'This is Shakespeare' and 'Stalingrad'; 'Capitalism, Alone' and 'Good Reasons for Bad Feelings'. Our list of this year's best books
Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America.Over several years the author of this book, a former Wall Street trader, conducted thoughtful interviews in neglected communities across America, and took moving photographs of his subjects. The result is a quietly revelatory portrait of what he calls the country’s “back row”.Chicago has suffered 14,000 murders in the past two decades; overwhelmingly the victims are African-American or Hispanic.
In 1974 the special counsel to the impeachment inquiry commissioned a survey of presidential misconduct from Washington to Lyndon Johnson. Brought up-to-date with chapters on presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, this useful study supplies the scales on which more recent wrongdoing can be weighed.
Richard Sorge’s bravery and recklessness in the Soviet cause in Tokyo—where boozing and seduction were among his main espionage techniques—were matched by the venality and cowardice of his masters in Moscow. Despite their brutal incompetence, his intelligence helped turn the course of the second world war. A tragic, heroic story, magnificently told with an understated rage.Dey Street Books; 592 pages; $29.99.
The real meaning of this book by a Nobel-prizewinning duo of economists lies in its method—a patient attempt to take on tough problems through empirical evidence. Known for pioneering the use of randomised controlled trials, the pair offer insights into thorny global issues ranging from inequality to corruption, all with refreshing humility.First Second; 256 pages; $19.99. St. Martin’s Press; £15.
An account of the struggle over Kafka’s papers between competing archives in Israel and Germany—plus a woman who inherited them from a friend of his editor, Max Brod—which played out after most of the writer’s family had died in the Holocaust. A book about the provenance of art, and how much, in the end, it matters.W.W. Norton; 384 pages; $27.95. Hamish Hamilton; £20
The protagonist of this story is dead when it begins. The body of “Tequila Leila” has been dumped in a wheelie bin on the outskirts of Istanbul; yet, somehow, her mind remains active. While it does, she scrolls back through her life—a pained childhood, stalwart friends in adulthood—in a powerful, unflinching novel that, like all of the Turkish author’s work, is political and lyrical at once.Pantheon; 608 pages; $29.95. Picador; £16.
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