The latest releases reviewed
Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs Edited by John Pilger Vintage, £8.99
This vital collection of the most important examples of investigative journalism, edited by the great iconoclast John Pilger, never ceases to remind us of the importance of a free and vigilant fourth estate, challenging the powerful and giving voice to the oppressed and exploited. These articles and extracts cover atrocities and scandals from Dachau and McCarthyism to the occupation of East Timor and the current conflict in Iraq. Many of these reporters, including Edward R Murrow, Martha Gellhorn, Robert Fisk, Paul Foot and Seymour Hersh, are still among the most celebrated names in journalism. Above all, what resonates in these powerful articles is a passionate hunger for justice, and a firm belief that honest reporting is one of the greatest weapons against all that is unfair and wrong. Davin O'Dwyer
Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Irish World Cup Blues Conor O'Callaghan Bloomsbury, £8.99
Oh God no, I hear you say, not the S-word. Don't worry; although football fans will savour the way in which this book brings together the various points of view concerning the Saipan bust-up from the autobiographies and newspaper diaries of the main players, there's much more to this than an anorak's account of the minutiae of the row. There are frequent laugh-out-loud moments. And it is as memoir - the author's life as remembered through a football filter, the excitement of a young boy (the author's son) watching his first World Cup, a wife's frustration at having get-togethers ruined by the never-ending debate - that the book works best. A warning: the author's accounts of heated arguments with passing acquaintances are sure to bring similar embarrassing memories back to many readers in vivid detail. Prepare to cringe. Ciaran Murray
Doing Our Own Thing: the Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care John McWhorter Arrow Books, £7.99
Here's an account of what's wrong with the US, where the villain isn't President Bush but, eh, Bob Dylan. Young fogies and old grumpies will love this book but McWhorter belongs in neither camp. The author is a Californian linguistics professor who blames 1960s counterculture for triggering the dumbing-down of language, and who flays the hip-hop music culture and derides white middle-class "respect" for rap. He scorns those who approach the Gettysburg address and a Homer Simpson "soliloquy" with equal gravitas. He mocks the campus madness that po-facedly evaluates the gibberish of Eminem alongside the genius of Emily Dickinson and is scathing about the poor quality of much contemporary US poetry, journalism, academic writing and political speech-making. A highly erudite, and amusing, contribution to a great debate. Michael Parsons
The Body of Jonah Boyd David Leavitt Bloomsbury, £7.99
Denny is a Thanksgiving guest at the home of her boss and psychology professor, Dr Ernest Wright, and his hopelessly bourgeois wife, Nancy. Denny is also Dr Wright's lover. What makes this 1969 Thanksgiving special is the visit of Nancy's best friend, Anne, and her new husband, the celebrated novelist Jonah Boyd. Leavitt uses this gathering as the focal point for his perceptive and comic novel, dissecting the secrets and lies of middle-class academia and its surrounding world. He uses a defining occasion of American identity to assess the effects of self-deception, greed, success and failure upon the Wrights and their guests. Leavitt's dry humour and insightful depiction of the characters lifts the novel from mere portrayal of a dysfunctional American family to something more revealing about desires, jealousy and hypocrisy. Tom Cooney
Salonica, City of Ghosts By Mark Mazower Harper Perennial, £8.99
Reclaiming the Mediterranean city from official accounts, this empathetic elegy gives voice to the hugely contrasting stories that make up its past. Among Byzantine and Roman ruins, highly-regarded scholar Mark Mazower begins his narrative with the 15th-century Ottoman invasion of the city. Through five centuries, Christians, Jews, Muslims and people of innumerable nationalities co-exist, sometimes in tension, but often peacefully. The city thrives; it is home to industry, wealth, political debate, tolerance and burgeoning tourism yet also minor uprisings, injustices and terrorism. The exceptionally cosmopolitan society finally succumbs to two world wars, genocide, a great fire and fierce nationalism. With impeccable research and lively style, the history of Salonica is recreated. Mazower frames it as an example of the great potential - and also problems - of a diverse metropolis and a fascinating microcosm of the world around it in pre-war Europe. Larry Ryan
Stalin: A Biography Robert Service Pan Books, £9.99
This is an insightful 600-page-plus heavyweight blockbuster that tries desperately to unhinge the closed personality and life of one of the 20th-century's most charismatic monsters. While it is at times a "please-get-to-the-chase" slog through the early life of the man born Joseph Dzhugashvili, Russian specialist Robert Service has got as close to the real "Koba" as anybody, tracing his early life in the Caucasus through his revolutionary opportunism, manipulation of the Communist party, show-trials, collectivisation mania and numerous blood-fests to his succession as supreme post-war figurehead. Charting the rise of a one-time seminarian with a love for Marxism, architecture, linguistics and genetics, who was as happy passing on Georgian nursery rhymes to children on his knee as signing a nation's death warrant, this is a chilling look at the evil that once permeated Soviet society. Paul O'Doherty