Clyde Prestowitz’s Rogue Nation looks at the current isolation and distrust of the USA by other countries. Prestowitz is a former US trade negotiator, a Presbyterian minister and surprisingly enough, a Republican partisan. In the Herald, reviewer Mark Fryer comments:

And how did America squander the world's goodwill? Clyde Prestowitz doesn't put it so crudely, but by acting like a jerk, long before September 11 … the US has rejected or weakened international treaties, including the ban on landmines, limits on chemical and biological warfare, controls on the spread of nuclear weapons, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

Fryer concludes:

Rogue Nation is written as a wake-up call to Americans, but anyone with an attachment to "Western" values can share the underlying message - the problem isn't American ideals, it is America's failure to live up to its ideals.

Paul Strathern’s The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance is a study of the rise and fall of the Medici family over 300 years. The Medicis always provide a fascinating story, but according to John Gardner, this book does not do it justice:

For those unfamiliar with Medici history, it provides a useful introduction, but my "new readers start here" recommendation is Christopher Hibbert's The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, to which Strathern pays a graceful tribute.

Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything is subtitled The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Peter Calder likes it:

Winchester takes us through those 68 years with loving attention to entertaining detail, but without losing the story's momentum. He ensures we understand the dictionary's ambition to be descriptive - to show how the language is and has been used, rather than prescribe what ought to happen … His love for his subject is evident, his style is light and lucid … Winchester has crafted an excellently readable book about one of the enduring monuments of English culture.

Death's Acre is by Dr Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Twenty years ago, Bass created an open-air lab to study decomposition in corpses. That is the Death's Acre of the title, and the research now helps investigators fix the likely dates of death of corpses. The Herald’s Robin Arthur is gripped:

Bass knows how to hold an audience as he tells a tale. With the help of journalist friend Jefferson, he has sifted through his own work and personal life as carefully as he would comb the ashes of an arson scene. He pulls out fragments of evidence and pieces them together carefully to reveal stories of serial killers, mob hits, audacious insurance fraud and a shocking crematorium scandal … In the end, his work is testimony to the fact that while our bodies are little more than water, fat, carbon and calcium, the careful application of scientific methods may - where justice requires - allow the dead to speak for themselves.