Two cures for what Ailes you: the brilliant biographies of fantastic Mr Fox

Media titan or the man who broke America? Inspirational leader or terrifying tyrant? A guide to the two lives of Roger Aisles

NSA codenames: can you tell fact from fiction?

Can you tell which of these terms refers to covert activity by your government, and which comes from a Bourne thriller?

World war letters: soldiers’ writings to loved ones reveal frustrations

Wives and Sweethearts is a book that delves into the National Army Museum archives to offer tales of women left behind

Literary project honours Baghdad’s devastated bookselling district

Hundreds of writers and artists prepare tributes to Iraq's historic books hub, Al-Mutanabbi Street, hit by car bomb in 2007

I am a homosexual, mum

Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina reveals a lost chapter from his 2011 memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: as relevant as ever

Theo Hobson: Jean-Jacques Rousseau – part 1: The philosopher's thought still has the power to challenge our deepest assumptions on identity, religion and the Enlightenment

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I by Richard Ned Lebow – review

Richard Ned Lebow imagines how European history would have unfolded if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated in 1914, writes Ian Thomson

Alexandre Dumas: swashbuckling musketeers are only half the story

John Dugdale: The BBC's adaptation of The Three Musketeers departs strikingly from the original, with its 23-year-old D'Artagnan, its Made In Chelsea lookalike and its pistols, but such liberty-taking ignores Dumas's influence as a seminal historical novelist

Anne Brontë: the unsung sister, who turned the gaze on men

Beulah Maud Devaney: Charlotte and Emily Brontë gave us romanticised, byronic heroes, but Anne refused to wear rose-tinted glasses when dealing with male alcoholism and brutality

Inside Llewyn Davis: the book behind the Coen brothers film

Bob Dylan called him his first New York muse, yet Dave Van Ronk never gained the recognition he deserved. Inside Llewyn Davis draws on his story. By Richard Williams

12 Years a Slave: the book behind the film

As Steve McQueen's Oscar favourite 12 Years a Slave opens at cinemas, Sarah Churchwell returns to the 1853 memoir that inspired it – one of many narratives that exposed the brutal truth about slavery, too long ignored or sentimentalised by Hollywood

January’s Reading group: Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon

This month, our look at the first world war begins with a long run-up from a gilded Edwardian age. Sign up now!

Big Brother is watching you e-read Mein Kampf

Richard Lea: The supposed privacy which has sent electronic editions of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf soaring up the charts isn't really all that private