The Irish Times reviews a selection of the latest paperbacks.
Where I Was From by Joan Didion, Harper Perennial, £7.99
Having already positioned herself as one of America's great social essayists with Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Sentimental Journeys, Didion turns her remarkably unblinkered attention to "where she was from", resulting in a celebration and critical examination of California on many levels: personal, historical, geographical, social, political, environmental and aesthetic. Beginning with her family's trek across North America, Didion delves into the fabric of her home state, enumerating countless threads of a past made suddenly pertinent by her mother's death in 2001. In weighing the "confusions and contradictions in California life", she has portrayed an essence of American life with magnitude. Christine Madden
Our Final Century by Martin Rees, Arrow Books, £7.99
According to Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, humanity has a 50-50 chance of surviving until the end of this century. What might kill us off? Terrorist bio-weapons, an asteroid impact, intelligent computers that turn on their makers or carnivorous nanoprobes that escape a lab and create a "grey goo" which destroys all living things on Earth. Rees's potential disasters offer a certain thrill; suggesting ways of destroying ourselves that go beyond traditional frighteners into the realms of what most of us believe to be science fiction. But he is a respected scientist and there is sobriety behind the snappy prose. Let's hope we live to see how the predictions turn out. Shane Hegarty
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen, Harper Perennial, £7.99
If you think you have both a sense of humour and a touch of cynicism in your being, this book is for you. It is also a contradictory book - it is at once highly amusing and deadly serious. And it's a marvellous read. Wheen takes them all on fearlessly and with great élan - the right wing think-tanks, New Age quackery, economic voodoo, world leaders, their many advisers, self-help gurus, astronomers and celebrity worship. He is relentless in his pursuit of perceived charlatans, writers who wrote best-sellers on some of the aforementioned topics and were subsequently proved to be completely wrong as they laughed their way to the bank. Wheen brings debunking to a fine art; he assaults the pompous and seems to enjoy it all enormously. He writes with such forceful common sense you wonder why you hadn't seen through all these people long ago. Owen Dawson
Living the Dream by Kate Thompson, Bantam Press, €12.99
Living the Dream is Kate Thompson's seventh novel in the popular fiction/chick-lit genre. The three lead characters are women, whose lives revolve around the handsome, romantic men who stride manfully into their lives. When Cleo Dowling wins the Lottery and moves to "the pretty village of Kilrowan to write her first novel", she quickly meets her neighbour Pablo MacBride. Once he invites her to sit "with an inclination of his head", Cleo knew "from that moment . . . that she was lost". Dannie Moore's man is Jethro Palmer, a hot-shot film director who is making a blockbuster in the area and Deirdre O'Dare has her own problems with gorgeous heart-throb actor Rory. Needless to say, by the end of the book, all three women have snared the requisite man each - and are set to live happily ever after. Catherine Foley
Charlie Johnson in the Flames by Michael Ignatieff, Vintage, £6.99
The central conceit of Michael Ignatieff's precise, brief third novel is that a litany of battlegrounds and atrocities render war journalists numb to what they witness in relentless pursuit of a good story. The versatile Canadian journalist and commentator focuses on Charlie Johnson, veteran war correspondent, covering the Balkan conflict. He encapsulates the jaded macho world of war reporting. His stupor is jolted upon seeing a woman who aids him set on fire by a soldier and he vows to avenge her killer. What follows is occasionally a little over-egged and nearly tips too far into action movie fantasy. However, the sense of helplessness for a war journalist - all passive reporting, no action - is powerful. It's an interesting but flawed novel with a terrible title. However, the evocation of the "predatory indifference" of war and the complex paradox of a journalist's need to get a story - while remaining humane - is fascinating. Larry Ryan
The Culture of Defeat by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Granta Books, £12
In the age of nationalism, loss in war causes deep and widespread depression, but before long this mood turns into a unique type of euphoria, argues Schivelbusch in this fascinating book. The change is usually caused by an internal revolution in the defeated country. The vanquished nation now feels cleansed and expects to be treated well by its conquerors. When this doesn't happen, the revolutionaries who formed the new regime now find themselves accused of deserting and betraying the nation in its hour of greatest need. Along with this, the losers equate military defeat with their own cultural superiority: they invent myths to glorify their past and explain their defeat. The defeated now question their very identities and seek to learn from and emulate the victors. Schivelbusch backs up his thesis persuasively and eruditely (the range of learning displayed is stunning) with three case studies: the American South after its loss of the Civil War to the North; France in 1871 following its defeat by Prussia, and Germany at the end of the first World War. Having read this book, you will never look at history in quite the same way again. Brian Maye