My books of the year

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Linked, a layman’s primer on the science behind ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon', which has profound implications for our understanding of everything from the internet and biology to sociology, economics and, I would argue, international politics.

Also, Olivier Roy's The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, a succinct and incisive critique of the ‘War on Terror’, with a twist. It damns both the neo-cons and the conventional left-wing riposte to their ideas in one deft movement.