Too much bile, so little guile
Too many reviewers forget their primary function - to review books. Roy Hattersley assesses collections from Dale Peck and Nicholas Mosley.
All singing, all dancing, all screwed up
Wil Haygood lays bare the torments and obsessions that drove Sammy Davis Jr in a compelling biography, In Black and White.
Lost boys
Josh Lacey suggests Gazza could learn a thing or two from Ruy Castro's Garrincha, the retelling of a true football tragedy.
Pirate treasure
William Dampier started out as a buccaneer, but ended up a friend of the brightest luminaries of Restoration London. Kevin Rushby relishes Diana and Michael Preston's new biography, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind.
Rows and prows
Martin Cross on Tim Foster's timely story of his struggle to make it in the British rowing team, Four Men in a Boat.
‘We tried to tell them the sky would fall in’
Martin Bright is surprised by the narrative muscle of The 9/11 Commission Report.
Stand-up comics
Grown-up graphic novels addressing issues of loneliness, alienation and heart-breaking human failure. And not a caped crusader in sight, says Roger Sabin.
Size isn’t everything, Bubba
Paul Richards chooses new political writing worth spending the summer recess with - and some you might want to throw off the pedalo.
The people we’re allowed to hate
Michael Collins' 'biography of the white working class', The Likes of Us, confronts liberal prejudices, but also seems like an argument for insularity.
King of the wild frontiers
Chuck Palahniuk, the master of schlock, casts a gleeful eye at the extremes of sex and violence in America in Nonfiction.
From hysteria to history
The Secret Purposes, David Baddiel's self-consciously serious novel about Jews interned in Britain in the Second World War marks a brave change for the comedian.
Alexander the bloody brutal
In Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past, Paul Cartledge exposes the Macedonian as an uncultured gangster whose genius lay in luck.
And where are the lilacs?
Adam Feinstein neatly combines the music of Pablo Neruda's poetry and the whirl of his life.
Behind the barbed wire
David Baddiel's The Secret Purposes, is a delicately handled tale of German Jews interned in Britain during the second world war. It's just a pity that the main character is such a wimp says Eva Figes.
A love affair that survived even 9/11
Craig Unger's notably intelligent piece of investigative reporting, House of Bush, House of Saud, uncovers the corruption and greed that continues to hinder peace in the Middle East.