Sometimes seen as the dark underbelly of the Enlightenment, this volume strips away the myths from such societies as the Beggar's Benison, the Mowhawks and the Medmenham Friars – radicalist seed beds or seedy cliques of Satanists?
Quantum
Manjit Kumar, Icon, £20An elegantly written and accessible guide to quantum physics, in which Kumar structures the narrative history around the clash between Einstein and Bohr, and the anxiety that quantum theory "disproved the existence of reality".
Fiction
Folly
Alan Titchmarsh, Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99A multi-generational saga from the prolific celebrity gardener with the grab-line "Their love story began before they were born..." The opening chapter quotes Hardy, but comparisons, as they say, are odious.
A Time To Every Purpose Under Heaven
Karl O Knausgaard, Portobello, £18.99Billed as the most exciting Scandinavian fiction since Miss Smilla, this eclectic,hefty novel features a Renaissance boy who might have encountered an angel, and devotes his life to determining if the divine can change.
Travel
The Island That Dared
Dervla Murphy, Eland, £16.99"Travel legend" Murphy has long been obsessed with post-revolutionary Cuba and this travelogue recounts her ongoing love affair with the island, mixing reportage with commentary
Passport To Enclavia
Vitali Vitaliev, Reportage Press, £12.99A paean to local identities, Ukrainian-born Russian exile Vitaliev journeys to the fragments of countries lingering behind other borders, and makes a compelling case against the centralism of what he dubs the EU-SSR
The full article contains 261 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
