Critical eye: book reviews roundup

Niall Ferguson's Civilization, Rosa Luxemburg, Wallander's last outing and Jennifer Egan's latest novel

"Niall Ferguson is far more than a writer and a historian these days; he's a brand," began David Aaronovitch's review of Civilization: The West and the Rest in the Times, which went on to suggest "his fans would doubtless be prepared to pay for Ferguson merchandise, a mug perhaps, or a Niall Ferguson action figure with tousled hair that shouts 'China!' when you press its genitals." Despite this initial facetiousness, Aaronovitch acclaimed a book he found "technically accomplished, brilliantly written, full of wit and virtuosity". He argued, however, that Civilization later "loses sight of its themes", and mocked its "bizarre" view that the east will overtake the west partly because of our feeble history teaching. Similarly, Frank Dikötter, in the Literary Review, was largely approving, but saw the book as eventually "unravelling"; "on what is this prediction based?" he asked of Ferguson's prophecy of the east's triumph, concluding that "when even a historian of [his] calibre is seduced by the China myth, it may be time to start worrying." The Daily Telegraph's Ben Wilson offered only all-purpose fence-sitting ("Civilization is very readable; it is also a book with which to argue, disagree and question"); while the Independent on Sunday's Amol Rajan echoed Dikötter in finding the book's history "peerless", but contending its later sections showed "the future is harder to do".

The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg were enthusiastically recommended in the Observer by Ian Thomson, for whom the views of the much-imprisoned German socialist leader seem especially "pertinent now with the world financial crisis". Her letters, he wrote, "come as near as anything to the way this extraordinary woman talked with loved ones and friends . . . This is a wonderfully compelling record, both poignant and timely." Lesley Chamberlain disagreed in the New Statesman, observing that the best letters (from prison) have appeared separately already, and saying only of the newly published ones that "they will be required reading for Luxemburg devotees".

In an early review of Henning Mankell's The Troubled Man, a tale of cold war espionage in which Kurt Wallander takes his final bow, the Evening Standard's David Sexton was dry about the author's politics ("readers won't be surprised to learn that the villain of the piece is not the Soviet Union but that far more dastardly outfit, the United States"); but he praised the novel for "delivering in full as a whodunit", and as "a sorrowful but fully satisfying conclusion to a great series. No Mankell reader will think of missing it." James Urquhart, in the Independent on Sunday, applauded Mankell's evocation of his diabetic detective's "quiet inner turmoil" and his "adeptness in weaving big ideas into seemingly local crimes".

Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of America's National Book Critics' Circle award, has been greeted almost as warmly here as it was in the US. For the Observer's Sarah Churchwell, this "series of chapters featuring interlocking characters at different points in their lives" was "a delight to read, gradually distilling a medley out of its polyphonic, sometimes deliberately cacophonous voices." Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the Financial Times felt "the characters are less sympathetic than you suspect she intends them to be", but admired Egan's "striking images" and the detailing of technology's effects in a novel that "updates 19th-century realism for the age of text messaging and Facebook".

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