The world of paperbacks - Bibliography

Contemporary Review, June, 2002

VINTAGE leads the list this month with a wide range of new titles. In fiction there are two novels by Andre Gide published in one volume: Fruits of the Earth and Later Fruits of the Earth ([pounds sterling]6.99). These are his prose songs to the joys of life first published in 1917 and 1935 respectively. Vintage Classics continues its publication of Iris Murdoch's novels with A Word Child ([pounds sterling]7.99) here introduced by Ray Monk. New biographies include Judith Cook's Dr. Simon Forman: A Most Notorious Physician ([pounds sterling]7.99), a fascinating account of Shakespeare's England as seen through the life of an intriguing man, and two titles in the Vintage Lives series: Selina Hastings' Evelyn Waugh: A Biography ([pounds sterling]8.99) first published in 1994 and the same author's Nancy Mitford ([pounds sterling]7.99). Vintage have also published: Desmond Morris' People Watching (E8.99); Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression ([pounds sterling]8.99); Robert M. Sapolsky's A Pr imate's Memoir. Love, Death and Baboons in East Africa ([pounds sterling]7.99); Tim Flannery's The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples ([pounds sterling]8.99); and, finally. Martin Amis's The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 ([pounds sterling]8.99), the thoughts and reflections of the novelist, mainly on literature.

ARROW has republished Shay McNeal's The Plots to Rescue the Tsar: The Truth behind the Disappearance of the Romanovs ([pounds sterling]8.99) in which the American writer offers her own idiosyncratic view about the fate of the Romanov Family during the Russian civil war.

From FOURTH ESTATE we have Maureen Duffy's England: The Making of the Myth from Stonehenge to Albert Square ([pounds sterling]7.99), another idiosyncratic view, this time of 3000 years of English history in 274 pages. It reads well but is it history?

PHOENIX PRESS has reissued Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Short History ([pounds sterling]6.99) first published in 2000: after the events of last September such guides are more necessary than ever and a paperback edition is to be welcomed. Phoenix has also brought out paperback editions of Giles MacDonogh's highly praised The Last Kaiser: William the Impetuous ([pounds sterling]l4.99) and Richard Overy's 1984 biographical study, Goering ([pounds sterling]12.99), which shows that Goering was a far more important figure than many have thought.

Recently published titles from PIMLICO are divided into biography and history. Among the new biographies are Adrian Tinniswood's highly praised His Invention so Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren ([pounds sterling]10.00), Piers Brendon's Hawker of Morwenstow: Portrait of a Victorian Eccentric ([pounds sterling]12.50), first published in 1975 and still a marvellous read, and Alison Weir's Henry VIII: King and Court ([pounds sterling]8.99) which describes the world in which the Tudor tyrant ruled as much as the character of the man himself. New history titles cover a wide range: Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine ([pounds sterling]12.50), as chilling a study as when first published in 1975; Lauro Martines' Power and Imagination: City-States In Renaissance Italy ([pounds sterling]l2.50); John Prebble's Culloden ([pounds sterling]9.99); a revised edition of John Noble Wilford's 1981 title, The Mapmakers: The Story of the Great Pioneers in Cartography -- From An tquity to the Space Age ([pounds sterling]12.50); the late Ian Ousby's delightful survey, The Englishman's England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism ([pounds sterling]12.50); Anthony Read and David Fisher's The Fall of Berlin ([pounds sterling]9.99); and David Gates' The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War ([pounds sterling]14.00), a fresh and refreshing look at Wellington's great Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon.

Moving back a few decades to the wars which ultimately put Henry VIII's father on the Throne we have from ROBINSON a paperback edition of Desmond Seward's 1995 title, The Wars of the Roses and the Lives of Five Men and Women in the Fifteenth Century ([pounds sterling]9.99). By concentrating on the lives of five people caught up in the civil unrest Mr Seward makes this fascinating but confusing century intelligible. Robinson, following in the wake, perhaps, of O.U.P.'s 'short histories' has introduced its own series of 'brief histories' which is 'accessible, affordable and authoritative'. The new venture begins with David Davies' A Brief History of Fighting Ships ([pounds sterling]6.99), Diana Preston's A Brief History of the Boxer Rebellion: China's War on Foreigners, 1900 ([pounds sterling]7.99), Peter Berresford Ellis' A Brief History of the Druids ([pounds sterling]7.99) and Jasper Ridley's A Brief History of the Tudor Age ([pounds sterling]7.99). More titles are promised in what looks like a promising pub lishing venture. Also from Robinson we have a paperback edition of Kevin Rushby's Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of tile Lost Pirate Utopias of the Indian Ocean ([pounds sterling]7.99), first published by Constable last year.