• The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize - The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Empowering Women by Linda Scott
  • The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize - The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan
  • The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize - Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time by Gaia Vince
  • The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize - The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
  • The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize - The World According to Physics by Jim Al-Khalili
  • The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize - Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships by Camilla Pang

The Best Science Books of 2020: The Royal Society Book Prize, recommended by Anne Osbourn

The Royal Society is the world’s oldest independent scientific academy, dedicated to promoting excellence in science—and that includes an annual prize for the best popular science book. Here Professor Anne Osbourn, Fellow of the Royal Society and chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the six books that made the 2020 shortlist—and what makes them intriguing, accessible and exciting.

  • Best China Books of 2020 - Aftershock: Essays from Hong Kong by Holmes Chan (editor)
  • Best China Books of 2020 - Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang by James Millward
  • Best China Books of 2020 - Forbidden Memory: Tibet during the Cultural Revolution by Susan Chen (translator) & Tsering Woeser
  • Best China Books of 2020 - Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital's Center by Harriet Evans
  • Best China Books of 2020 - Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai by Jim Carter
  • Best China Books of 2020 - American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Best China Books of 2020, recommended by Jeffrey Wasserstrom

All eyes are on China as it occupies an increasingly important role on the world stage and its economic growth continues to barrel on. But behind the Chinese Communist Party’s apparent competence lies a deep insecurity about its relationship with its own citizens, particularly those who question its right to rule them. American historian and Sinologist Jeffrey Wasserstrom picks the best books of 2020 on China.

  • The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize - The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev & Stephen Dalziel (translator)
  • The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize - Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth
  • The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize - Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown
  • The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize - Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival, the Life of Mikhail Sholokhov by Brian Boeck
  • The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize - This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia by Joan Neuberger
  • The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize - An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent by Owen Matthews

The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize, recommended by Serhii Plokhy

Every year since 2013 the Russian Book Prize run by Pushkin House, a UK charity, has carried out the important task  of drawing attention to books that “encourage public understanding and intelligent debate about the Russian-speaking world.” Here, Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2020 shortlist.

  • The Best Audiobooks of 2020 - Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (author and narrator)
  • The Best Audiobooks of 2020 - The Sandman by Dirk Maggs (audiobook adaptation), Full Cast & Neil Gaiman
  • The Best Audiobooks of 2020 - The Pull of the Stars: A Novel by Emma Donoghue & Emma Lowe (narrator)
  • The Best Audiobooks of 2020 - The Searcher: A Novel by Roger Clark (narrator) & Tana French
  • The Best Audiobooks of 2020 - A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team by Adam Lazarre-White (narrator) & Arshay Cooper

The Best Audiobooks of 2020, recommended by Robin Whitten

With most people carrying smartphones these days, entering the world of audiobooks has never been easier. Some are straightforward narrations of a book, but when an audiobook is done well, it can be an extraordinary, all-encompassing experience. Here Robin Whitten, editor of AudioFile magazine—the best resource for finding good quality audiobooks on the web, in our view—talks us through her picks for the best audiobooks of 2020, chosen from the hundreds they’ve reviewed over the course of the year.

  • The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize - Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands by Hazel Carby
  • The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize - Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamavada Gopal
  • The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen
  • The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize - Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King
  • The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize - All Our Relations: Indigenous Trauma in the Shadow of Colonialism by Tanya Talaga

The best books on Global Cultural Understanding: the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize, recommended by Patrick Wright

Every year the British Academy's Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize is awarded to the best nonfiction book that has contributed to 'global cultural understanding.' This year, the legacies of colonization and empire loom large. Patrick Wright, Emeritus Professor at King's College London and chair of this year's panel of judges, talks us through the books shortlisted for the £25,000 prize.