Long live couch potatoes!
A new book claims that laziness is the key to a lengthy and happy life. But not everyone is convinced, says Ian Sample.
Great expectations
Four new biographies suggest that the more we write about Alexander the Great, the less we understand him, says Rory Stewart.
Mob rule
Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies and Henry Hill and Gus Russo's Gangsters and Goodfellas shed new light on the FBI and the criminals they chase, says Clare Longrigg.
Buttered toast, but then you die
Jad Adams praises Bevis Hillier's life of John Betjeman - not just a poet of the English middle classes.
For the love of thought
Susan Sontag, the writer and cultural commentator, died on Tuesday. Here, fellow critics and academics remember a woman who was as warm in person as she was intellectually fierce in print.
Susan Sontag dies aged 71
Cultural critic called herself a 'zealot of seriousness'.
Susan Sontag obituary
The Dark Lady of American intellectual life, an aesthete who reorientated its cultural horizons.
Iraq’s library struggles to rise from the ashes
Remains of national history are slowly pieced together.
The world in 0s and 1s
Leader: The great library of Alexandria, it is said, came to be one of the world's greatest stores of learning by requiring visitors to the city to hand over books in their possession to be copied. Now Google is borrowing the trick.
Belle on her toes
Margot Fonteyn's story is remarkable, but Meredith Daneman could have given it a little more lift, says Judith Mackrell.
The outsider
William J Mann's Edge of Midnight captures all the complexity and creative energy of John Schlesinger, says Gavin Lambert.
Collins launches online dictionary to debate new words
Collins Dictionaries today launches an online Living Dictionary, in which netheads can suggest new words and argue over whether they should be added to the print version of the dictionary. By Stephen Moss.
Peer review
Uncorked: the science of champagne by Gerard Liger-Belair.
Top libraries to go online in deal with Google
Some of the globe's greatest literary treasures will soon be freely available on the internet under a deal announced between search engine Google and five of the world's top libraries. By Bobbie Johnson.