Sophie Roell, Editor

Quantum physics is deeply confusing and its relation to reality the cause of heated debate among physicists since its discovery. Here, science writer Jim Baggott—who has spent more than three decades thinking about quantum mechanics and written a number of books about it—recommends books for better understanding what it’s about, and explains why how physicists approach it is so crucial to science’s credibility.

There is no shortage of great kids’ books written in English, but reading books in translation can open up whole new worlds and surprising perspectives. Adam Freudenheim, managing director of Pushkin Press, talks us through some of his favourites among the many books he’s published for kids, translated from other languages.

The best romance books of 2020 (so far) as recommended by Frannie Cassano, winner of the 2018 RWA Cathie Linz Librarian of the Year award. After nearly two decades as a librarian, she remains an avid reader of romance and picks out her favourite ‘comfort reads’ from across the genre.

It’s a beautiful nation of islands with staggering levels of biodiversity. It’s also home to more than a quarter of a billion people, many of them Muslim. And yet, it gets little regular coverage in the western media. Krithika Varagur, journalist and author of The Call, talks us through the books that most inspired and informed her as she reported on Indonesia.

Is it possible that Augustus was not the first Roman emperor, but the last of Rome’s great populist champions? That’s what classicist Peter Wiseman argues in his book, The House of Augustus: A Historical Detective Story. Drawing on a lifetime of research and writing on this period, the emeritus professor of classics and ancient history gives a brilliant overview of the Augustan age, and recommends what to read to better understand the adopted son of Julius Caesar, who found Rome in brick and left it in marble.

Crime novels are hugely popular in Japan, but English translations of Japanese mysteries not always easy to come by. As Pushkin Vertigo publishes translations of two novels by Seishi Yokomizo, one of Japan’s most famous mystery writers, his grandson, On Nomoto, talks us through the best classic Japanese mysteries of the last century.

If you’re looking for the best history books published this past year, the annual Wolfson History Prize is a great place to start. Each year, the judges pick out outstanding books that are both originally researched and readable. Historian and Wolfson judge Richard Evans talks us through the six history books that made the 2020 shortlist.

Our political systems evolved in an era when information was much harder to come by. What challenges does our current reality of information overload pose for democracy? How do we even start thinking about these questions? Political scientist Henry Farrell proposes key books for building a curriculum on ‘the politics of information,’ starting with a beautifully written novel.

Before Einstein, how the universe began was a question for theologians, not scientists. Over a century later, we know much more, but not enough to do more than guess at what happened at the moment of the Big Bang and immediately after. Astrophysicist Dan Hooper, author of At the Edge of Time—a book that explores dark energy, dark matter and other things we don’t yet understand—talks us through books about the Big Bang, and questions whether our entire understanding of the universe is about to be turned upside down.

If your idea of an audiobook is a single narrator reading a book out loud, think again. These days many audiobooks are created as dramatic performances with a cast of dozens. Veteran audiobook reviewers Robin Whitten and Mary Burkey talk us through the finalists of the 2020 Audie Awards’ ‘multi-voiced performance’ category—and the books that have been brought to life by dedicated teams of actors, editors and producers.