The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley
Helene Joffe prepares for the worst
Culture
The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley
Simon May comes face to face with mortality
Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy
Jonathan Derbyshire admires a dystopian classic
The Roads to Modernity: the British, French and American Enlightenments by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Stephen Howe asks why Gordon Brown is endorsing Neocon history
Motley crew
Laurie Taylor gets medieval with the cults
Heights of madness
As Sex and the City totters on to the big screen, Sally Feldman celebrates the agony and the ecstasy of the stiletto
Writing on the wall
Henri Lefebvre, the theoretician of the Paris uprising of 1968, saw that society’s most profound truths were etched on everyday life, discovers Daniel Miller
Field of nightmares
As festival season begins Andrew Mueller counts off the reasons to avoid them
Forked tongue
Doug Ireland examines the reputation of Tariq Ramadan, the man widely hailed as the saviour of Islam
Diary: Man the hedgerows
The spirit of freedom lives on in parklife, says Ken Worpole