My life as a bitch
Kayla Williams can't deliver on the early promise of her US army memoir, Love My Rifle More Than You, says Carole Cadwalladr.
Down the long slide
Andrew Motion is entertained by Simon Gray's meandering musings in The Year of the Jouncer.
The ragged-trousered alchemist
Renaissance mage, visionary and militant medic - Philip Ball reveals Paracelsus as all that and much more in The Devil's Doctor, says PD Smith.
This charming man
Ian Sansom finds out all he needs to know about the New Yorker in Gardner Botsford's memoir, A Life of Privilege, Mostly.
In hock to Uncle Sam
Nicholas Lezard becomes better informed, and more dismayed, about the causes of Third World debt revealed by John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Wordsworth’s foreign affairs
James Fenton on Wordsworth's French mistress.
The muse knows best
Anthony Thwaite ponders Anthony Astbury's collection of poems chosen by sons, daughters and 'significant others', The Tenth Muse.
Hambling for the defence
The artist's conversations with Andrew Lambirth in Maggi Hambling: The Works reveal her independent streak, says Alex Clark.
The killer question
Sister Helen Prejean puts the compassion and fire of her public speaking into her compelling examination of the death penalty, The Death of Innocents, says David Rose.
When pork becomes a weapon in the sex wars
Hephzibah Anderson finds sex, death and satire as she rounds up the best of this month's first novels.
The all-seeing eye
From randy cats to Simon Callow, nothing escapes Simon Gray in his typically witty chronicle, The Year of the Jouncer, says Ranjit Bolt.
Humble beginnings
Ian Jack revisits his childhood home.
Mozart: the man and his myths
Lucasta Miller on a quartet of Mozartian biographies from David Cairns, Anthony Holden, Julian Rushton and Stanley Sadie.
Daddy knows best
Naomi Wolf completes her journey from radical feminist to cosy mum with a collection of her father's homilies, The Treehouse, says Rachel Cooke.