To put the review in brief, Nathaniel Philbrick picks up the thread where Herman Melville left off. In the Heart of the Sea steals a march over Moby Dick in that it is not a work of fiction, it is a chilling real-life story brilliantly retold by Philbrick, a leading authority on the history of Nantucket, director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. The climatic encounter between the whale and the whalers proved inspiration for Melville, says Christine McNeill

When journalist John Cornwell started working on this book, it was with the sole intention of exonerating Pope Pius XII, arguably the most powerful and controversial Pope in modern history. The exhaustive research conducted by Cornwell, who had himself once studied for priesthood, made him conclude otherwise. Readers will agree. Irony of ironies -- the Vatican is said to be preparing to canonise Pius XII, points out Gene Evans

The problem with theistic approaches towards and analyses of fundamentalism is that they do not serve much purpose. Moderates will always be at loggerheads with extremists. Dichotomy in religion has always existed and will continue to exist. All non-primitive religions were established by social rebels. But once established, all these religions did was to curb subsequent generations of social rebels. There always have been people who have brayed for blood in the name of religion. Means and ends always differ for different people, writes James Warder

For 30 years Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most acclaimed and widely read scientists of the twentieth century, bridged the gap between science and the mass culture through his monthly essay column in Natural History magazine. The end of the century will also dawn the end of Gould's tenure. As the subtitle of his ninth collection of essays indicates, the next compilation will be his last. Gould is the Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology and professor of geology at Harvard and the curator for invertebrate palaeontology in the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology, asserts James Warder

Peacekeeping does not help, perhaps it would be better for wars to meet their own catastrophic ends. That is the depressing message that emanates from the 400-odd pages of reportage and analysis by journalist William Shawcross. The Cold War ended, but what followed in the Nineties was a decade of regional and ethnic wars. Bloodbaths and massacres. All this is recounted in gory detail from the heart of the conflict zones by Shawcross. The conclusion is dismaying: "only the evil of war can resolve a political conflict and bring about peace", says Gene Evans.