The Yoko Ono problem
As David Sheff’s new biography reveals, decades of suspicion aimed at the provocative artist, musician and widow have obscured her…
ByNon-fiction
Discover the latest non-fiction books and must-reads with the New Statesman’s expert reviews. Including biographies, music books, political writing and more.
The cyclical history of abortion rights
The past has been marked by periods of acceptance and intolerance of women’s bodily autonomy. Can it offer lessons for…
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Why you can’t trust economists
Dispassionate discussions of financial markets are often political statements in disguise.
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The Beatles’ brilliant friendship
The Paul McCartney-John Lennon bond is a great story of boys and men, class and fame, love and jealousy
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How not to build a nation
Britain and the US lack the political will and legal means to innovate.
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Our overdiagnosis epidemic
How a marked rise in the treatment of certain conditions – physical and mental – is harming, not protecting, public…
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Dante’s divine autofiction
How the Italian poet’s search for self-knowledge changed the course of literature.
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Art and the ruins of the left
Can painting alter the course of our politics?
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Where to find meaning
As Christianity in Britain declines, two new books ask: what should we believe in now?
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Making China great again
The former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd writes that Xi Jinping has embraced an assertive nationalism that aims to put…
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The inattention pandemic
The tyranny of social media has made us all minor celebrities: exhausted and narcissistic.
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Shon Faye and the problem of love
In this memoir-cum-manifesto, the author explores the politicised nature of love – and why it seems to elude us.
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The long reign of the Caesars
Charlemagne and The Sopranos, Trump and I, Claudius – all owe a debt to the imperial biographies of Suetonius.
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The woman who made the rape kit
This story of Martha Goddard’s forensic method does more than reclaim her role in history – it gives her a…
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The contested life of Roger Casement
The Irish nationalist was caught in the fault lines between empire and nation, colonised and coloniser, public face and private…
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“There is no such thing as Starmerism”
An account of the Labour Party’s rise to power presents the PM as a man with a deep aversion to…
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The brutal world of the Brothers Grimm
The folklorists’ fairy tales, in which moral laws are suspended and violence abounds, were no stranger than the progressive fantasies…
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Bill Gates vs Ren Zhengfei
The Microsoft and Huawei founders have competing visions of technological dominance. Which will endure?
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The secret history of the poles
How glaciers hold the key to Earth’s deep past.
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How WG Sebald found his form
His studies of Austrian writers, at times more fiction than fact, offer a guide to the artist he would become.
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