The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan
Allen Lane, £25

ALAN GREENSPAN is regarded as the high priest of capitalism and is often credited with single-handedly averting recessions in the United States and steering the economy over there into calmer waters. He has had the ear of every US President since 1969 and, in 1987, was appointed chairman of the US Federal Reserve by Ronald Reagan. This 531-page book is, effectively, his memoirs with his assessment of the world economy including the rise of Russia, China, India and the other Asian economic tigers.

Don McPhee: photographer
Guardian Newsroom, Archive and Visitor Centre, London

SUMMER, 1984. A striking Yorkshire miner at Orgreave, wearing an old police helmet, confronts a row of policemen. Yes, you’ve probably seen this photo before. It was very famous at the time, it was used on the cover of GB84, David Peace’s novel about the miners’ strike, and now it fronts the catalogue to this exhibition of the work of Don McPhee, the late Guardian photographer. It’s so simple and iconic that it defies verbal description. Or does it? Look a little closer and you’ll see that the officer’s helmet bears the legend “Kent Constabulary”. Is this a war of the south of the country against the north?

Ten Years of New Labour
edited by Matt Beech and Simon Lee
Palgrave Macmillan, £19.99

BEFORE you read any further you should take a seat and have the smelling salts to hand. For what you are about to receive, you may not be truly thankful. For it is written in this good book that Tony Blair was more successful in terms of Labour’s objective of expanding provision of services through public expenditure than Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson or even Clement Attlee.

Neil Young reports on the British Silent Cinema Festival, where the absence of sound did not mean any lack of talking points

Who Runs Britain? by Robert Peston
Hodder & Stoughton, £20

FOR MORE than a century writers and politicians on the left have been predicting that the capitalist system would shortly collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Again and again, capitalism has proved these prophets of doom wrong. However, the start of the 21st century has coincided with a financial crisis every bit as great as any that has gone before. If things go on as they are, Karl Marx may be proved right after all.

Pompeo Batoni 1708-1787
The National Gallery, London

ARTISTS can dramatically go in and out of fashion. This is certainly the case with the Italian artist Pompeo Batoni, who was regarded as one of the leading portrait painters of the 18th century. Yet, since his death, his work has fallen out of favour. However, as this revelatory exhibition makes clear, he was a highly skilled and inventive artist, capturing likeness and mood with consummate skill.

A History of Conservative Politics Since 1830
by John Charmley
Palgrave Macmillan, £15.99

THE Tory Party has been with us for getting on for two centuries, and its mindset has been with us since the first cavemen began trading flint scrapers. Indeed, Ug and Og can be readily identified by a cursory glance across the Opposition benches. Suits may have replaced animal skins but barbarian hearts still beat beneath them.

A Dance to the Music of Time
Radio 4

ANTHONY POWELL’S magisterial cycle of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time, was published between 1951-75. There are 12 volumes altogether, totalling some 3,000 pages. It is an original and compelling saga owing much to Proust, PG Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. The title comes from the famous painting by Nicholas Poussain.

Blood & Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism
by Michael Burleigh
Harper Press, £25

MICHAEL BURLEIGH’S new book is a history of terrorism beginning in the mid-19th century with the Irish Fenians and Russian Nihilists and ending with the terrorism of today, which he terms jihadi-salafist. Burleigh looks at the lives and the actions of the terrorists and the choices they make rather than focusing on their ideologies, though these are addressed, because he regards ideology as “a detonator that enables a pre-existing chemical mix to explode”.

The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
Allen Lane, £20

WAR was, in ancient times, usually brutally straightforward; the victors simply paid for the cost of a campaign by plundering and wiping out the vanquished. Killing the losers and grabbing their loot paid the bills. It was clear cut and, anyway, Genghis Khan employed no accountants.