The World of Paperbacks - Bibliography

Contemporary Review, March, 2003

CONSTABLE ROBINSON has recently published a variety of titles relating to biography and history including Robert Harvey's highly praised Liberators: South America's Savage Wars of Freedom 1810-30 ([pounds sterling]8.99), Frank Giles' Napoleon Bonaparte: England's Prisoner ([pounds sterling]7.99), which gives a new view of Napoleon's confinement after his defeat at Waterloo, and The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: World War II edited by Jon E. Lewis ([pounds sterling]7.99) which has 200 first-hand accounts of the outbreak of the last World War. As part of the 'brief history' series the firm has also republished Thomas Crump's A Brief History of Science As Seen Through the Development of Scientific Instruments ([pounds sterling]8.99) and a revised and abridged version of Lord Moran's Churchill at War 1940-45 ([pounds sterling]9.99) with some new entries and an introduction by the present Lord Moran.

PIMLICO has recently published a variety of new titles including Isaiah Berlin's 1952 BBC lectures, Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty ([pounds sterling]12.50) edited by Henry Hardy, and Lord Russell of Liverpool's The Trial of Adolf Eichmann ([pounds sterling]10.00) first published in 1962. This edition has a new introduction by Prof. Richard Overy. However illegal was the Israelis' abduction of Eichmann from the Argentine, his trial and condemnation were acts of justice. Given the latest round of 'war crime' trials, the republication of this magisterial study is most welcome. Pimlico has also republished Ian Ousby's highly praised, The Road to Verdun ([pounds sterling]8.99), Linda Colley's Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 ([pounds sterling]12.50) which, when first published in 1992 helped to set the current academic fashion for asking what it means to be British and what the future has in store for the United Kingdom, Christopher Hill's Society & Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary Engl and ([pounds sterling]15.00) Norman Davis and Roger Moorhouse's Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City ([pounds sterling]12.50) a study of central Europe as seen in Breslau, and the U.S. journalist, Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation ([pounds sterling]12.50). This study of the lives of average Americans who lived through and fought in the Second World War was based on interviews and was hugely popular in America when published there in 1998. New biographies include Rosemary Ashton's Thomas & Jane Carlyle: Portrait of a Marriage ([pounds sterling]15.00), a magnificent study not just of the writer and his wife but of their times and David Gilmour's The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling ([pounds sterling]15.00), a fair and balanced volume that shows Kipling for the unique man he was. Finally, we have Jerry White's Rothschild Buildings: Life in an East End Tenement Block 1887-1920 ([pounds sterling]12.50) and Mihail Sebastian's Journal 1935-1944 ([pounds sterling]12.50) with its firsthand view of life in Romania as seen by a Jewish writer.

DUCKWORTH, one of London's few surviving independent publishers, has released two new titles in his 'Duckback' series, titles which are also part of the 'intelligent person's guides'. The first is Peter Jones' An Intelligent Person's Guide to Classics. On its hardback publication the reviewer in this magazine wrote: 'If this book doesn't encourage a rebirth in the classics, nothing will'. The second is Roger Scruton's An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy. As the reviewer in The Times wrote, 'philosophy has no better salesman than Prof. Scruton'. The third new title is Tim Pigott-Smith's Out of India, selections from works on India along with the actor's own impressions whilst there to film The Jewel in the Crown. All three titles are priced at [pounds sterling]7.99.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS has brought out a revised paperback edition of its Oxford Companion to British History edited by John Cannon ([pounds sterling]19.95). This has fifty new entries and updated bibliographical references. The editor has also modified over 900 of the original entries and in doing so has 'taken note' of reviewers' and readers' comments, some of them rather unfavourable. A second new paperback reference book from the Press is The Oxford History of Western Art edited by Prof. Martin Kemp ([pounds sterling]19.99). This was highly praised on its hardback publication, in part because it places artistic achievements against the societies in which they were produced and in part because it defines 'art' to include sculpture, architecture and interior design. OUP has also published, as part of its Oxford World's Classics series, Samuel Smiles' famous Victorian text, Self Help: With Illustrations of Character,; Conduct, and Perseverance ([pounds sterling]7.99). This, one of the most famous books of V ictorian Britain, was first published in 1859 and now is, alas, as dated as the civilisation it embodied. The numerous editorial notes provided by the editor, Peter Sinnema, are therefore to be much appreciated.