Only five books this month — blame the football in the second half of the month, the hot weather and having to take care of my girlfriend coming back from hospital.
As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela — Mark Thomas
Comedian Mark Thomas looks at the international arms trade.
The Origins of the British — Stephen Oppenheimer
An exhaustive look at the genetic evidence for where the British came from and when they arrived. Surprise, it’s not quite what’s being taught in school…
Fleshmarket Close — Ian Rankin
Sometimes you need a properly depressing police procedural to get you through the day. Rankin’s Rebus stories are always good for that.
Firewall — Henning Mankell
But for a real dose of existentialistic angst with your detective story, go to Henning Mankell.
The Reconstruction of Nations — Timothy Snyder
An interesting if difficult in places case study of the interaction between history, memory and the modern idea of the nation, looking at how Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine evolved from a early modern state based around elite consensus into four separate ethnically basded states build on support from the masses.