Bangs and crashes

Sara Wheeler finds it hard to resist Tomás Graves' gentle memoir of growing up in Majorca, Tuning Up at Dawn.

Knickers ahoy

Joseph O'Connor is not convinced by either Patrick O'Brian's sketch of The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, or Nikolai Tolstoy's solidly written biography of the master and commander of sea-fiction.

Excess and the city

Los Angeles is the true star in Anthony Kiedis's Scar Tissue and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man.

Facades and feuds

Daniel Libeskind is a serious architect but his book, Breaking Ground, is bigger on bile and celebrity trivia than building.

Working on the railroad

Jonathan Mirsky is moved by Ian Denys Peek's One-Fourteenth of an Elephant, the horrific true story of the bridge on the River Kwai.

Breaking the Da Vinci code

Is there anything fresh to be written about Leonardo da Vinci? Lisa Jardine assesses biographies by Charles Nicholl and Martin Kemp.

Titter ye not

Graham McCann's fine new biography of Frankie Howerd includes examples of his routine but eschews the more intimate details, says Simon Callow.

Roman in the gloamin’

Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins tell the story of Roman Abramovich's meteoric rise, but it would take Charles Dickens to do it justice, says Rafael Behr.

Acting the giddy goat

Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats is an inspired study of America's war on terror, says Tim Adams.

The other man who tried to appease Hitler

Rich, well connected and with a fascination for politics, Lord Londonderry was that most useful of men - a perfect scapegoat. Ian Kershaw tells his story in Making Friends with Hitler.

Brief encounters

Peter Bogdanovich's collection of Hollywood profiles, Who The Hell's In It?, is long on hagiography, but short on substance, says Geraldine Bedell.

Day of the first Jackal

Frances Stonor Saunders tells how Sir John Hawkwood - looter, murderer, blackmailer and hero - helped to fund the Renaissance.

Don’t lose your sense of Uma

You'll find everything you wanted to know - and a little bit more - about Hollywood's one-time ugly duckling in Bryony Sutherland and Lucy Ellis's biography of Uma Thurman.

All at sea

Nikolai Tolstoy's rambling apologia for his grisly novelist stepfather, Patrick O'Brian, is a failure, says Rachel Cooke.