A User’s Guide to Melancholy by Mary Ann Lund review – senses of humour
A learned and readable picture of Renaissance medicine with less comic eccentricity than Robert Burton’s 1621 magnum opus
Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor review – beyond words
Disaster in the Antarctic necessitates heroism at home, in this beautifully restrained interrogation of language, care and loss
Michael Lewis: ‘We were incentivised to have a bad pandemic response’
In his new book, the author of The Big Short has turned his attention to Covid and the people who could have prevented it sweeping the US – had they been allowed to
Not Even This by Jack Underwood review – fatherhood, philosophy and fear
A poet confronts his anxieties about becoming a parent in this free-wheeling meditation on the theme of uncertainty
Doom by Niall Ferguson review – how to make sense of catastrophe
A study of horrible afflictions, from famines to pandemics, and our failure to learn from past mistakes
Yoga, karate, skiing … Alison Bechdel on her lifelong obsession with exercise
Ever since she was a child, the Fun Home cartoonist has been fascinated by fitness. The cartoonist talks about the ‘salvation’ of running, polyamory and being seduced by a fan
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel review – no pain, all gain
The author of Fun Home reflects on self-improvement, death and her lifelong obsession with exercise in an extraordinarily generous memoir
The Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O’Sullivan review – 21st century health mysteries
Sleeping sickness, strange behaviour and mass hysteria ... a neurologist makes sense of ‘psychosomatic’ illness
‘We will have to choose our apocalypse’: the cost of freedom after the pandemic
To remake society after the pandemic, we must swap Insta self‑improvement for something more radical, argues author Sam Byers
In brief: Unsettled Ground; Genesis; Inferno – reviews
Twins unravel their family history when their mother dies; myths, science and the origins of the universe; and a harrowing account of postpartum psychosis