book reviews

Authors Guldi and Armitage have some advice for the Historians of the world: it’s time to go big.

Safran’s murder stories contain some grain of truth, however elusive it may be

Humankind can learn—in theory—from catastrophes like hurricane Sandy

What conjoined twins Chang and Eng reveal about race, slavery and 19th-century America

Wolves, salmon and bears can teach us about self-sacrifice and ecology

As tightly knit and powerfully evocative as anything human religious sensibility has created, writes reviewer Brian Bethune.

Plus a biography of the Bhagavad Gita, what the endangered Great Bear Rainforest has to teach us, investigating men, and the original Siamese twins

In short stories, most only a few pages long, Peacock recounts the life of the alphabet.

Johnson’s book about archaeologists—their passion, tenacity and sense of humour—is filled with many fun (and disgusting) facts

Gabriella Coleman’s meticulously researched account of the hacker group that escapes definition