How Not to be a Hypocrite: preface

This book is for parents who have a choice about what kind of school their children go to and find that the choice raises moral dilemmas.

East of Eden

Peter Jay finds valuable lessons for Tony Blair in DR Thorpe's biography of Anthony Eden

More means better

Lucasta Miller on Anna Stott's portrait of a woman torn between religion and the racy world of the London literati, Hannah More

Spookily empty

Richard L Holm's account of his time as a counter-terrorism expert with the CIA, The American Agent, is hamstrung by an instinct to give little away

The outer limit

François Bizot's account of his capture by the Khmer Rouge, The Gate, reveals the humanity and sensitivity that saved his life

From hero to zero

DJ Taylor is fascinated by the trials and tribulations of Julian Maclaren-Ross as told in Paul Willetts's biography of the Soho legend, Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia

The gene genius

50 years after the discovery of DNA, Brenda Maddox assesses the life of James Watson

Saved by a lie

Elena Lappin appreciates the feminist slant in Ruth Kluger's account of survival at Auschwitz in Landscapes of Memory

Superman in the mirror

Geoff Dyer welcomes Curtis Cate's unusually accessible biography of Friedrich Nietzsche

Full Nelson

Andrew Motion on the trials and triumphs of our first national hero in biographies from Edgar Vincent and James P McGuane

Arthur Brown

Eminent economist who applied Keynesian theory to the regions.

Her baleful legacy

Brenda Maddox's Maggie is an exhaustive study of the Iron Lady - but is it necessary, asks Hugo Young?

Teetering on the edge of sanity

Phillippe Petit's coup - a high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Centre - is described with lyrical urgency in To Reach The Clouds, finds Stephanie Merritt