How Donald Trump rose to power
Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man is the best account yet of Trump’s path to the presidency – and a crucial guide…
ByPolitics books
Find the New Statesman’s latest politics book reviews and our curated lists featuring the best writing on politics.
How oil become the world’s most contested resource
Keith Fisher’s A Pipeline Runs Through It charts how oil revolutionised transport and war, and continues to shape today’s geopolitics.
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Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka: “You don’t know who you’re going to offend”
The Sri Lankan novelist on growing up amid civil war, turning trauma into satire, and winning the 2022 prize.
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How the housing crisis shaped modern Britain
The country is blighted by landlordism, homelessness and Thatcher’s legacy.
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We can’t consign Boris Johnson to history yet
Andrew Gimson’s biography of the former prime minister describes a man who can pull off a miracle. With the Tories…
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What Harold Wilson can teach Keir Starmer
A new biography shows how one of Labour’s most successful leaders kept the party united at all costs.
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The long shadow of Chairman Mao
How China’s uneven ascent has been driven by debt and the Communist Party’s obsessive pursuit of social stability.
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The lessons of Corbynism
In their new books, Andrew Murray and James Schneider ask what the left can learn from its time in control…
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What is to be done about money?
A new economic history examines how and why money has always been inextricably linked to politics and power.
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British diplomacy in the dock
A former diplomat’s new book reveals that, for 25 years, UK foreign policy has left mainly harm and disorder in…
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The 15 best books for summer
The New Statesman’s selection of essential recent releases.
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The limits of black and white thinking
Ibram X Kendi’s new book, How to Raise an Antiracist, is overly simplistic and dogmatic.
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The banality of Vladimir Putin
A new biography of the Russian president details the extraordinary rise of an unremarkable man who learned how to exercise…
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Reviewed in short: New books from Sophie Pavelle, Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor, Ana Kinsella and Gerald Murnane
Forget Me Not by Pavelle, The Silver Waterfall by Simms and McGregor, Look Here by Kinsella and Last Letter to…
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Volodymyr Zelensky behind the mask
Serhii Rudenko’s biography is a portrait of a wartime hero whose troubled past may return to haunt him.
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How the empire degraded Britain
Three new histories reveal the corrosive effects of colonialism and slavery on today’s British politics.
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The Death of Consensus: the recurring nightmares of British politics
From strikes to Brexit, a new book by the BBC producer Phil Tinline explores how the UK has been shaped…
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Henry Kissinger’s whitewashing of Richard Nixon
The American diplomat’s new book, Leadership, is undermined by his self-serving portrait of his thuggish former boss.
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How nostalgia fuels the culture wars
In her new book Rule, Nostalgia, Hannah Rose Woods explores how illusory and contested golden ages have haunted Britain since…
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Zero: Jeremy Hunt’s book on the NHS is well intentioned – but misses 90 per cent of the story
Candid on short-staffing and underfunding, ministerial memoir Zero omits the healthcare that happens in the community.
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