How to Be a Dictator

Frank Dikötter Bloomsbury (2019)

For this magisterial study on the misuse of power, historian Frank Dikötter analysed the strategies of eight brutal twentieth-century dictators. The result reveals how weak, largely unelectable men such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin maintained cults of personality through tireless self-glorification, aided by propaganda and the illusion of popular consent. Dikötter’s insights into their modus operandi — “to sow confusion, to destroy common sense, to enforce obedience, to isolate individuals and crush their dignity” — make for salutary reading at a time of persistent attacks on democracy.

End Times

Bryan Walsh Hachette (2019)

In this sweeping “brief guide to the end of the world”, journalist Bryan Walsh details the science on existential risks, from supervolcanoes to global war — many of them amplified by chaotic governance. He explores United Nations climate conferences, synthetic-biology labs and the US nuclear command-and-control system. He disentangles the maths of asteroid strikes and the complexities of gene editing. And, as billionaires focus on escape (boltholes in New Zealand, space colonization), Walsh envisions survival for the rest of us — a scenario of subterranean refugees subsisting on insects, fungi and rats.

Don’t Believe a Word

David Shariatmadari Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2019)

Language, notes writer David Shariatmadari, is a hall of mirrors: we can understand it only through language itself. His assured tour takes in the origins of language (he argues for nurture over nature) and deconstructs a plethora of myths. These include the supposed demise of linguistic standards, the question of animal communication, the vagaries of translation and the comparative richness of vocabularies. Insights abound, from the blurred boundary between Hindi and Urdu, to Australian languages in which the grammar changes when the speaker’s mother-in-law is present.

Proof!

Amir Alexander Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2019)

In his opus Elements, fourth-century bc Greek mathematician Euclid created a “complete world of mathematical truths”. Yet, as historian Amir Alexander’s subtle chronicle shows, Euclid’s ideas really blossomed only in the Renaissance. Then, luminaries such as Leon Battista Alberti codified what they saw as the hidden geometries of the Universe, including the rules of perspective. The geometric imperative went on to shape the French monarchy’s rigidly hierarchical world view, symbolized by the formal gardens of Versailles, before emerging in the architecture of power from New Delhi to Washington DC.

The Curious World of Seaweed

Josie Iselin Heyday (2019)

From the silken greens of Ulva fenestrata to the bulbous glories of Botryocladia pseudodichotoma, seaweeds are stars of the intertidal zone. This paean by Josie Iselin, a fine-art photographer, and writer celebrates both their remarkable morphology and tactility (“smooth and slimey and tough and stretchy”), and the history of phycology. Iselin studs her evocative text with exquisite ‘portraits’ of algal species — a mix of archival illustrations, snaps of historical specimens and luminous shots taken using a flatbed scanner. A mesmerizing swim through a liminal world.