Search

Will our love affair with robots send us the way of the dinosaurs? Bryan Appleyard thinks it might Why do humans want to build robots? It seems, on the face [...]

Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow Cape, 35 £, pp. 734 Armed with their tiny Leicas and Nikons, most of the great postwar 'street' photographers liked to [...]

Love her or hate her, it's impossible to ignore Julie Burchill. But is there more to her than a motor-mouth with a mania for self-promotion? Just to keep you up [...]

The article discusses the use of the rhetoric of charity by billionaires. Topics include the Giving Pledge campaign started by billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the notion of charitable results of business in relation to the thoughts of entrepreneur Elon Musk, and the social impact of products related to Apple Inc. firm co-founder Steve Jobs.

When Google Met WikiLeaks Julian Assange OR Books, 224pp, 10 [pounds sterling] How Google Works Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg with Alan Eagle Hodder & Stoughton, 352pp, 25 [pounds sterling] [...]

IRIS MURDOCH: A LIFE Peter J Conradi HarperCollins, 706pp, £24.99 £19.99 at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+£1 p&p) The first thing to be said about this book is that, although readable and well [...]

Britain looks set to become the world's first post-Christian society. But what beast, slouching towards Bethlehem, will take over? The biggest stories are often those that are most weirdly underplayed. [...]

THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS Jon Ronson Picador, 337pp, £16 Extremists, notes Jon Ronson, don't like being called extremists. They prefer to say that it is members of 'the western liberal [...]

Pornography, once a seedy, marginal industry, has become a respectable, multimillion-pound business, bigger than Hollywood. Fleet Street, as we still call ourselves, had a lot of fun with the takeover [...]

CARRIED AWAY: THE INVENTION OF MODERN SHOPPING Rachel Bowlby Faber & Faber, 256pp, £12.99 £10.39 at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+£1 p&p) Shopping may be seen as the definitive modern activity. Nowadays, we [...]

Parents dress as teenagers while pushing their toddlers into trashy adulthood In the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, there was a baby in a buggy. About nine months old, she [...]

ALAS, POOR DARWIN: ARGUMENTS AGAINST EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY Edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose Jonathan Cape, 292pp, £17.99 £14.4O_at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+1 50% p&p) The succession of more or less destructive [...]

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE BRAIN Susan A Greenfield Penguin, 249pp, £18.99 £15.20 at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+15% p&p) The idea that the brain works like a computer is rapidly passing into [...]

The effect of Terry Eagleton on two generations of English students has been disastrous, argues Bryan Appleyard. But now the old Marxist appears to be mellowing THE IDEA OF CULTURE [...]

The Internet, says John Naughton, is 'one of the most remarkable things humans have ever built'. It is open, free, global and so far unrestrained by companies and governments. Nobody [...]

John Naughton Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 320pp, £18.99 £14.9 at www.newstatesman.co.uk The Internet, says John Naughton, is 'one of the most remarkable things humans have ever built'. It is open, free, [...]

FILM 1 The paradox of oppression is that it strengthens that which it most desires to eradicate. So, in their stupidity, philistine bureaucracies ennoble and sanctify the artist. 'Every act [...]

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World Key Cities As a documentary-maker, Werner Herzog is a master of tone. His widely parodied voiceovers--breathy, raspy, ominous -are cunningly ambivalent. The [...]

Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes? by David Boyle Fourth Estate, £14.99, 352PP When the Money Runs Out: the End of Western Affluence by Stephen D King Yale University Press, [...]

Inside the Centre: the Life of J Robert Oppenheimer Ray Monk Jonathan Cape, 832pp, £30 Behind the mushroom cloud, there's a face. Wide-browed and skinny with staring eyes, it is [...]

In the restaurant a young couple were staring downwards and apparently scratching the table with their right forefingers. You never saw people doing this before June zoo7; now you see [...]

Niche: Why the Market No Longer Favours the Mainstream James Harkin Little, Brown, 256pp, [pounds sterling]20 I once tried to buy a shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch. It was clear [...]

The End of Discovery Russell Stannard Oxford University Press, 240pp, [pounds sterling]14.99 During the recent protest march against the Pope in London, I noticed one sign which read 'I believe [...]

High Financier: the Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg Niall Ferguson Allen Lane, 584pp, £30 The key to this bold and mighty biography is that word, high, in the title. [...]

Mad Men and Bad Men: What Happened When British Politics Met Advertising Sam Delaney Faber & Faber, 320pp, 14.99 £ The only rational people in politics are floating voters. To [...]

The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff's $65bn Investment Scam Adam LeBor Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 304pp, £18.99 This book brilliantly answers the 'How?' question about Bernie Madoff and his [...]

The Death of Marco Pantani: a biography Matt Rendell Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 324pp, £16.99 Erythropoietin is a hormone produced by the body in reaction to low blood oxygen levels. It [...]

Space Race: the untold story of two rivals and their struggle for the moon Deborah Cadbury Fourth Estate, 372pp, £20 There were two space races, both of them won by [...]

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: a journey into the mind of Philip K Dick Emmanuel Carrere; translated by Timothy Bent Bloomsbury, 336pp, £17.99 Journeying into the mind of [...]

Why Most Things Fail: evolution, extinction and economics Paul Ormerod Faber & Faber, 255pp, £12.99 There are few things more exhilarating than the authoritative endorsement of human ignorance. It resolves [...]

The Invisible Man H G Wells Kessinger Publishing, 140pp, £15.95 Between 1895 and 1898, H G Wells wrote four science fiction masterpieces--The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The [...]

The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki Little, Brown, 295pp, £16.99 Books, like newspapers, require headlines. Life, however, has none. Headlines are thus eye-catching lies or, at the very least, distortions. […]

Mind Wide Open: one man's journey into the workings of his brain Steven Johnson Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 274pp, £17.99 Reassessing all human culture on the basis of the […]

Growing Up With Lucy: how to build an android in twenty easy steps Steve Grand Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 229pp, £16.99 After 50 years, the search for artificial intelligence (AI) has [...]

You would have needed a heart of stone not to shed tears of helpless laughter. As Concorde completed its final commercial flight, Tony Benn, preening and condescending as ever, solemnly [...]

Tomorrow's People: how 21st-century technology is changing the way we think and feel Susan Greenfield Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 284pp, 20 £ The last time I reviewed a book [...]

The British Museum was 250 years old on 7 June. Among many other celebrations, two are especially worth mentioning. They embody all the greatness and ambiguity of this institution. One [...]

Placebo: the belief effect Dylan Evans HarperCollins, 224pp, £16.99 Placebo is Latin for 'I will please'. In medicine it has come to mean a treatment -- a sugar pill or […]

The words fill my head And fall to the floor If God's on our side He'll stop the next war. For Bob Dylan, writing in the Sixties, the 'next war' [...]

The latest US census found that 43 per cent of the population in Santa Clara County, California, were members of a religious institution. This is slightly less than the American [...]

Blockbusters: Why Big Hits - and Big Risks - Are the Future of the Entertainment Business Anita Elberse Faber fe Faber, 256pp, £14.99 In zoo6, when global optimism about the […]

The Hurricane: the turbulent life and times of Alex Hiqqins Bill Borrows Atlantic Books, 368pp, [pounding sterling]16.99 www.newstatesman.co.uk/bookshop I once spent a week in Blackpool with Alex Higgins. He wasn't [...]

Science: a history (1543-2001) John Gribbin Allen Lane, 650pp, £25 Discounts at www.newstatesman.co.uk The point about science is that it has a history. It is the only truly accumulative human [...]

Counting Sheep: the science an pleasures of sleep and dreams Paul Martin HarperCollins, 406pp, £14.99 Discounts at www.newstatesman.co.uk Sleep is a distress purchase in the modern world. Like filling up [...]

Dignity is best served when grief is honoured by silence. There is, therefore, nothing that should -- or can -- be said about the sorrow of Gordon and Sarah Brown [...]