What Next?: Surviving the 21st Century
By Chris Patten
Allen Lane £25, 512 pages
In an erudite volume, Chris Patten considers the global condition, including climate change, world poverty and nuclear proliferation. He deprecates wars on common nouns (“grandiose ways of describing doomed political ventures”), and has never eaten a Big Mac. As a “liberal internationalist”, he believes the world still capable of “rationality, creativity, generosity and kindness”, and he likes the look of Barack Obama.

A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity
By Jan Egeland
Simon & Schuster £18.99, 272 pages
As UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland was dubbed “the world’s conscience”. Here he describes his work in the world’s most dangerous places – Baghdad, Darfur, Congo, Columbia – among tyrants and warlords, relief workers and refugees. A passionate book, full of adventures and surprisingly hopeful.