Books of the month: what to read this December

With comedy grotesque timing, Michelle Obama’蝉 self-help book Overcoming: A Workbook (Viking) comes out in hardback on 3 December, timed for three weeks before Christmas, presumably, and not as a postscript to November’蝉 Democrat catastrophe. Leaving aside the observation that the former first lady’蝉 publication seems to be little more than a mishmash of pleasant, banal platitudes, I was struck by the number of blank “activity” pages for purchasers to write their own “fortifying” thoughts. I’m sorry to say that a gallows humour laugh was triggered by her instruction to “write about a time someone tried to diminish you?”. Hard not to read that without the image of the insult-spewing orange oaf coming to mind.

December is always a patchy, quiet month for new books (publishers are focused on their new year schedules) but one stocking-filler treat is Gerald Durrell’蝉 Myself & Other Animals (Viking), a posthumous work of autobiographical writing, released on 5 December to mark the naturalist’蝉 centenary on 7 January 2025. Durrell was a pioneering conservationist and his words resonate as loudly as ever, especially: “When man continues to destroy nature, he saws off the very branch on which he sits.”

Finally, John Bleasdale’蝉 impressive biography of Terrence Malick, The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick (University Press of Kentucky) opens a window into the life of a somewhat private filmmaker and offers insight into his work, including The Tree of Life. There are also little-known stories about his past, including the time he played basketball with Fidel Castro.

Books on Vatican spies, a memoir about Ukraine, cartoonist Martin Rowson’蝉 writings, the story of the world in 50 failures and a history of American migrants are reviewed in full below.

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Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War by Julian Evans ★★★☆☆

Waging war against Ukraine is a “Russian habit” according to BBC radio writer and producer Julian Evans, who fell in love with the city of Odesa in 1994. According to Evans the character of the Ukraine people is a mixture of fatalism and disobedience, and he details the long roots of their mistreatment at the hands of Russia in Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War, cruelty which even pre-dates Stalin and his deliberate policy of inflicting famine on Ukraine.

Much of the “love” part of the book is the account of Evans’ marriage to Natasha, which ended after 16 years. A foreboding sign of the split-to-come is evident in their exchange after the author suffers food poisoning from a Russian café. “You’re too delicate,” she tells him. His opinions in the book are anything but delicate, though, and he doesn’t pull his punches about how “staggeringly corrupt” Ukraine was in the early 2000s. He offers a stark portrait of mafia bosses obsessed by expensive motor vehicles (he calls it “car swank”).

The book also contains accounts of numerous bizarre interactions with ordinary Ukrainians, including a pathologist whose job is examining the “purple, bloated victims of Black Sea drownings”, and a taxi driver who uses a system of ropes and pulleys to work the pedals on his car, having lost both legs below the knees to frostbite in Siberia (a jail, presumably).

The book is at its most compelling when dealing with the ongoing conflict Evans witnesses while in Odesa. He is blunt about the warfare in Bakhmut, where soldiers fought for metres of land in ice-and-water-filled trenches, a situation he likens to “a grotesque Ukrainian Passchendaele”. By November 2022, he remarks, “the number of Ukrainian amputees is already approaching the number of amputees in all of World War One”. In a dismal conclusion, he also cites how Russia is using dirty tricks around the world, including in the UK (he alleges arson attacks in London by Russian criminal proxies and the recent “disinformation to incite far-right mob violence”).

The book is a vivid snapshot of a wretched situation, which he puts down to “Putin’蝉 amorality and Western leaders’ see-no-evil cowardice”. Whether Ukraine can remain undefeatable in the Trumpian sequel is less certain.

Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War by Julian Evans is published on 2 December by Scotland Street Press, ?25

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Vatican Spies: From the Second World War to Pope Francis by Yvonnick Deno?l ★★★☆☆

Espionage in the Vatican goes back to Pope Pius V in the late 16th century and continues up to the present day. In his candid, wide-ranging study, Yvonnick Deno?l, a French historian who has written on the CIA, Mossad and spying in the 20th century, draws on freshly released foreign service archives for Vatican Spies: From the Second World War to Pope Francis, an interesting study translated from the French by Alan McKay.

Deno?l voices his own opinions – he writes of the “delusions “of Pius XII who sacrificed his “moral credibility” in the way he dealt with Hitler – as he examines the behaviour of different Popes (some in cahoots with the CIA and some with the Russians) and how the Vatican itself was infiltrated by Eastern Bloc intelligence.

Vatican Spies is a tale of remarkable machinations – ones that apparently continue to the current reign of Pope Francis – and a story rich in betrayals, sacrifices, compromises, “damage control” dirty tricks and even murders.

Vatican Spies: From the Second World War to Pope Francis by Yvonnick Deno?l is published by Hurts on 5 December, ?25

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A Short History of the World in 50 Failures by Ben Gazur ★★★☆☆

Catastrophes and mistakes have often changed the course of history. One such misstep listed in Ben Gazur’蝉 A Short History of the World in 50 Failures is that of 1914 minicab driver Leopold Lojka, who took a wrong turn and stalled the car carrying Archduke Franz Ferdinand. By chance, Black Hand terrorist Gavrilo Princip, armed with a pistol, was standing outside the delicatessen where the car came to a stop. He assassinated Ferdinand and the world was on its way to World War One.

As history books go, it’蝉 snack reading. But some of the morsels are good. My favourite was about the origins of coffee, supposedly accidentally discovered when a shepherd noticed that his goats were unusually frisky after eating a type of berry. Kaldi tried them himself and was delighted with the caffeine high. Let’蝉 hope we’re not being kidded.

A Short History of the World in 50 Failures by Ben Gazur is published by Michael O’Mara Books on 5 December, ?12.99

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As I Please and Other Writings 1986–2024 by Martin Rowson ★★★★☆

Martin Rowson is one of Britain’蝉 best-known satirical cartoonists. He is also a writer and his essays and columns – including for Tribune, the Guardian and the Independent – are collected in As I Please and Other Writings 1986-2024.

It’蝉 an enjoyable read, full of acerbic opinion and insights, including into the secrets of drawing politicians, contained in the 2024 essay “Cartooning the Tory Years”. Rowson says he made the most of Liz Truss’蝉 hard features (including “a nose like a little chisel”) and noticed Rishi Sunak “was so immeasurably pleased with himself, I gave him three rows of grinning teeth”. He also admits that he didn’t want to draw Boris Johnson at all, “just to starve him of the oxygen of publicity”, but the clownish leader was just too tempting in the end. “However, like all attention-seeking narcissists, although his skin appears inches thick, it’蝉 actually microns thin, and I know from several sources that he truly hates the way I portray him,” Rowson writes.

As I Please and Other Writings 1986–2024 by Martin Rowson is published by Seagull Books on 6 December, ?19.99

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The Migrant’蝉 Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration by Brianna Nofil ★★★☆☆

There are 2,850 jails in the USA and they are detaining 12 times as many migrants as 50 years ago (an average of 37,000 each night), and they are often places of abuse, bribery and corruption.

Brianna Nofil, assistant professor of history at William & Mary University in Virginia, has written a revealing, potent history of mass incarceration and deportation, told through the stories of migrants in American jails. The accounts are disturbing – one Cuban in Louisiana describes his detention as a form of “state-sponsored disappearance” – and the statistics are depressing: Black migrants make up just six per cent of all people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, but they constitute about 28 per cent of all abuse-related reports and more than a quarter of solitary confinement cases.

Nofil starts The Migrant’蝉 Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration with the story of Chinese migrants in New York in the 1900s and 1910s, and his account includes the jailing of Caribbean refugees in Gulf South lockups of the 1980s and 1990s, right up to the modern-day incarceration of thousands of Latinos.

A federal cash windfall helps fund jail-building and detention costs and this in turn helps fill the pockets of local officials with an incentive to cram their jails full of migrants. Reading from afar, I can’t help but suspect that a giant and lucrative game is being played at the expense of vulnerable people held for long durations with little accountability in “the land of the free”.

The Migrant’蝉 Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration by Brianna Nofil is published by Princeton University Press on 17 December, ?28