Politics & Society

The China specialist and UCLA professor Richard Baum (1940-2012) says that he sometimes feels genuine admiration for China’s technocratic leaders. Other days, he shakes his head at their obsessive intransigence and China's endemic political insecurity.

From a biography of the Soviet Union's most successful spy to an isolated German general in Tanzania in World War I, from a brilliant novel of World War II to what it was like in Moscow during Stalin's show trials, British journalist Richard Beeston (1962-2013) recommends a range of books that resonated with him as he reported from troublespots around the globe.  

The idea that girls are emotional and “boys don’t cry” is ridiculous, says the feminist and psychologist. She tells us about books that debunk the gender myths that continue to restrict and distort our lives.

American presidents may not want to send troops into battle or militarise foreign policy but, in the end, most of them do. The author and journalist explains how this happens, and why it’s not even the military that's to blame. He picks the best books on American militarism.

The Princeton philosophy professor tells us about the meaning of honour, how it's won and lost, and what role it has played in the history of moral change

Why do huge stories sometimes go unreported? Our news media are good at promulgating conventional wisdom but find it much more difficult to deal with evidence that contradicts it, says the former Washington Post reporter

American statistician Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University and author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State explains the (often surprising) realities of how Americans vote.

Satire is humour used for a moral purpose, explains American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke—though it doesn't have to be particularly funny and can be quite dark. Here, he chooses five classic works of political satire, books that lay bare the shortcomings of not only communism and fascism but also the two-party system and the quest for a perfect society where everyone is happy.

The former chief of staff to Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, tells us about his experience of negotiating in Northern Ireland, and explains why it's important never to lose your temper except on purpose

Spying is ultimately very dull and you run into the same kind of mediocrity that you encounter anywhere else in life, says former CIA operative Robert Baer. Nor do governments always listen.  He recommends books on espionage—both fiction and nonfiction—that give a sense of what it's all about.