THE ECONOMIST

Feet up, volume down

Nov 25th 2004

We choose the year's best books, and tell you about those our own writers published in 2004

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Fiction and memoirs
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The Plot Against America. By Philip Roth. Houghton Mifflin; 400 pages; $26. Jonathan Cape; £16.99

A novel about what happens to one Jewish family—the Roths of Newark, indeed—when America’s welcome is gradually rescinded. The book imagines a nasty turn in American politics in the 1930s, when Charles Lindbergh, an aviator with strong Nazi sympathies, wins the presidential election on an isolationist ticket. An extraordinary description of how history can encroach upon ordinary lives.

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The Master. By Colm Toibin. Scribner; 352 pages; $25. Picador; £15.99

In this novel, short-listed for the Man Booker prize, the author insinuates himself under the skin of Henry James, covering not only the known episodes in the literary lion’s life, but also imagining the darker corners. One of a handful of recent novels that have to do with James, Mr Toibin’s portrayal of innocence, shyness and even wisdom confirms him as a master craftsman.

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Snow. By Orhan Pamuk. Knopf; 448 pages; $26. Faber and Faber; £12.99

A novel about the tensions between Turkey’s urban, secularist elite and their long-derided Islamist opponents. By the leading interpreter of Turkish society to the western world, it deals with such familiar Pamuk themes as faith, identity and betrayal.

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I’ll Go to Bed at Noon. By Gerard Woodward. Chatto and Windus; 440 pages; £12.99. To be published in America by Vintage in February

A summer idyll ends in tragedy. The best depiction of alcoholism since Kingsley Amis.

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The Amateur Marriage. By Anne Tyler. Knopf; 306 pages; $24.95. Chatto & Windus; £16.99

Spanning 60 years, Anne Tyler’s novel is a melancholic story of a mismatched marriage. The complexities of family life in mesmerising detail.

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The Line of Beauty. By Alan Hollinghurst. Bloomsbury; 400 pages; $24.95. Picador; £16.99

In this year’s winner of the Man Booker prize, a shy Henry James-loving leech moves into the house of a Tory politician and immerses himself in gay sex. A depiction of Thatcher-era London done with great literary skill.

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Cloud Atlas. By David Mitchell. Random House; 528 pages; $14.95. Sceptre; £16.99

In this feat of brilliant pyrotechnics, six interlocking stories mix the voices, among others, of a journalist in Governor Ronald Reagan’s California and a voyager crossing the Pacific in the mid-19th century.

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About Love and Other Stories. By Anton Chekhov. Translated by Rosamund Bartlett. Oxford University Press; 246 pages; $8.95 and £7.99

Seventeen peerless examples of how much life you can put into a few pages of fiction if you have Chekhov’s economical mind, his eyes and ears, his feel for comedy and his sense of humanity. Chekhov is better known for his plays. But these are small masterpieces of their own, in a revelatory new translation.

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The Lambs of London. By Peter Ackroyd. Chatto and Windus; 228 pages; £15.99

A novel of intrigue set around a small bookshop in Holborn Passage in 19th-century London and the discovery of a document in Shakespeare’s own writing. The Lambs are a young brother and a sister taken into the confidence of a 17-year-old antiquarian. As clever and vivid as any work of Mr Ackroyd, a man deeply at home in the London of the past.

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A Tale of Love and Darkness. By Amos Oz. Harcourt; 544 pages; $26. Chatto & Windus; £17.99

A deeply sensitive memoir of the Israeli novelist’s childhood and adolescence, from Lithuania to Jerusalem. At times funny, at times tragic, Amos Oz weaves his family’s history into the broader story of the birth of Israel, attended by blood.
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History
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The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. By N.A.M. Rodger. Penguin/Allen Lane; 907 pages; £30

A timely reminder of the vital role the sea has played in the development of Britain’s heritage and culture. Scholarly and erudite but also a thrilling story, told with wit and verve.

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The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam. By Martin Windrow. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 734 pages; £25

The definitive account of France’s military involvement in Vietnam, and a meticulous though fluid account of the final showdown.

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In Tasmania. By Nicholas Shakespeare. The Harvill Press; 320 pages; £20

For many people, Tasmania is an island of the imagination, distant and alluring. Nicholas Shakespeare weaves a cast of unlikely characters into 200 years of Tasmanian history.

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Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. By Suketu Mehta. Knopf; 560 pages; $27.95. To be published in Britain in February by Review Books

Suketu Mehta tells the stories of slum-dwellers, dancing girls, hitmen and poets, all of whom have come to Bombay to make it. With a clear but non-judgmental voice, his is an outstanding tale of the exhilarating city in which he grew up.

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The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave-Robbery in 1830s London. By Sarah Wise. Metropolitan Books; 400 pages; $26. Jonathan Cape; £17.99

A gripping picture of the teeming underclass in Victorian London, told through the story of the investigation in 1831 into a series of fresh corpses supplied to the city’s anatomy schools for dissection. The case that came to be known as “The Italian Boy” led to legislation that was to put an end in Britain to bodysnatching.

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Science and technology
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The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World. By Jim Shreeve. Knopf; 416 pages; $26.95

This is a model of how science writing should be done. A great portrait, and a fresh and surprising take on what you would think was a thoroughly picked-over story.

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The End of the Line: How Over-Fishing is Changing the World and What We Eat. By Charles Clover. Ebury Press; 320 pages; £14.99

For fishing, read “mining”, as global fish stocks are worked to exhaustion. Here is the world’s fishing industry laid bare, gutted and filleted for all to see: the greed, the folly, the waste and destruction. You will never look at a fish supper in the same way again.

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Jacquard’s Web: How a Hand Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age. By James Essinger. Oxford University Press; 302 pages; $28 and £14.99

In 1804 Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a hand loom that led the silk weavers of Lyons to produce their fabrics many times faster. The device made use of punchcards to store instructions for weavers. This book charts how the technology of the punchcard led, in fascinating ways, to prototype computers and even the information age.

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Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin. By Francis Spufford. Faber and Faber; 240 pages; $27.42 and £14.99

Britain, the country that invented the industrial revolution, has always had an ambivalent relationship with its engineers. Francis Spufford dissects this beautifully, with six post-war case studies that show how, with the one brilliant exception of Vodafone, neither the politicians, the bureaucrats, the businessmen nor even the engineers themselves actually got it quite right.

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Earth: An Intimate History. By Richard Fortey. Knopf; 448 pages; $30. HarperCollins; £25

Geology’s time in the scientific sun is long past, and its hard-won truths are now commonplace. Yet the latest work by Richard Fortey, at London’s Natural History Museum, is still imbued with the romantic, revolutionary spirit that drove his 19th-century forebears in their quest to turn, as it were, the world upside down.

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Politics and current affairs
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Plan of Attack. By Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster; 467 pages; $28 and £18.99

In a fast-paced inside account of the Bush administration’s preparations to invade Iraq, Mr Woodward takes on the role both of instant historian and father confessor. Three decades after breaking the Watergate scandal, with Carl Bernstein, the author still has the power to depict the inner workings of the White House. Not everybody, however, will feel comfortable with Mr Woodward’s invented dialogue and generally unverifiable statements.

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Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. By Seymour M. Hersh. HarperCollins; 416 pages; $25.95. Penguin/Allen Lane; £17.99

The latest book from a New Yorker staff writer and one of America’s leading investigative reporters. In the kind of meticulous marshalling of facts and testimony from well-placed (though often also unnamed) sources that has become his trademark, Seymour Hersh offers a searing indictment of George Bush and his closest political aides for mishandling the war on terrorism, creating the conditions for the torture revealed at Abu Ghraib and ignoring or brushing aside facts that they do not like.

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The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Norton; 567 pages; $10 and £6.99

A surprise bestseller of the year. Not only does the report provide an authoritative and well-written account of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, but it also offers wise words on the need for joined-up thinking in the West about how to win the war against radical Islamism.

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Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. By John Lewis Gaddis. Harvard University Press; 150 pages; $18.95 and £12.95

A masterclass by a distinguished cold-war historian. John Lewis Gaddis, at Yale University, sets September 11th and what followed in the context of the country’s history, with criticisms of the Bush administration’s very grand strategy, while being generally supportive of it. Outstandingly clear, the book is also blessedly short.


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American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. By Jason DeParle. Viking; 432 pages; $25.95

A former New York Times reporter follows three welfare mothers through the years after Bill Clinton’s groundbreaking welfare reforms in 1996. It is a brilliant exercise that combines an honest but sensitive portrait of the women and their families with a larger look at the policy and the politics of welfare reform.

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Biography
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Ulysses S. Grant. By Josiah Bunting. Times Books; 208 pages; $20. Henry Holt; £11.99

Even his critics concede that Ulysses Grant was a good general. This bold biography defies conventional history in arguing that, despite the inarguable troubles that marked his terms in office after the civil war, he was also a good president.

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The Architect King: George III and the Culture of the Enlightenment. By David Watkin. The Royal Collection; 224 pages; £30. To be published in America by The Royal Collection in January

George III had a passion for agricultural improvement, merino sheep and art, but architecture moved him most of all. This book proves beyond doubt that, for all his periodic bouts of insanity, he was our most cultured king (along with Charles I, perhaps), and (along with Elizabeth I) England’s most intelligent monarch.

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Alexander Hamilton. By Ron Chernow. The Penguin Press; 818 pages; $35

A work that restores the reputation of America’s first treasury secretary, killed in a duel with the vice-president. Hamilton is usually maligned as arrogant and as having sold out to foreigners. Ron Chernow shows him to have been a visionary administrator and a patriot, who rose from his illegitimate beginnings through competence alone. Hamilton built the foundations for the American government and the financial system.

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Wodehouse: A Life. By Robert McCrum. Norton; 530 pages; $27.95. Viking; £20

A biography of the British comic writer who was dubbed “the Master” by his contemporaries. Mr McCrum skilfully plots the relationship between Wodehouse’s three obsessions: writing, money and Pekinese dogs.

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Economics and business
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Why Globalisation Works. By Martin Wolf. Yale University Press; 398 pages; $30 and £19.99

The fullest and most sophisticated case yet for globalisation, by the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times. In plain, taut English, Martin Wolf argues that alleviating global poverty is the challenge of the age, and that the poorest countries in the world are poor not because of the baneful effects of too much globalisation, but rather because they stand outside the global economic system altogether. Mr Wolf pays a lot of attention to the interdependence of states and markets—and to the vital, even if limited, role that the state needs to play if countries are to prosper. The poorest countries, after all, are often failed states.

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Global Crises, Global Solutions. Edited by Bjorn Lomborg. Cambridge University Press; 670 pages; $29.99 and £19.99

A hugely sensible book about global health and environmental problems, based on the “Copenhagen Consensus” project documented in The Economist. Its authors, eminent economists, recognise that the resources to tackle such problems are finite and need to be applied where they are most likely to be effective. Better, for instance, to spend resources on the immediate problem of AIDS in Africa than the more distant one of global warming. This book is a healthy antidote to the narrow views of single-issue pressure groups.

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Mr China: A Wall Street Banker, an Englishman, an ex-Red Guard and $418,000,000 Disappearing Day by Day. By Tim Clissold. Constable & Robinson; 304 pages; £9.99. To be published in America by HarperBusiness in February

Every foreign company in China should arm its executives with a copy of this shocking, funny and culturally sympathetic tale of the perils of doing business in Asia’s wild west. This first-hand account of one of the most expensive foreign forays into the Middle Kingdom is happily also one of the most instructive business books on China around. Next year the book will be translated into Chinese, for a market on mainland China that is hungry for business advice.

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The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned Up the World. By Adam Macqueen. Bantam Press; 328 pages; £12.99. To be published in America by Corgi in June

A book that takes the reader back to when soap was the silicon chip of the day. Less than four years after William Hesketh Lever opened his Sunlight soap factory in 1885, it was making 14,000 tons a week. This is a well-told story of Britain’s greatest 19th-century brandmaker.

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The Modern Firm: Organisational Design for Performance and Growth. By John Roberts. Oxford University Press; 318 pages; $27.50

A professor of international business at Stanford University describes how businesses around the world are changing not just their processes and routines, but the very way they organise themselves and exercise authority. The consequences are profound. Yet among all this change, the author argues, certain predictable relationships improve productivity and performance.

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The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits. By C.K. Prahalad. Wharton School Publishing; 496 pages; $28.95. FT Prentice Hall; £19.99

The best book on capitalism and the poor since Hernando de Soto’s “The Mystery of Capital”. It calls on big business to regard the world’s poor as potential customers, and argues that both firms and the poor will win if it does. Plenty of entrepreneurial spirit and economic demand exist among the poor, and some of the world’s leading firms are increasingly bent on working with them and on serving them.

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Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It. By Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner. Princeton University Press; 256 pages; $29.95

A disturbing analysis of how the patent system, the heart of the knowledge economy, is rotten. With plenty of examples, the authors explain how America’s patent system has become slow and bureaucratic, awarding too many patents for the wrong sorts of things. As a result, it is a threat to this most innovative economy.

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Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America. By Nomi Prins. The New Press; 336 pages; $26.95 and £17.95

An insider’s tale of how Wall Street went off the rails during the late 1990s. Nomi Prins details the pernicious effects of a failure properly to manage the conflicts of interest at the heart of the financial system. In the process, she provides the most revealing description yet of what it is like to work for the mighty Goldman Sachs, her employer during the stockmarket bubble.

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Culture and digressions
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Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. By Stephen Greenblatt. Norton; 434 pages; $26.95. Jonathan Cape; £20

This historicist squeezes the most out of the few known facts about William Shakespeare. Unabashedly speculative, he is acutely alive to the historical context, with an appetite for understanding the legalities of the time, the meanings of words, and the importance of friends and mentors.

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The Stories of English. By David Crystal. Overlook Press; 584 pages; $35. Allen Lane; £25

This superb general history of the language points out that the richness and diversity of English has always lain not in the standard form, but in its variation—regional, social and ethnic. Deserves to transform the way English is studied and taught.

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How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher. By Simon Barnes. Short Books; 208 pages; £9.99. To be published in America by Pantheon in May

By a sports writer for the Times, this is a gentle book, friendly, encouraging and in its way rather profound. Partly about birds, partly about how birdwatching changed the author’s relationship with his father.

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Chronicles: Volume One. By Bob Dylan. Simon & Schuster; 304 pages; $24 and £16.99

It is the best of books, it is the worst of books. The first volume of Bob Dylan’s projected autobiography begins and ends with a fascinating musician in a cold New York of the 1960s. The middle, however, drags with the musings of a self-important middle-aged man.

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Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington. By Nadine Cohodas. Pantheon Books; 576 pages; $28.50

As Queen of the Blues, Dinah Washington brooked no rivals. Nadine Cohodas winningly captures the mixture of passion, talent and sheer wilfulness that characterised Washington’s reign before her early death at the age of 39.

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Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son. By John Jeremiah Sullivan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 272 pages; $24

An eloquent and strange account of the history of man’s relationship with the horse, interleaved with a personal narrative that is touching and funny.

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A Little History of British Gardening. By Jenny Uglow. North Point Press; 256 pages; $35. Chatto & Windus; £15.99

An addictive book that attempts to answer why the British are so potty about gardening. The argument, worn lightly, is that gardening is an expression of Britishness.


Economist.com | Books of the year 2004