I like to be delighted as I'm informed. All of these books have done so, but few have delighted me as Robb's explorations, on bike and by book, into the regional identities of France.

Collier asks why a sixth of the world, mostly in Africa, are failing to profit from globalisation. The result is an elegant analysis of the "traps" these societies face, and how they can escape them.

Shiller shows how misguided policies and behaviour caused the Credit Crunch. He argues for bail-outs in the short-term, but then builds a powerful case for radical "democratic" reform of finance.

With an incisiveness few MPs could achieve today, Crosland eloquently refutes the old dogmas of class war and nationalisation, then defends a moderate socialist ideal of social equality.

Under a Republican government Rome became a great empire, but it soon collapsed into a dictarship. It's a resonant subject, told with a novelist's skill at building character and drama.

Figes emphasises ordinary Russian people's lives under Tsarist misrule and then civil war. Their suffering, together with the missed opportunities for liberal reform, comes across as an epic tragedy.

Cohen thinks the Left has gone mad and betrayed its own values. His targets (postmodernists, Living Marxism, the Anti-War movement) are a bit selective, but deserving of the pen-lashing handed them.

Partly a history of Buddhism, the author also writes vividly and thoughtfully about world politics and his own life. The crisp Himalayan solitute of his time in Simla has stuck with me.

For Hofstadter continuity rather than clash was the defining feature of American political history. This revisionist thesis is pursued in fascinating mini-biographies of key figures up to FDR.

A series of essays which amount to an introduction to aesthetics. It is fitting that a book on beauty should be a beautiful work itself.

The critic at the heart of post-war Britsh theatre filled his diaries with hilarious anecdotes and cutting perceptions: "The critic's job is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad".