Books editor’s blog: elemental journeys and hellish christenings Matthew Reisz is intrigued by a gentle stroll through the byways of the periodic table By Matthew Reisz 21 November
Fully Connected: Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Overload, by Julia Hobsbawm Book of the week: the digital deluge can harm our social health; Emma Rees commends a prescription to tackle it By Emma Rees 30 March
Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection, by Evelleen Richards Book of the week: Simon Underdown enjoys a stunning view of Darwin at work on his less celebrated classic By Simon Underdown 23 March
Book of the week: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy Book of the week: Danny Dorling lauds an exposition of the benefits of obligation-free income and how to attain them By Danny Dorling 16 March
Popularizing Science: The Life and Work of JBS Haldane, by Krishna Dronamraju Book of the week: Richard Joyner on a proselytiser for science who emphasised the ethical issues of advancement By Richard Joyner 23 February
Living a Feminist Life, by Sara Ahmed Book of the Week: Emma Rees praises an effort to show how to turn personal traumas into political resistance By Emma Rees 16 February
Books of the year 2016 Scholars and senior sector figures reveal their favourite titles – read for work, for pleasure or both – published this year By Contributors 22 December
Eating the Ocean, by Elspeth Probyn Book of the week: A study of our leviathan appetite for seafood dares to go deep and recovers pearls, says Philip Hoare By Philip Hoare 1 December
The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy, by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz Book of the week: From the black stuff to books, who gets the goods in a sharing and streaming era? asks Paul Bernal By Paul Bernal 24 November
Freud: In His Time and Ours, by Élisabeth Roudinesco Book of the week: New sources yield fresh insights and oversights by the father of psychoanalysis, says Janet Sayers By Janet Sayers 10 November
The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions and Meritocracy at Elite Universities, by Natasha K. Warikoo Book of the week: Universities pay lip service to minorities while maintaining the status quo, says Kalwant Bhopal By Kalwant Bhopal 27 October
“Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation, by Nancy Weiss Malkiel Book of the week: A history of the fight to share elite spaces focuses on gender over race and class, says Mary Evans By Mary Evans 13 October
Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983, by Tim Lawrence Book of the week: Hillegonda Rietveld on the fierce creative energy of Big Apple clubs in the early Eighties By Hillegonda Rietveld 29 September
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O’Neil Book of the week: If all-seeing ‘miracle’ tech is making the decisions we must demystify the tricks, says Danny Dorling By Danny Dorling 8 September
Hunger Pains: Life inside Foodbank Britain, by Kayleigh Garthwaite Book of the week: Why are those pushed into food poverty then stigmatised and shamed, asks Lisa Mckenzie By Lisa Mckenzie 16 June
My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries, by Elizabeth Chin Book of the week: Shahidha Bari on our attachment to consumption and whether we might ever somehow escape it 9 June
A Life Beyond Boundaries, by Benedict Anderson Book of the week: Joanna Lewis on nationalism’s truest friend and the books that made him a world authority By Joanna Lewis 2 June
The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, by Manisha Sinha Book of the week: Blacks were key agents in the international battle against slavery, Olivette Otele writes By Olivette Otele 19 May
Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict, by Jennie Bristow Are ‘invented’ narratives the way to understand demographic shifts? David Willetts is unconvinced By David Willetts 16 July
The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You’re Not Looking, by Michael C. Corballis Daydreaming relies on memory and our past helps us imagine future possibilities, finds Luna Centifanti 7 May
The Great Divide, by Joseph Stiglitz Rising inequality can be addressed without taking to the barricades, Victoria Bateman suggests 30 April
The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction, by Pat Shipman A lupine alliance may have helped Homo sapiens to beat the competition, says Simon Underdown 23 April
The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages, by Jessi Streib A study of American couples who married out of their socio-economic culture intrigues Mary Evans 16 April
Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh, by Stanley Wells The first act in an entertaining study of gifted stage performers is the most powerful, says Lisa Hopkins 9 April
Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel, by Annie Cohen-Solal A sense of not belonging coloured an outsider’s journey to the avant-garde, learns Tracey Warr 2 April
Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure, by Cédric Villani The lows and highs of a ‘rock star’ scholar cracking an impossible problem enthral Noel-Ann Bradshaw 26 February
To Explain The World: The Discovery of Modern Science, by Steven Weinberg A history of the steps humans took to explain how and why things work delights Cait MacPhee 19 February
A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble, by Edzard Ernst Helen Bynum admires a physician’s quest to distinguish alternative medicine from quackery 29 January
Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, by Judy Wajcman It’s not machines but rather man that makes us dread the clock’s tick, Stina Lyon discovers 22 January
The Match Girl and the Heiress, by Seth Koven A cross-class relationship burns bright in a study of an experiment in ethical living, says Nadia Valman 15 January
Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness, by Nathaniel Tkacz Paul Bernal admires an analysis of the sanctified ‘neutrality’ of the encyclopedia we all love to hate 1 January
Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan, by Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds Roger Morgan lauds a biography charting Labour statesman’s rise from a colliery to the Cabinet 11 December
The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore Giulia Miller writes on the weird backstory to a female superhero, from women’s suffrage to lie detectors 4 December
Email from Ngeti: An Ethnography of Sorcery, Redemption, and Friendship in Global Africa, by James H. Smith and Ngeti Mwadime One-way secrets in a gripping exchange between a Kenyan and an Africanist trouble Joanna Lewis 20 November
Good Times, Bad Times: The Welfare Myth of Them and Us, by John Hills Most people receive from the welfare state what they pay in taxes, argues Danny Dorling 13 November
A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, by Allyson Hobbs Those who masqueraded as white scarred more than just themselves, finds Catherine Clinton 30 October
Plato at the Googleplex, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein K. E. Gover assesses the case for the continuing relevance of Platonic thinking to modern life 23 October
Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall, by Hester Vaizey First-person accounts add complexity to popular notions of East Germany, writes Ulrike Zitzlsperger By Ulrike Zitzlsperger 16 October
The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Toward a Political History of Madness, by Laure Murat Biancamaria Fontana on the tangled connections between historical events and mental illness 9 October
How I Stopped Being a Jew, by Shlomo Sand Lynne Segal on an Israeli scholar’s persuasive arguments against his country’s myths of identity 2 October
Joan of Arc: A History, by Helen Castor Rachel Moss praises an elegant account that sets a charismatic Maid of Orleans in political context 25 September
The Marshmallow Test: Understanding Self-control and How to Master It, by Walter Mischel Resisting sexual temptation is one thing, forgoing sweets another. Natalie Gold on a study of restraint 18 September
The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity, by Sandra M. Gilbert Shahidha Bari savours a celebration of our relationship with food across genres and cultures 11 September
Mysteries and Conspiracies: Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of Modern Sciences, by Luc Boltanski Sharon Wheeler on an ambitious investigation of crime fiction and its relation to modern society 4 September
National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945-1963, by Richard Vinen A. W. Purdue on a British institution that changed lives but has been largely ignored by historians 28 August
Female Tommies: The Frontline Women of the First World War, by Elisabeth Shipton Niamh Gallagher on the women who challenged the consensus of who could serve at the front 21 August
Italian Venice: A History, by R. J. B. Bosworth Despite popular wisdom, time did not stop in the Most Serene Republic after all, says Kate Ferris 14 August
The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language, by John H. McWhorter Kerstin Hoge on a manifesto correcting the view that the language we speak affects how we think 7 August
Crisis Without End? The Unravelling of Western Prosperity, by Andrew Gamble Vera Troeger on a persuasive, if gloomy, look at the dangerous paradoxes at the heart of neoliberalism 31 July
Time in Powers of Ten: Natural Phenomena and their Timescales, by Gerard ’t Hooft and Stefan Vandoren Considering different timescales is a fun way to digest serious science, finds Graham Farmelo 24 July
The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter, by Katherine Freese Virginia Trimble on the search for the mysterious, magical secret ingredient of the universe 10 July
The New Emperors: Power and the Princelings in China, by Kerry Brown Seven men rule the Middle Kingdom, but why them? Jonathan Mirsky on a study of Party potentates 3 July
Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World, by Gillen D’Arcy Wood Alison Stokes on a 19th-century volcanic eruption that caused a global climate disaster 26 June
Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, by Amir Alexander Robyn Arianrhod on a compelling tale of Jesuits, geometry and heresy in the turbulent 17th century 19 June
Mammon's Kingdom: An Essay on Britain, Now, by David Marquand Danny Dorling lauds an impassioned call to tame the UK’s ever more toxic worship of money 12 June
How Not to Be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life, by Jordan Ellenberg Tony Mann enjoys a fresh application of complex mathematical thinking to commonplace events 5 June
The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol, by Robert Dudley Tiffany Taylor on a thought-provoking exploration of alcoholism from an evolutionary perspective 29 May
One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery, by Karyn L. Freedman Lynne Segal on an analytic philosopher’s first-hand account of sexual violence and its aftermath 22 May
On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffman Dick Hobbs on how the intense nature of policing creates secondary casualties in poor communities 15 May
The Psychopath Whisperer: Inside the Minds of Those Without a Conscience, by Kent Kiehl Luna Centifanti welcomes a disentanglement of popular confusions over brain and behaviour 8 May
