The End of Wall Street proves no exception to these accolades, indeed I’d class it as one of his best books. Covering the Global Financial Crisis from inception to gory crash, it has come out later than the other GFC narratives I have read (the author himself somewhat caustically congratulates his forerunners), but the delay has allowed Lowenstein to ascend higher on his helicopter to scan the landscape. All the many assessed culprits, from loosened regulation, slack regulators, greedy mortgage originators, bankers inventing and flogging derivatives, risk-taking by banks, to uncomprehending rating agencies . . . Lowenstein weaves them all together into a crackerjack tale that would be rejected as fanciful in a novel. Add Lowenstein’s mastery of the terrain and his garnering of many fine interviews, and this is as good as you’ll get in surveying the barely comprehended wreckage. You may well disagree with his analysis of root causes but you’ll gain immensely in knowledge.

The End of Wall Street is one of the two GFC books you should read right now and urgently. 4 stars.

A road trip book coupled with a nuanced, heartfelt examination of home and family. 3 stars.

Paul Mees should be knighted and Public Transport for Suburbia is his best book yet. 3½ stars.

All of which suggests an intriguing read, especially for anyone interested in true crime or the nature of evil. Yet Siberian Education fails badly at all levels of narrative craft. It is bookended by two horrific sections describing post-teen life in the Russian army, killing people in Chechnya, a structure that offers no overarching tension. Sections read like shaggy dog stories, endlessly discursive. The only three abiding characters – the author, his simpleton friend and an elderly patriarch – remain cryptic. No moral lessons are learnt or even resisted – the world is described flatly, as if via a long interview. A longish, harrowing section on prison life is particularly difficult to even read. Lilin’s ‘tell it like it is’ prose is boring. Siberian Education ends up as a turgid, unpleasant slog.

Possibly valuable as a record of a bizarre and morally dysfunctional society, Siberian Education offers very little indeed to the general reader. 2 stars.

Brainstorm is a solid addition to Eric Maisel’s lifesaving body of work. 3 stars.

Moffett is a sparkling writer and Adventures among Ants would be superb as pure text. But it is the photography that had me gasping. Shot after short, beautifully taken and beautifully presented, brings ants to life as I’ve never seen before.

A stunning, approachable window into the world of ants. 4½ stars.

This is another contemporary must-read book. Fear grips our hearts when we contemplate mankind’s future on Earth (whoops, I must remember to call it Eaarth), so we need to let our rational minds read stories of the future, realistic stories. The tail end of Eaarth presents McKibben’s morsels of hope but they seem scant indeed – more productive, holistic, natural agriculture; distributed, small-scale energy; the Internet as a unifier. Yet the book is laced with the author’s irrepressible, instinctive call to action.

Passionate yet grim. 3½ stars.

I found especially valuable a chapter on how the United States and Germany outstripped Great Britain over the turn of the 19th century to become capitalism’s exemplars; what fascinates me is how powerful Germany’s advance was, even though its paternalistic, rigid society was nothing like the freewheeling, individualistic American system that we often mistake as capitalism’s natural form. And a 21st century chapter focusing on China reinforces the need to guard against assuming even that capitalism presupposes democracy.

The Relentless Revolution is not just about conceptual correctness. Appleby brilliantly proclaims its sparkling triumphs over the last two centuries. She is an evocative yet precise stylist and I cannot recall a more compelling paean to the virtues of capitalism’s efficiency, vigour and promotion of innovation. Yet she is also clear on the downsides of capitalism; it is not, she illustrates plainly, a moral force. The Relentless Revolution is an ideal book for people like me who believe in the power of capitalism controlled by strong, moral, democratic government.

Scholarly, readable, thought provoking . . . a must. 4 stars.

The GFC sprang upon the world as a huge shock, yet dozens of books since insist that the crash was quite predictable. Lewis tackles the question of cause from the most original angle of all, by focusing on those rare financial players who bet money – hefty licks of money – against the herd. A fascinating set of mavericks and misfits spent the years before the GFC seeking ways to make fortunes by gambling that the boom would turn to bust: a rebel with no social skills, a bunch of newbies with one good idea, a recluse with Aspergers, a glib salesman with brains. Lewis burrows deep into their lives, dovetailing their almost unbelievable stories as the storm approaches.

Throughout what reads like a Matthew Reilly thriller, Lewis gradually explains, evocatively and clearly, the intricacies of mortgages, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, sub-prime, and the interlocked financial markets. In the process, his portrayal of the money world is staggeringly simple: yes, there was evil afoot, but most of the supposedly ‘perfect’ market were simply thick and driven insane by greed.

The Big Short is the one account of the global financial crisis you simply must read, and it’s my pick for best book, nonfiction or fiction, of 2010 so far. 4½ stars.

The structure of The Face on Your Plate is discursive, sometimes almost random, and anyone seeking a coolly logical treatise on the moral advantages of vegetarianism would best go elsewhere. Yet it is the humane, highly personal exploration of these issues that gives the book its strong charm. Masson is an eloquent stylist, and that style is put to the service of an emotional message that hits its mark.

Powerful but never sanctimonious. 3 stars.