Harry Freedman’s diligent and lucid book examines the Jewish and Christian sources Cohen mined for his songwriting

Rob Doyle’s new collection of short essays sees him ponder the impact that his favourite books have had on him down the years

From board games to night-time bus journeys, Hannah Jane Parkinson’s new book encourages the reader to take pleasure in the minor things in life

Guardian writer Oliver Burkeman urges us to accept that we will never have full control over how we live our lives, to embrace our limits and enjoy the time we have

Leading British psychiatrist Alastair Santhouse argues that doctors need to learn to listen more closely to what their patients are telling them before diagnosing a physical illness

Helena Merriman’s new book is the true story of how a group of Wast Germans dug their way under the Berlin Wall in 1962

Georgia Pritchett found success as a writer on some of the funniest TV comedies of the past two decades, but she was conscious of being something of an outsider, especially in the male-dominated world of television writing

Fifty short but fascinating essays by artists and writers about the records they loved in their youth lay bare the importance of the album as an art form

Arifa Akbar looks back at her sister’s unhappy childhood, her early death and the dysfunctional family life that ruined their relationship in this honest and thoughtful memoir

All of human life is there in John Green’s thoughtful essay collection, adapted from his podcast of the same name

Ten years after the Arab Spring and the subsequent cruelties brought upon the people of the Middle East, Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash argue that the region is a third of the way through its transition to democracy

As Bob Dylan prepares to turn 80 tomorrow, a selection of

Donald Trump features prominently in this exposé of the lengths private investigators will go to when asked by wealthy and prominent individuals to dig the dirt on their adversaries

Craig Taylor spent six years interviewing the people of New York for his latest book, and the result crackles with raw urban energy

Seamus O’Mahony’s memoir of working life at Cork University Hospital is a fascinating mix of contrariness, despair and resignation

Movie journalist Helen O’Hara pulls no punches in her analysis of women in front of, and behind, the camera in Tinseltown

New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert has written a fascinating tour de force about our chances of reversing the bleak trajectory of climate change

Eliot Higgins’s account of how he set up his online intelligence collective Bellingcat is an eye-opening read

A lucid and succinct chronicle of the US’s decline in status as world leader and the rise of China to take its place

Stephen Jackley’s efforts to steal from the rich and give to the poor saw him come a cropper before long, as retold in this entertaining account of his life of crime