Roula Khalaf
FT Editor
Robert Kagan’s Rebellion: How anti-liberalism is tearing America apart again is a must-read if you are (rightly) worried about a second Donald Trump presidency and confused by the MAGA phenomenon. Kagan’s central argument is that Trump is merely the vessel through which an anti-liberal tradition in American politics is staging a revolution. While this may only provide part of the explanation for Trumpism, it is essential historical context for understanding contemporary America.
Janine Gibson
FT Weekend Editor
For reasons too complicated to explain, I have lived for much of the past year just behind Cally Road, sandwiched between the garden squares of wealthy, liberal Islington and the sprawling sprawl of Googlopolis at King’s Cross. I am perhaps uniquely placed to appreciate its location at the centre of everything. Andrew O’Hagans Caledonian Road takes the disparate societies of our time and loosely puts them together, sometimes poignantly, sometimes crudely. He dissects the London laundromat like the excellent journalist he is, and skilfully lays out a series of criminal trials without linking them in a defamatory way to real oligarchs. A new set of stock characters for our way of life today, like a Jilly Cooper for the readers of the Times Literary Supplement. I can’t pay a higher compliment.
Frederick Studemann
FT literary editor
The brutal attack on Salman Rushdie two years ago by a knifeman left the author blind in one eye and fighting for his life. But it did not take away his literary abilities – as in Knife. This remarkable book of “meditations” weaves together several strands: a calm, matter-of-fact account of the attack and its aftermath, expanding to include love, family and a life of literature, and the power of fiction – an imaginary “interview” with his attacker – to provide a reckoning, or as Rushdie puts it, “I take responsibility for what happened and make it my own.” Elegantly and poignantly executed, it also brings an ironic and witty twist to a horrific story. A testament to the power of literature.
Rana Foroohar
FT Global Business Correspondent
Jonathan Haidt is one of the most astute social scientists of our time, an early believer in the issues of American political polarization and the campus culture war. The fearful generationhe examines how 24/7 digital culture has destroyed our children’s mental health and what we can do about it.
Nilsson Roy
FT columnist
Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Timea thoughtful foray into the world of colonialism through time-travelling expats, is the perfect beach read with literary heft. Romance simmers as a minor bureaucrat in near-future London is tasked with being the “bridge” for a Victorian Arctic explorer brought back from the past, but Bradley’s debut is also haunting about what refuge means in a rapidly changing world.
Tim Harford
FT’s Undercover Economist columnist
Matt Parker is a real nerd among nerds, and the choice of topic of his new book, Love Triangle: The Life-Changing Magic of Trigonometrymay seem intimidating, but we’re in safe hands here, as we delve into the curved glass walls that architects seem to love and why everyone sees a different rainbow. An entertaining and often surprising guide to the history of triangles – and the (practical and highly impractical) applications of trigonometry.
Stephen Bush
FT columnist
The only woman in the room by Pnina Lahav, a retelling of the life of Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female prime minister, is a compelling account of Meir’s life, thought and politics. Lahav, an eminent and respected historian, has written a book that offers new insights both to those familiar with Meir’s story and to those reading it for the first time.
Claire Barrett
FT Consumer Editor
Hedge fund managers are in for a tough summer. Tax bills will soar if Labour gets its way with carried interest rules, and now one of them has been deliciously portrayed as a monstrous villain in Near death, Anthony Horowitz’s latest crime thriller, set in a gated community in Richmond where every single one of Giles Kenworthy’s posh, eccentric neighbors wanted him dead, but which one of them shot a crossbow bolt through his neck?
Henry Mance
FT Editor-in-Chief
Cal Newport, author and computer science professor, argues that knowledge workers must escape the modern cult of busyness, which only amounts to “pseudo-productivity.” His new book Slow productivity has various ideas on how you can do your job smarter and better (until maybe AI comes along and does it for you).
Soumaya Keynes
FT columnist and host of the podcast “The Economics Show”
While many politicians promise more growth and some environmentalists demand less, growth: A story and a reckoningDaniel Susskind offers a nuanced view of the mistakes they all make. One mistake is the overemphasis on physical things. We should all better appreciate the power of ideas, fund their discovery, and help them flow more freely.
Anjana Ahuja
FT science commentator
In The weight of natureClayton Page Aldern sums up better than anyone in a long time why so many of us feel uneasy about climate change: it’s not just changing the landscape, it’s changing us too. Rising temperatures are subtly changing our brains and bodies: making us angrier, reducing our productivity, and distorting our decision-making. This beautifully written read about the heatwave will give you goosebumps.
Jemima Kelly
FT columnist
The first 100 pages of The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas have a familiar feeling: here is a well-told story of a honeymoon gone wrong. But as the novel unfolds in highly original ways – including via a 17-page AI-generated audio transcript – it becomes clear that everything is much darker and more disturbing than it seems. Reminiscent of a Ruben Östlund film, this is a shocking, wickedly funny, totally unpredictable and gripping summer holiday read.
Tell us what you think
Are you taking any of these books with you on your summer vacation this year? Which ones? And which titles did we miss? Let us know in the comments below.
Rebecca Watson
Assistant Editor for Arts and Books
I read Alba Arikha’s novel Two hours earlier this year and it made a big impression on me. The novel is told in a first-person, diaristic and poetic form and is full of contradictions. The memory of a brief, romantic encounter as a teenager clings to the protagonist’s life for over two decades. The intimate voice – and the sensory observation – are reminiscent of Arikha’s memoirs Major/Minor and is an intoxicating portrait of a life half lived in the imagination.
Rebecca Watson’s new novel “I Will Crash” (Faber) will be published in July
Cheryl Brumley
The FT’s global audio director
What first drew me to Jo Hamyas The Hypocrite was its cloak of crystal-blue sky and sea. So I was surprised to find that most of the play takes place in a more familiar setting: a crowded theater in London’s West End, where a father watches his daughter’s play about a summer they spent together in Sicily. To his shock, she tears him apart. “You messed me up, too,” he tells her later. But this isn’t just a book about a young woman examining the mores of her father’s generation. The playwright also resents her dour contemporaries, who see trauma as something more worthy of storytelling than a laugh. This is a surprisingly funny book, in which no character’s polemics go unchallenged.
Gillian Tett
FT columnist
The latest book by Joseph E. Stiglitz the way to freedom is, in my opinion, a must-read: provocative and powerful, it questions the right’s use of the word “freedom” and points out that the freedom of one often represents a restriction of the other and that we should therefore always ask ourselves: “Freedom for whom?”
Antonia Cundy
FT Special Investigation Reporter
In Samantha Harvey’s Orbitsix astronauts orbit the Earth 16 times. Gliding through Harvey’s colorful prose is an equally smooth experience: it switches effortlessly between the lives of those in orbit and those they think about on Earth, from swirling global weather patterns to the inner workings of the space station. Orbit inevitably comes to an end, but feels like it could go on forever.
Coming soon to the Summer Books 2024 …
All week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights include:
Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Wednesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Thursday: Fiction by Laura Battle and Andrew Dickson
Friday: Story by Tony Barber
Saturday: FT journalists choose their favourite book of 2024 so far
Sunday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café
