Entry type: Long listsTTTT

In the past decade Pakistan has become a country of immense importance to its region, the United States, and the world. With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change. Anatol Lieven’s book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven’s extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.  Taken from Public Affairs Books

On an icy dawn morning in Paris in January 1943, 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz – the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp.The youngest was a schoolgirl of 15, the eldest a farmer’s wife of 68; there were among them teachers, biochemists, sales girls, secretaries, housewives and university lecturers. Caroline Moorehead’s remarkable new book is the story of these women – the first time it has been told.It is about who they were, how and why they joined the resistance, how they were captured and treated by the French police and the Gestapo, their journey to Auschwitz and their daily life in the death camps – and about what it was like for the 49 survivors when they returned to France. Six of the women were still alive in 2010 and able to tell their stories. What they had to say – and this was confirmed by the children of those who died – was that great affection and camaraderie grew up among the group. They became friends, and it was precisely this friendship that kept so many of them alive.They supported and cared for one another, worked together, shared everything, watched out for each other and faced the horror together.Friendship, almost as much as luck, dictated survival. Drawing on interviews with survivors and their families, on German, French and Polish archives, and on documents held by WW2 resistance organisations, A Train in Winter covers a harrowing part of our history but is, ultimately, a portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and endurance, and of the particular qualities of female friendship. Taken from Vintage Books

One hundred and eight rounds of bullets. Fourteen dead. Fourteen wounded. Two sides to a story and a four-decade search for the truth… It was meant to be a peaceful march. But on the afternoon of 30 January 1972 in the City of Derry a riot started, the army went in and firing began. ‘Bloody Sunday’ became a catalyst for three more decades of violence. In 1998 a new Inquiry was ordered. It took thirteen years. This book tells what happened when victims, soldiers, spies, politicians and paramilitaries finally appeared on the witness stand. It is about the search for truth, the hope of reconciliation and the people who still stand in its way. Taken from Biteback Publishing

A major and controversial new biography of one of the most compelling and contradictory figures in modern British life. Born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, to most of us he is just ‘Boris’ – the only politician of the age to be regarded in such familiar, even affectionate terms. Uniquely, he combines comedy with erudition, gimleteyed focus with jokey self-deprecation, and is a loving family man with a roving eye. He is also a hugely ambitious figure with seemingly no huge ambitions to pursue – other than, perhaps, power itself. One of the most private men in public life, we all know of Boris, but so few can truly claim to know him. He invites attention, but has evaded scrutiny. Now, from the vantage point of a once close colleague, Sonia Purnell charts his remarkable rise and offers the first forensic account of just how he did it. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Boris’s friends, rivals, admirers and enemies, this revealing biography examines how a shy, young boy from a broken home grew up to be ou r only box-office politician – and most unlikely sex god; how the Etonian product fond of Latin tags became a Man of the People – and why he wanted to be; how the gaffe-prone buffoon charmed Londoners to win the largest personal mandate Britain has ever seen; and how the Johnson family has built our biggest – not to mention blondest – media and political dynasty. At times, allegations of infidelity, journalistic chicanery, rivalries with fellow Tories and scandal at City Hall have threatened to upset his rise, but still it continues. With his unruly mop of hair, trusty bicycle and the surest of popular touches, he remains a Teflon-coated breed apart – but for how long? In Just Boris Sonia Purnell unravels this most compelling of political enigmas and casts light on his record and his character. Finally, she asks whether the Mayor who dreams of crossing the Thames to Downing Street has what it takes to be Prime Minister.