1. Alex Niven, The North Will Rise Again: In Search of the Future in Northern Heartlands. If you can look past the usual ill-informed chatter about Maggie ruining northern England (the author needs to study growth models!), this is quite an interesting book. I do not mind that it roams into the territory of popular music in what seems to be an arbitrary fashion. Here is one bit: “I have written before about how a version of this cultural complex is one of the reasons why English identity — with its nostalgia for vague historical dreams and absurd lack of real constitutional structures in the present — is really a kind of vast melancholic illusion. Northern English identity is a sort of killer variant of this more widespread national disease.”
2. Christopher Clarey, The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay. An intelligent and very good book, covering one of the greatest eras (Federer-Nadal-Djokovic) that any sport ever has had.
3. Ned Palmer, A Cheesemonger’s Tour de France. About half of this book is good and focused. Think of it as one possible introduction to French regional history. You can learn why Provence is so special for goat cheese, and why Dijon has kept so many original agricultural and cheese-making traditions. Why cheese comes from Brittany only in recent times, and so on.
4. Rupert Gavin, Amorous or Loving?: The Highly Peculiar Tale of English and the English. An excellent book that will make my best of the year list. How did the English language come to be so diverse and also have so many words? Along the way you get decent insights into economic history, the importance of London, and the Straussian readings of Macbeth.
5. Tim Bouverie, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler. A useful and detailed reminder that allies never really quite get along with each other. You can never read too many books about World War II.
I am very sympathetic with Dean Spears and Michael Geruso,
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