Irish Times critics review the latest crop of paperbacks.
France and the Nazis. Adam Nossiter, Methuen, £8.99
France, unlike Germany, was so traumatised by its massive human losses in the first World War that it had no stomach for a second. When it came, bringing rapid defeat and disintegration, the demoralised nation adapted to (partial) occupation, with some opting for active collaboration, others for resistance and most for simple survival. There is a tendency among historians from countries that have never been invaded to take a rather lofty attitude towards wartime France, and Nossiter is no exception. His elegant, forensic study deals with the memory - and lack of memory - of collaboration in France today through a series of interviews in modern Bordeaux, Vichy and Tulle. Written from a point of view of considerable moral superiority, urbanity of tone failing to quite conceal considerable harshness of judgment, this is still a compelling evocation of a dark time. - Enda O'Doherty.
Duende. Jason Webster, Black Swan, £7.99
Drunk and dumped, Jason Webster meets a busker in a bar who suggests that he learn the guitar as a cure for his troubles. Taking it to the extreme, Webster packs up his life and heads for Spain in the hope of becoming a flamenco great and finding his duende, the ecstatic emotional state that is its essence. The resulting memoir is revealing, funny and often poignant, even if it does rely on the author's naivety and ability to walk blindly into misadventure. In Alicante he has an affair with Lola, a second-rate dancer and Señora Robinson. In Madrid, he falls in with a gypsy band, and dives into the flamenco underground, fuelling the three gigs a night with a diet of cocaine and alcohol, while getting dragged into one band member's car-stealing activities. Fuelled by dumb romantic notions and drugs, Webster shows us the world behind the tourist troupes, to thrilling effect. - Shane Hegarty
Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason. Jessica Warner, Profile Books, £8.99
From 1720 to the 1750s, the poorer parts of London experienced a "gin craze". Cheap gin was the original urban drug, numbing the city's teeming poor to the hunger, fatigue and cold that were their lot. When men and women, who ordinarily would have drunk a pint or two of beer, drank the same quantity of gin, the consequences were often disastrous, especially since their health was already precarious and their diet indifferent. Reformers were right to claim that London was facing a public health crisis, but they neglected to observe that poverty itself was very bad for one's health. As well as being a professor of history, Warner is a research scientist in addiction and has written extensively on the history of alcohol and other drugs, which makes her comparisons between the 18th-century gin craze and more recent drug scares all the more fascinating. - Brian Maye
Fat Wars: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry. Ellen Rupel, Shell Atlantic Books, £8.99
Forget Atkins, Shell's book is a fascinating study in counter-
weight culture. She weaves together a compelling narrative, exploring the historical origins of our weight-
obsessed society and the industries that drive us to the dinner table, and suggests an uncompromising alternative to the fast-food nation. This is no academic text. Shell does not merely highlight the research being done in universities; she gives us the story behind the white coats, of how professors cheat their hard-working teams out of any credit for work on obesity research and, more importantly, an adequate share of the resulting patent cash. She debunks myths, analyses diet pills and their disturbing side-effects, and tackles miracle cures that are anything but, with a scientific zeal that makes this is as readable as any good investigative journalism. - Laurence Mackin
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Roger Lewis, Arrow, £9.99
First published in 1994, this paperback has been reissued to coincide with the forthcoming film based on it, starring Geoffrey Rush as Sellers. A monster of the first order, even worse than fellow Goon Spike Milligan, Sellers was, according to this author, certifiably mad: "He was off his head in more than a manner of speaking." Lewis takes more than 1,000 pages to prove this, his progress as convoluted and manic as his subject's own bizarre life. The problem, of course, was that Sellers believed he had no personality of his own and only came alive when he was performing, so that if he was not employed as an actor he was an empty space. So, his demons compelled him to be obnoxious to everyone around him - wives, children, fellow-actors, producers, directors, friends, and so on. A sad sack himself, he still left the sound of laughter ringing round the world. - Vincent Banville
The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman and The Brother. Flann O'Brien, Scribner/TownHouse, £7.99
After sampling a few sketches from this collection of Myles na gCopaleen's Cruiskeen Lawn columns you'd be forgiven for suspecting that Flann O'Brien had spent too much time in public houses with those lesser-spotted journalists known as sub-editors, part of whose job is to compose headlines, although here the headline is the last line of the story. The pieces are drawn from a 20-year period of Myles's pieces in this newspaper, and feature the discourses, musings and misadventures of Keats and Chapman, each story furnishing a witty pun or brilliant bon mot. Though bristling with intelligent humour, like rich Belgian chocolates these individual offerings were not intended for digestion in only one sitting. But perhaps that's being pedantic, and as Keats and Chapman might have put it, the pedants are revolting. - John Moran