Darkness falls
Steven Rose is fascinated by Extreme Measures, Martin Brookes's life of the father of eugenics, Francis Galton.
Dark hearts
Alexandra Fuller takes Peter Longworth on a hunt for demons in Scribbling the Cat, a grim journey through Zimbabwe's past.
Mirror writing
A thoughtful, witty book about journalism? Roy Greenslade is pleasantly surprised by Andrew Marr's My Trade.
Listening in
Peter Bradshaw applauds Hanif Kureishi's prickly but moving evocation of his father, My Ear at His Heart.
The burden of history
Linda Grant is moved by Amos Oz's quest to understand his mother's life and death against the background of the establishment of Israel, A Tale of Love and Darkness.
Plum pudding
Nigel Williams tucks into Robert McCrum's satisfying life of a comic master, Wodehouse.
Oh, mother
Joanna Briscoe is moved by the honesty and intimacy of contrasting tales of motherhood from Anne Enright and Siân Busby.
The turmoil that is modern Cambridge – according to the medievalist professor
Waste and weak management highlighted in latest attack.
Poetic licence
Jad Adams enjoys Diana Souhami's Wild Girls, a jolly romp through the rebellious life of Natalie Barney, heiress and seductress.
The technocrat of massacre
Chris Petit applauds David Cesarani's scrupulously objective portrait of Adolf Eichmann, a man 'rotten from the inside out'.
A side order of couscous
Giles Milton's remarkable tale of 18th-century slavery, White Gold, is a hidden nugget from the treasure house of history, says Tim Ecott.
Gilded pawn
John Freely follows a Turkish prince through Renaissance Europe in Jem Sultan. What a shame his sources are so bland, says Kathryn Hughes.