Whether it's because things were on hold earlier in the year because of coronavirus or just coincidence, there's an eye-popping number of interesting new books coming out. From memoirs to historical fiction, from books about kids to books featuring pensioners as the main protagonists, there seems to be all manner of fiction and nonfiction books to choose from. We've highlighted a few that have come to our attention below.
(Note: We also have a list of 'most recommended' books. These are books that have to be picked again and again in our expert interviews, so tend to be older classics, with a few exceptions).
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
by Sudhir Hazareesingh
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***
Black Spartacus by Oxford politics don Sudhir Hazareesingh, an expert on French political and cultural history, tells the extraordinary life story of Toussaint Louverture, general and leader of the Haitian Revolution, the first successful black revolt against European colonial powers. He was fighting—at various times—the Spanish, French and British. But beyond that, it goes into detail about Toussaint's worldview and how he thought about the predicament of black slavery and what should be done about it—how he drew on European Enlightenment ideas, but was also strongly influenced by Christianity and beliefs and cultural practices from Africa. It's a great story.
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke's debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was a bestseller when it came out in 2004, a fabulous book of what is probably best described as historical fantasy. 800 pages long and very hard to put down, fantasy novelist and (then) Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman said it was the book that woke him up to "the power of the new fantasy." Since then, Clarke has published a volume of short stories, but no other novel until this one, Piranesi. Named after (and presumably party inspired by) the extraordinary 18th century Italian printmaker, Giambattista Piranesi, the novel is weird and wonderful (and quite short, comparatively speaking).
Naturalist: A Graphic Adaptation
by C.M.Butzer, Edward O. Wilson & Jim Ottaviani
This book, due out in November, is a wonderful graphic adaptation of biologist EO Wilson's memoirs. It's touching and enlightening and leaves you feeling excited about the natural world. It's also interesting for the light it sheds on what makes someone a great scientist. Wilson, born in 1929, won two Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction for his books, one in 1979 for On Human Nature, and one in 1991 for The Ants, co-authored with German biologist Bert Hölldobler. EO Wilson's books—he wrote many—have also been frequently recommended on Five Books.
A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
Editor's note: as soon as A Promised Land is available, we'll review it on this page.
Even before he became the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama had already won a Grammy award for his narration of the audiobook of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from my Father, recommended a number of times in Five Books reviews including for his insights into Africa from his contact with his father's family, who come from Kenya.
A Promised Land is the first volume of his presidential memoirs, to be published November 17th, 2020, in 25 languages. It's 768 pages long but, yet again, Obama has narrated it himself. Obama is a thoughtful man, and the book/audiobook is likely to be illuminative, both of his presidency and what has happened in its wake.
While there's no substitute for listening to Obama tell us about himself, if you'd like to read books about him, there are two books by Five Books interviewees worth pointing to: firstly Barack Obama: The Story, a highly readable book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and biographer David Maraniss, which is not just the story of Obama, but also of his extraordinary family. For a more academic assessment of his presidency, Princeton historian Julian Zelizer has edited an excellent volume entitled The Presidency of Barack Obama: A First Historical Assessment.
The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers
by Eric Weiner
"‘Socrates’ is a stand-in for the kind of philosophy that I was interested in, that I write about, which is a practical, therapeutic, accessible philosophy. It was Cicero who famously said of him that he called philosophy down from the heavens and introduced it into people’s homes. That’s what I’m trying to do."
Bestselling author Eric Weiner talked to our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton, about 'Life-Changing Philosophy Books'
Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
by Ben Macintyre
Agent Sonya is the latest book by Ben Macintyre, who has made an art of writing nonfiction books about spies that read like thrillers. Agent Sonya was the codename of Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jew who ended up living in an English village and spying for the Russians.
Immortal
by Jessica Duchen
Immortal, by Jessica Duchen, is a historical novel that aims to solve the mystery of Beethoven's 'immortal beloved' letter, which was found in a drawer in his apartment after he died, and has led to endless speculation about who it was intended for. Jessica Duchen is a specialist music writer, and the book, which is being published by Unbound, the crowdfunded publisher, promises to be both a good read, historically accurate and insightful about the music Beethoven wrote.
Jessica Duchen spoke to us about the best books on Beethoven.
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery
by Seb Falk
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery, by Cambridge historian Seb Falk, is about science and technology in medieval times and, as the title suggests, argues that this period does not deserve to be written off as 'the Dark Ages.' The tale is told through the eyes of John of Westwyk, an interesting figure who was, among other things, a monk, a crusader and an astronomer.
“As the title indicates, it’s ‘all’ the sonnets of Shakespeare — not just the 154 from the 1609 quarto. This includes excerpts from the plays that are literal sonnets, as well as characters discussing the practice of ‘sonneting…Separately, they’ve speculated about the possible order of composition of those poems.” Read more...
How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
by Tim Harford
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics," said Benjamin Disraeli (according to Mark Twain, anyway), in what has become one of the most well-known quotations in the English language, and certainly the only one most of us know about statistics. And yet...while we all know statistics are potentially misleading in the abstract, in practice most of us continue to be misled by them on a daily basis.
In How to Make the World Add Up, British economist Tim Harford—whose services to improving economic understanding won him an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 New Year Honours—tries to equip us with tools to take on the latest misinformation, in a book that has received a rave review (see below) from Benedict King, our contributing editor and a former Bank of England economist.
By the way, we've also interviewed Tim Harford, a Financial Times columnist and BBC Radio and TV presenter, about books on two topics: Unexpected Economics (including a comic book) and the best Introductions to Economics.
Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time
by Gaia Vince
***Shortlisted for the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize***
"I wrote this book to answer what, for me, is the biggest question: how did we become so different from all the other animals—able to alter our own destiny and that of the rest of life on earth?" —Gaia Vince.
In history, we so often learn about the Tudors or the founding fathers or the American Civil War, but we often know little about the history of the human race. Reading Gaia Vince's Transcendence is one way to put that straight.
Read our interview with Gaia Vince—whose last book, Adventures in the Anthropocene, won the 2015 Royal Society Science Book Prize—on the best books on the Anthropocene.
The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad
by Emily Thomas
"This topic brings two things I really love together. I’ve spent years of my life backpacking and I’ve always been a bit obsessed with travel. Having spent my entire adult life as a professional philosopher, I was suddenly gripped with the obsessional idea of writing something about philosophy and travel. When I started, I wasn’t sure if I would find anything. It’s not a topic that’s talked about anywhere. I thought it was possible I would begin research and find that philosophers are just not interested in travel and that philosophy and travel have never interacted. Yet to my delight I found they’ve interacted a lot and there’s plenty to look at."
Emily Thomas also spoke to our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton, about the best books on the philosophy of travel.
Twilight of Democracy
by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum's latest book, Twilight of Democracy, is part polemic, part memoir, and tracks how and why so many people she knew (eg Viktor Orban, who has been prime minister of Hungary for the past decade) abandoned liberal democracy and became far right populists. Applebaum was a foreign correspondent in eastern Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and continued to cover the region for many years.
We interviewed Anne Applebaum on the best Memoirs of Communism.
The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans
by David Abulafia
***Winner of the 2020 Wolfson History Prize***
“David Abulafia is a remarkable historian and this is, I think, his masterpiece" —Paul Lay, editor of History Today, in his interview with us on the best history books of 2019.
The Philosopher Queens: The lives and legacies of philosophy's unsung women
by Lisa Whiting & Rebecca Buxton
"The book aims to challenge the notion of the well-defined canon, which typically doesn’t have many women in it. We were also really keen to make a book that was written by women who are working in philosophy."
We spoke to Lisa Whiting and Rebecca Buxton about their favourite philosophy books by women.
How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy
by Daniel Kaufman, Massimo Pigliucci & Skye C Cleary
Are you an existentialist? A Stoic? Or does Buddhism have more appeal? In How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy, philosophers Skye Cleary, Massimo Pigliucci and Dan Kaufman gather together essays by 15 thinkers, with each presenting the philosophy they've chosen to guide their lives.
We have interviews with both Skye Cleary, on the Philosophy of Love, and Massimo Pigliucci, on the Best Stoicism Books, on Five Books.
The End of October: A Novel
by Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright is a journalist whose account of Al Qaeda and the run-up to 9/11, The Looming Tower, has been recommended an astonishing 7 times in our interviews with experts (the other books to be reach this number of recommendations are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Evelyn Waugh's Scoop). The End of October is a novel, but it's about a virus that starts in Asia and turns into a global pandemic. Though "eerily prescient" is one of those clichés that are too often applied to books, it does seem The End of October is indeed, um, eerily prescient.
Troubled Blood
by Robert Galbraith
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) is the 5th book in a series featuring Cormoran Strike, a British war veteran who sets up a detective agency in London after losing his leg in a roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The series is one of the most intelligent out there for fans of crime fiction. Our review of Troubled Blood follows below, but if you're new to the books, we recommend reading the series in order.
