1974: Scenes from a Year of Crisis
Nick Rennison
Oldcastle, £14.99, pp252
Following on from his enjoyable 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year, Nick Rennison returns with another breezy and very readable canter through a seminal 12 months. As he admits in the introduction, 1974 is not as obvious a subject for a book as 1922, but as he takes the reader through everything from the implementation of the three-day week and the first lesbian kiss on British television to Stephen King publishing his debut, Carrie, and Lord Lucan’s disappearance, Rennison maintains a finely judged balance between conversational anecdote and genuine insight.
America Fantastica
Tim O’Brien
Mariner, £20, pp449
The now 77-year-old Tim O’Brien returns with his first novel in two decades, a sprawling and at times hilarious state-of-the-nation satire that follows the sociopathic journalist Boyd Halverson on a journey across the US peopled with thieves, liars and conmen, each of whom tries to outdo the rest in (im)moral turpitude. O’Brien is best known for his writing on the Vietnam war, but he brings the same verisimilitude to what he calls his country’s “mythomania”, or addiction to falsehoods, and owes equal debts to Swift, Trump and A Confederacy of Dunces.
Heritage: A History of How We Conserve Our Past
James Stourton
Apollo, £14.99, pp464
The question of how far conserving our history is desirable, even essential, and how far it is simply a backwards-looking indulgence lies at the heart of James Stourton’s superbly written and often powerful new book. Although Stourton is open about his disdain for the current obsession with high-rise buildings that squash cities, he is no nimby, but instead draws on wide and often fascinating examples to tell the story of how often-overlooked, even belittled groups and organisations have been responsible for keeping the historic fabric of Britain alive for centuries.
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