A world built on trash
Oliver Franklin-Wallis’s Wasteland shows how our rubbish creates an environmental and human catastrophe.
ByBook reviews
Read all the latest book reviews from the New Statesman and discover the best novels, non-fiction, essays and biographies. If you’re looking for something more specific, explore our sections dedicated to politics books and history books.
The women classical music forgot
Leah Broad’s Quartet restores the pioneering work and colourful lives of Britain’s finest female composers.
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Milan Kundera’s identity crisis
In renouncing his homeland and despairing of European culture, the Czech novelist walks in the footsteps of Kafka.
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Goodreads is degrading our literary culture
Everyone can, and should, be a critic. But the reviews website is having a sinister effect on books.
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The monsters of feminist art
How the audacious artists of the Seventies embraced disgust and redefined female beauty.
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A world built on sand
Ed Conway’s Material World shows that despite our digital lives it is rocks and minerals that power the global economy.
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The problem with smart thinking
We can’t all be philosophers, but a whole genre of bad books will try to make you one.
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Making a murderer
Mark O’Connell’s portrait of a notorious Irish killer becomes a study of the desire to turn reality into fiction.
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Trapped in the generation gap
Jean Twenge’s new study suggests that the young are the losers in a society transformed by technology.
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Caroline Calloway’s Scammer: a chaotic attempt to set the record straight
In her self-published memoir, the influencer veers between sharp wit and trite aphorisms, perceptive candour and petty insults.
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Britain’s race delusion
Tomiwa Owolade argues that American culture wars obscure black British identity – but are racial borders less fixed than he…
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The family doctor knows best
A sweeping history of the NHS and one GP’s inside account of a long career on the front line.
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Cormac McCarthy’s existential Westerns
In his career-defining Border Trilogy, the late novelist summoned the ghosts of America’s bloody history.
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Too big to blame: the great Libor cover-up
Andy Verity’s Rigged reveals how a few City bankers became scapegoats for a national rates-rigging scandal.
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Losing the Wager
In his gripping new book, David Grann reveals the imperial rivalry and hubris that lay behind an 18th-century mutiny.
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Peter Turchin’s empty prophecies
The social scientist has made a career from predicting global instability. But in the new book End Times, his analysis…
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The new age of perfectionism
Is capitalism itself causing millennial burnout?
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From Jacqueline Rose to Kira Yarmysh: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Encounterism by Andy Field and Art Firsts by Nick Trend.
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How to survive a nuclear holocaust
A luxury hotel protects the affluent in Sven Holm’s Termush, a rediscovered 1967 dystopia that sheds light on our own…
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How germs shape history
Jonathan Kennedy’s Pathogenesis reveals how diseases have built and broken empires and economies.
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