IT’S NOT BEEN A GREAT YEAR for non-fiction books. Indeed, it’s been a while now since the last one, which is probably something to do with the pandemic, as well as the general lack of courage and conviction among too many publishers and commissioning editors, many of whom are relatively inexperienced and partial to modish, censorious obsessions.
But the books published over the last 12 months that do pass muster are very good indeed, and would grace any year, vintage or not.
I’ll single out three. But before I get to 2022’s holy trinity, its worth mentioning in dispatches a handful of superb works that also achieve the holy grail: a combination of scholarship and readability.
