Lead story in Books

FT Best of Weekend long reads
The midlife crisis — and how to deal with it

Empathy, mortality and ‘happiness U-curves’ can be found amid the angst in three books aimed at forty-somethings

Top stories in Books

Review Political books
China’s globalisation paradox

A timely account of how Beijing is expanding its influence makes for sober reading

Review Biography and memoir
Room to Dream — David Lynch: the man who wasn’t there

One of Hollywood’s great auteurs tries to reinvent the memoir — by revealing nothing

Nilanjana Roy
The Booker’s biggest challenge: staying relevant

At 50, the literary award has consistently delivered good longlists and shortlists, but it hasn’t been without its critics

Review Non-Fiction
The British love nature. So why are they destroying it?

An assured analysis asks why, in a nation of wildlife-lovers, species have experienced greater losses than the global average

Review Fiction
The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton — Australian pastoral

An adept exploration of masculinity and nature

Review Fiction
Tommy Orange and a new generation of American voices

The writer’s debut novel There, There presents a cast of characters who give voice to Native Americans

Review History books
Did Britain really spend the 20th century in decline?

David Edgerton’s unsentimental history challenges the received wisdom of the country’s inevitable downfall

Review Fiction
Florida by Lauren Groff — prose pulsating with peril

A lushly evocative collection of stories about the Sunshine State, its inhabitants and its history

Review Fiction
Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton — glamour girls

A lurid thriller about privileged New York life that has Gatsby-like overtones

Review Science fiction books
Short review: The Quanderhorn Xperimentations by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall

A comic sci-fi novel in which England has been stuck in 1952 for a 66 years

Review Science fiction books
Short review: Black Chamber by SM Stirling

A spy is tasked to uncover the truth about a German secret weapon that could change the first world war

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