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• Kissing cousins

  Is marrying close relations harmful? Charles Darwin, anxious about his own family inbreeding, applied his scientific rigour to find out the truth. Adam Kuper reveals all

• A paon in the arse

  Laurie Taylor ruffles a few feathers

• Film review: Inglourious Basterds

  This World War Two revenge tale is lazy and idiotic, yet has moments of true brilliance. Could the real problem be Tarantino himself? asks Fred Rowson

• Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music by Greg Milner

  Andrew Mueller appreciates a note-perfect history of recorded music

• The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles by Benedict Gummer

  Louise Foxcroft is perplexed by a book that squeezes the life out of the Black Death

• God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam

  Nina Power on a good Dark Ages argument made for the wrong reasons

• The Fall of the Imam by Nawal El Saadawi

  Philip Womack praises a formidable Egyptian novel

• Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back by Douglas Rushkoff

  Michael Bywater takes on the corporations with Douglas Rushkoff

• Rhythm rites

  Crispin Robinson explains why he has become initiated in an Afro-Cuban drumming cult

• Shock and bore

  New Humanist prides itself on tracking down and exposing charlatans and cultists. But when they are as bizarre as Genesis P-Orridge, even our nerve failed. So we sent Fiona Russell Powell instead