Though a serious work of non-fiction, Antony Beevor’s gripping account of the titanic struggle for the city of Stalin has won over the hearts and minds of countless readers of fiction the world over. Combining in depth historical research with the writing technique of a best-selling novelist, Beevor manages to skillfully retell the saga of this six-month battle from the perspective of the highest generals, to that of the frontline troops and of the civilians of the beleaguered city. He does not fall into the trap of propaganda or partisanship, but manages to effectively describe the living hell that this conflict was, both for the Russian and the German protagonists. Beevor portrays the compelling tale of this colossal confrontation between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich with truth and a scholarship devoid of myth and embellishment. His account of the battle of Stalingrad is a story as epic as the finest works of Homer or Tolstoy.

"What is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbour: that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."

There is no more comprehensive, clear and up to date history of the Jewish people available in the English language than this remarkable work by Norman Cantor, Professor of History, Sociology and Comparative Literature at New York University. "The Sacred Chain" focuses on the plight of the Jewish people, their religion, their social habits and their relationship with their gentile neighbours throughout the millennia, from exile in Babylon to émigrés in Brooklyn. Beginning with the stories of the Torah (the Christian Old Testament), this hardback passes through their struggle against the Romans, the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora, the rise of Christianity and Islam, the golden age of the Sepharad Jews in Muslim Spain and the gradual decline of the Ashkenaz Jews in Western Europe, all the way to the horrors of the Shoah (Nazi holocaust), the creation of the state of Israel and the new possibilities of peace between Jew and Arab. This work not only provides the key to better understanding the children of Abraham, but also the followers of Jesus and Mohammed, and the dept both Christianity and Islam owe to Judaism. For anyone trying to get to grips with the three great global monotheistic religions and the history of not only the Middle East, but also that of the Mediterranean and Europe as a whole, "The Sacred Chain" is to be highly recommended. If greater knowledge truly leads to greater understanding and mutual respect, then this book should be obligatory reading, lest we ever forget the lessons of Auschwitz.

"Altered State" tells "the story of ecstasy culture and acid house". It explains how the drug, MDMA, changed from being solely the preserve of left-wing intellectuals in the USA to the cornerstone of an illegal multi-million pound industry all over the world. The book also chronicles the rise of house and techno music from their beginnings in the all-night black gay disco haunts of Chicago and Detroit of the late ‘70s, via Ibiza in mid-1987 (the second "summer of love"), to the heart of British and European clubland. The illegal rave events in Britain in the late ‘80s and the creation of an urban drug culture in the ‘90s all stemmed from this combination of chemistry and up-tempo dance music. If you want to relive your formative years or merely to begin to understand European, and especially British, youth culture of the last decade, then this paperback is a must. It doesn’t over-dramatise or pontificate. It merely states the facts. "Altered State" does not glorify drug use. Nor does it condemn it out of hand. What it does do, is successfully manage to explain how and why ecstasy, house music and all their subsequent derivatives caught on in Thatcher’s Britain, when they had failed to do so at "home" in the US. Combining both personal experiences and extensive research, Matthew Colin, with the help of John Godfrey, have produced a book for our times. This work is to the world of investigative non-fiction, what Irvine Welsh’s "Trainspotting" was to progressive popular fiction.

"Round Ireland with a Fridge" is the funniest book I’ve read in years. From the moment I read the "about the author" paragraph at the start of the book, which stated that "Tony is unmarried and likes girls", I knew that this was going to be a humorous yarn. Hawks actually manages to out "Joseph O’Connor" Joseph O’Connor in this yarn, which is all the result of a "shabby night of booze". Spending one month hitchhiking around the coast of Ireland in the company of this everyday household appliance in an effort to win a £100 drunken bet (a zany task considering the fridge actually cost him £130), leads him on a wide range of adventures. From surfing with the fridge, to entering a bachelor festival, to getting the fridge (christened Saoirse – meaning "freedom" in Gaelic) blessed in a convent, English comedian Hawks entertains all the way in his relentless pursuit to get back to Dublin in time to win his bet and the acclaim of the Irish public. As the book says, the whole mad undertaking is "a totally purposeless idea, but a damn fine one."

700-page books are not designed to be easy going. But Anthony Sampson’s authorised biography of arguably the greatest man of the 20^th century, is as eminently readable as a best-selling work of fiction. Mandela’s life before his incarceration in 1963 has been well documented, as has his life since his release from prison in 1990. However, the 27 years that the former President of South Africa spent in prison were often skipped over, as if they were a blip on an otherwise continuous march to majority rule. The difference with this book is that Sampson carefully outlines the importance of those hard years on Robben Island, how they moulded Mandela, the romantic revolutionary, into Mandela, the skilled global statesman. A man as heroic as Nelson Mandela deserves no less a comprehensive work of literature than what Sampson has produced here. Whatever your race or political views, this book is as essential as reading gets.