deeply than you did when you started, says Nicholas Lezard