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Brian Bethune

Brian Bethune writes about ideas, books and the book trade, and religion, but what really interests him is why people believe what they believe.

The hottest titles in fiction and non-fiction from the week that was

Memory research has cast doubt on the few things we knew about Jesus, raising an even bigger question.

The latest in our monthly series looking at 1916, the year that marked the point of no return in the First World War

Jay Wexler examines the collision of religious and environmental values

Emma Smith’s close reading of Shakespeare’s first folio reveals a trove of information

Another award, another win for the biography of Joseph Stalin’s daughter penned by Sullivan, who thanked Stalin’s granddaughter for the access

This book explores what humans have won, and lost, with the decline of polygamy

Two researchers comb through the records and discover that religious faith doesn’t drive Islamist terrorism

The year 1916 marked the point of no return in the First World War. A look at the titanic French-German struggle at Verdun

The effects of the Middle Kingdom’s one-child policy, from the strictly economic to the social, will play out for decades to come