Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923-1968

Niall Ferguson

The magisterial first instalment of a two-part biography about a man who towered over American foreign policy for more than two decades, and still divides opinion as no one else does.

Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot

Mark Vanhoenacker

A highly readable account, as moving as it is unexpected, of what flying means, by an airline pilot with a gift for words.

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life

Jonathan Bate

It is hard to write a literary account of Ted Hughes without writing about the life, as many authors have found. Five years in the making, this biography began as an authorised life only to become unauthorised when the author fell out with Hughes's widow, Carol, over how much personal detail to include, prompting the poet's estate to withdraw its co-operation.

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Andrea Wulf

Explorer, polymath, friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Jefferson and Simon Bolívar, Alexander von Humboldt was one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. His ideas are as relevant today as they ever were.