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• Diary

  Forget about the stars, the Wise Men and the Baby Jesus. Christmas is all about family, says Carrie Quinlan

• God almighty PLC

  Marketing expert Winston Fletcher analyses a world-beating strategy

• Check republics

  The game of chess has its roots in rationalism. And, like the Enlightenment itself, argues Sally Feldman, it’s a force for both liberation and tyranny

• Thinkers: William Blake

  William Blake was a confused failure but a great humanist, says Shirley Dent

• Global warning

  With cartoon controversies reverberating across the world Tzvetan Todorov, one of the world’s foremost philosophers, considers the after-effects of the Danish images

• A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward

  Keith Kahn-Harris on a Jewish photographic history

• Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamic Turn by Asef Bayat

  Sami Zubaida questions Islamic democracy

• The Art of Listening by Les Back

  Stuart Sim is impressed by Les Back's approach to sociology

• From Anger to Apathy: The British Experience Since 1975 by Mark Garnett

  Stephen Howe is bored with apathy

• Diary of a Bad Year by JM Coetzee

  Stan Cohen reviews JM Coetzee's latest