History
Tom Bartlett, Professor of Modern History at UCD
I have chosen two history books and one non-history. First The Two Irelands 1912-39 (Oxford University Press, £8.99 in UK) by David Fitzpatrick, is quirky and entertaining, provocative and infuriating, looking at the two Irelands - north and south - which he feels were mirror images of each other.
In The Rebellion in Wicklow 1798 (Irish Academic Press, £39.50hb/ £17.95pb) Ruan O'Donnell manages to shift the centre of gravity from both Wexford and Antrim/Down - no mean feat.
I also enjoyed dipping into The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford University Press, £12.99 in UK) edited by Sean Connolly. It's a great reference book, packed full of fascinating entries.
Science
Dick Ahlstrom, Irish Times science correspondent
In Unweaving the Rainbow (Allen Lane, £20 in UK) Richard Dawkins delivers a beautifully written book which presents explanations of things scientific but also takes a hearty swipe at some of his rivals and things that annoy him. Read it for the richness of the prose but also for the abundant extracts from the Romantic poets which are sprinkled throughout the text.
In The End of Science (Little Brown, £18.99 in UK) by John Horgan, science is presented as a victim of its own success. In this thought-provoking offering Horgan interviewed several dozen of the world's best scientific minds. He asks the reader to consider the demise of science as answers are found for the final theory of everything. But of course he knows this final answer can never be achieved.
In The Fifth Miracle (Penguin, £18.99 in UK), Paul Davies challenges the reader with the possibility that life on Earth might actually be Martian life delivered to Earth billions of years ago. He explores the question of the origins of life and suggests that we may live in a bio-friendly universe that couldn't help but deliver life in all its teaming diversity.
Comedy
Brian Boyd, Irish Times comedy writer
I took to the Internet to find a copy of the out-of-print The Most of S.J. Perelman - the definitive collection of the work of the American humourist of the same name. Perelman started out writing incredibly erudite and devastatingly funny prose for The New Yorker before going on to write the screenplays for some Marx Brothers films. His writing style is difficult to describe but he would have the power of a Thurber combined with the snap of a Dorothy Parker. I was so enthralled, I went back to www.amazon.com and ordered a copy of Conversations with S.J. Perelman (University Press of Mississipi, $12.99) edited by Tom Teicholz, which is a collection of his interviews.
One of the best biographies of recent years was published in paperback this year, an account of the picaresque life of Peter Cook - Peter Cook: A Life (Sceptre, £7.99 in UK) by Harry Thompson. While showing due reverence for Cook's genius, Thompson also paints a picture of a flawed hero. It's marvellous stuff, with Cook's charm shining out from each page.
Also recommended is the extensive and well-researched biography, Morecambe and Wise (Fourth Estate, £17.99 in UK) by Graham McCann.
Cinema
Michael Dwyer, Irish Times film correspondent
Compulsive reading and much the most revealing film book in years, Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Holly- wood (Bloomsbury, £20 in UK) chronicles the last golden age of Hollywood cinema, from 1969 to 1980, as maverick film-makers tore up the rule book and amazed the studios with their achievements and their success. Biskind interviewed almost all the key players and the quotes he elicits are remarkably candid. There's some sex and rock'n'roll, and a great deal of drugdealing in Jane Hamsher's eyebrow-raising Killer Instinct (Orion, £16.99 in UK), which relates Hamsher and Don Murphy's baptism by fire as young film producers when they took on the project that became Oliver Stone's provocative Natural Born Killers. Despite its often self-serving nature, Hamsher's book is a cautionary tale which pulls few punches. The most compelling film biography of the year was Roland Bergan's Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict (Little Brown, £22.50), an impeccably researched and illuminating picture of the life and work of the great, mercurial Soviet film-maker, Sergei Eisenstein, who completed only seven feature films before his untimely death in 1948, at the age of 50. Along the way his encounters include James Joyce, Walt Disney, Charles Chaplin and Bertolt Brecht.
Sport
Tom Humphries, Irish Times sports writer
I've chosen King of the World (Random House, $25 to order in the US) by David Remnick, because he captures the era and the personality most sportswriters would most like to have been exposed to - Muhammed Ali in early 1960s, the greatest sportsperson of the century. And The Garrison Game (Mainsteam, £12.99 in UK) by Dave Hannigan, because I am slightly afflicted with his trainspotterish interest in Irish soccer players in Britain, and the book is packed with beautifully written stories about the same. And last, if I can cheat a little, two Irish sports photography books. Hoping for Heroes (INPHO Agency, £19.99) by Billy Stickland, and Season of Sundays (GAA, £14.95) by Ray McManus et al - the first is a study of a decade of Irish sport and the second is frozen moments of recently passed GAA years. Both make words scarily redundant.
Visual art
Aidan Dunne, Irish Times visual arts correspondent
Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas (Yale University Press, £95 in UK, £75 until January 1st, 1999) by David Antham is a doorstep of a book that contains good-sized colour reproductions of all Rothko's work on canvas together with a useful, lucid commentary.
Dreaming with his Eyes Open: a Life of Diego Riviera (Bloomsbury, £20) by Patrick Marnham is an exemplary biography of the larger-than-life Mexican artist, which expertly disentangles the truth from the myths he created about himself and vividly recreates his extraordinary life and times.
Monet is the French Impressionist whose influence is most clearly felt in 20th-century painting, and Monet in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, £30 in UK) by Paul Hayes Tucker offers a lavishly illustrated reassessment of his achievement and his artistic legacy. It accompanies the exhibition which opens at the Royal Academy in London in January.