Books

MICHAL BONCZA has a chuckle at the understated wit of a futuristic penguin with a jaundiced view of US politics.

ALTHOUGH Gordon Brown has rowed away from his ludicrous crusade to promote "Britishness" of late due to the new line involving some guff about "global responses" to the recession, the whole vexed question of national identity still simmers away.

WHEN US General David Petraeus led the surge against the Sunni resistance in Baghdad last year, it was bloody, with horrifying bombings, 901 US personnel dead in the first year and thousands of Iraqis killed. But Petraeus did show some political know-how.

MOST people in Britain may spend their weekends attending fetes, the seaside or markets. But, then, there are those who like to spend their time cheese rolling, nettle eating, pea throwing or, perhaps, even snorkelling in bogs.

MICHAL BONCZA finds fresh light cast on a revolutionary icon in a tale with a twist.

PUBLISHED as part of a series of books celebrating great revolutionaries, Toussaint L'Ouverture is a selection of notes, letters and memoirs written during the Haitian struggle against slavery and colonialism.

THIS book is a collection of essays celebrating the work of Edward Said. At his death from leukaemia in 2003, he was dubbed the world's best-known intellectual.

AT once intriguing and frustrating, this book appears to be the product of a personal private finance initiative. There is no name of press given, spellings are quirky and the layout is unusual.

RARELY has a book filled me with such despair for the future of our planet. It's made all the more breathtaking by the clarity of thinking and writing.

DAVID FLOYD can't help but think that Thomas Frank's run down of neoconservative rogues is something of a wasted opportunity.