Science & Ideas

XREMEMBERINGS by Sinéad O’Connor Sandycove, £20 This would be a misery memoir, if the singer didn’t tell her story – starved and beaten by her mother, brutalised by nuns, then trampled on by the music industry – with such eccentric charm. Tearing up the pope’s photo on TV derailed her career – and saved her soul: “I could just be me. Do what I love.

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Be imperfect. Be mad, even.” NM THE ADVENTURES OF MISS BARBARA PYM by Paula Byrne

William Collins, £25 Those of us who adore Pym’s socially piquant novels with their peculiarly English sense of failure imagine her to be meek, like her heroines. Byrne confirms she had a racier existence, dashing undergraduates beating a path to her door, and a

X troubling Hitler obsession. BL THE MADNESS OF GRIEF by Rev Richard Coles W&N, £16.99

As a gay pop star in the 1980s Aids epidemic, and latterly as “Britain’s Best

Loved Celebrity Vicar”, Coles has sat by many deathbeds. But the sudden loss of his partner in 2019 turned him into an emotional bomb, “detonating in super slow motion”. This brief, wise, frank book deals with the surreal mundanity of bereavement. HB

XETHEL ROSENBERG by Anne Sebba W&N, £20 In 1953, Ethel Rosenberg was executed (in horribly botched fashion) for conspiracy to commit espionage, with her husband. Yet the evidence against her was paper-thin. Sebba’s impassioned investigation into this shameful saga concludes that this remarkable woman became a “human sacrifice” to Red Scare hysteria and 1950s chauvinism. JK

XW-3 by Bette Howland Picador, £14.99 W-3 is the psych ward in Chicago where Howland was admitted in 1968, after a suicide attempt. Not only is this a sane memoir of madness but it may well be the sanest, most mordant take on the subject you’ve ever read. FW

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THE FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE by A C Grayling

Viking, £20

The British philosopher gives a brilliant survey of state-of-the-art science, history and psychology, showing that the more we learn, the more we

X realise we don’t know. JOG

VALUE by Stephen Bayley Constable, £18.99

“You can judge anybody’s moral credibility by the quality of their vinaigrette,” writes GQ journalist Bayley, in an entertaining aesthete’s guide to living the good life. It’s a book for those few of us left who prefer maps to satnavs, leather shoes to plastic trainers and proper

X conversation to Twitter. RL

THE PREMONITION by Michael Lewis

Allen Lane, £25

The author of The Big Short gives Covid-19 a similar treatment, turning the pandemic into a fluid intellectual thriller – and showing how the US government ignored a plan that could have saved

X countless lives. SP

DOOM by Niall Ferguson

Allen Lane, £25

In this wide-ranging study of “the politics of catastrophe”, the historian and broadcaster looks at public officials’ often inept responses to disasters, from Chernobyl and the 1957 Asian Flu

X pandemic to the present day. TS

MATERIAL GIRLS by Kathleen Stock

Fleet, £16.99

Philosophy professor Stock looks at the current debates over sex and gender, asking how we got here, in a brave and enlightening book. Of course transgender people require protective laws, she says; but we should not forget that claiming one can actually change sex is a fiction. JOG

XFIELD WORK by Bella Bathurst Profile, £16.99 Bathurst gets under the fingernails of people who work in agriculture and its ancillary industries, from farmers to civil servants to knackermen, in a vivid portrait of

X a fast-changing world. JB

BEYOND by Stephen Walker William Collins, £20 The control panel of the spartan-looking Soviet capsule that launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961 had just four dials. Walker’s gripping biography of the first man in space is full of such interesting details, bringing a huge amount that is new and fresh to the often-told

X story of the space race. SI

THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES by Suzanne O’Sullivan Picador, £16.99

Twenty years ago, hundreds of refugee children in Sweden began “falling asleep” – going into medically inexplicable comas for months or even years. O’Sullivan tells their story, and many others, in a brilliant and compassionate study

X of psychosomatic illnesses. HB THE SECRET WORLD OF WEATHER by Tristan Gooley Sceptre, £20

In a sensitive study that combines theoretical physics with beautiful nature writing, “Natural Navigator” Gooley shows how deeply weather is embedded in the landscape; every hill or wood is essentially its

X own tiny microclimate. RM

THE CODE BREAKER by Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster, £30

In 2012, biochemist Jennifer Doudna found a way to rewrite DNA. Her discovery paved the way for mRNA Covid vaccines – and so much more – as Isaacson explains in a biography that turns complex

X research into a rattling yarn. SI

SHAPE by Jordan Ellenberg Allen Lane, £20

This mind-bending history of geometry takes us from the simple isosceles triangle to knotty questions of artificial intelligence and free will. Writing with passion for a non-mathematical audience, Ellenberg is a popular educator at

X the top of his game. SI

THE BRILLIANT ABYSS by Helen Scales Bloomsbury, £16.99

The ocean floor is 10 times larger than the surface of the Moon, and teeming with weird life, as Scales shows in a wonderful tour of the vasty deep that takes in glowing jelly, vampire

X squid and zombie worms. SP NOTES FROM

DEEP TIME by Helen Gordon

Profile, £20

Covering over four billion years, this fascinating history of our planet – and its obsessive geologists – asks what the story of its rocks, fossils, plates and quakes can tell

X us about ourselves. SI

HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER by Bill Gates

Allen Lane, £20

Things are going pretty well for humankind, so long as we iron out some wrinkles, Gates argues in a surprisingly upbeat guide to the climate crisis. The optimistic Microsoft founder puts his faith in as-yet-uninvented tech solutions; though he doesn’t always have the right answers, he’s

X asking the right questions. EG

IN THE LAND OF

THE CYCLOPS by Karl Ove Knausgaard Harvill Secker, £20 Knausgaard follows his autobiographical epic, My Struggle, with a profound (and profoundly eclectic) collection of essays that range from Kierkegaard to cancel culture,

X via childhood and the Moon. SP

BEYOND ORDER by Jordan B Peterson Allen Lane, £25

Peterson has had an awful few years: after his wife was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he plunged into depression and substance abuse. But the divisive Canadian psychologist has emerged from that ordeal with a new set of admirable rules for better living, drawing on the Bible, Nietzsche and Harry Potter. SM