Lead story in Books

The best books of the week

Stalin, Putin and the history of poisoned Russian minds

The war in Ukraine is the latest manifestation of a mindset that has been decades, if not centuries, in the making. Three books debunk the myths that Russia tells itself

Promoted Content

Recommended

What to read in 2026

More Books

• May 9 2026
  HTSI

  Lydia Pang on infertility, bitterness and the unexpected gift of failure

  The author’s rage consumed her — the cure was to write a book

  4 hours ago

  
• May 8 2026
  Changpeng Zhao

  Alphaville. We read CZ’s ‘memoir’ to protect anyone else from having to

  A dull account of an interesting life

  
• May 5 2026
  Meta Platforms

  Meta and Zuckerberg sued by publishers over ‘massive’ copyright infringement

  Tech giant faces lawsuit from five large groups over its use of copyrighted works to train Llama AI models

  
• May 1 2026
  Artificial intelligence

  The FT View. The irresistible rise of authorial AI

  Humans must get used to living and working with the quirks of machine-written text

  The editorial board

  
• May 1 2026
  Poetry

  The Poem: Medea by Ariana Reines

  From ‘The Rose’, the latest collection by the award-winning New York-based poet and playwright

  
• May 1 2026
  The best books of the week

  Hey Man by Andrew Meehan — from bromance to the brotherhood

  A lonely teenager lodges with his father’s cousin in this story of substitute love and male friendship

  
• May 1 2026
  The best books of the week

  The Dog’s Gaze — our constant companions in art as in life

  Historian Thomas W Laqueur’s copiously illustrated book explores why dogs have long been an integral feature of the artistic world

  
• May 1 2026
  The best books of the week

  From Lady Chatterley to Marilyn to Dua Lipa, books are in rude health

  Reading for both pleasure and betterment endures — even if unquestioning faith in literary canons and critical authority is gone

  Boyd Tonkin

  
• April 30 2026
  The best books of the week

  The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout — profound and resplendent

  A new tale about the power of secrets by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘Olive Kitteridge’

  
• April 30 2026
  The best books of the week

  Prophecy — why predictions are all about power

  Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz’s ingenious, scathing survey of forecasting takes a well-timed swipe at today’s obsession with predictive algorithms

  
• April 29 2026
  The best books of the week

  A Vast Horizon — art, sex and freedom in a world on the brink of war

  Anna Thomasson mixes biography with photographic analysis to explore the tangled relationships of Picasso, Lee Miller and their circle in the summer of 1937

  
• April 29 2026
  The best books of the week

  Have we gone too far with British declinism?

  Three new books portray a land caught in a muddle and beset by inequalities. A familiar story or is it time for a reset?

  
• April 28 2026
  The best books of the week

  Rasputin by Antony Beevor — the corrupt prophet at the heart of a rotten Russian empire

  The peasant who became a powerful adviser was a symptom, not the cause, of the Romanovs’ downfall, argues the ‘Stalingrad’ author

  
• April 28 2026
  The best books of the week

  Adrift in the South — the stark memoir of a Chinese factory labourer

  Xiao Hai tells a story of shattered dreams and the grim reality of conditions inside China’s manufacturing sector

  
• April 27 2026
  FT Series

  A Chiang Mai dream home, the death of the wine bottle – and other HTSI stories you loved this week

  Catch up on our most-read articles

  
• April 27 2026
  The best books of the week

  Other People’s Children by Ben Faccini — an accomplished tale of families, biological or blended

  In a beautifully balanced novel, a man tries to bond with his partner’s young sons while grappling with his own inherited history

  
• April 27 2026
  The Bracken Prize for Young Authors 2026

  FT and Standard Chartered Bracken Prize for young authors opens to entries

  Award will go to the best original business book proposal by an author aged under 35

  
• April 27 2026
  The best books of the week

  The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge — portrait of a medieval killer

  A gripping and authoritative global history of the plague that killed more than 100mn people in the 14th century

  
• April 26 2026
  Business books

  Interview. LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky: ‘No one is taking care of your career for you’

  Co-author of ‘Open to Work’ argues AI will bring opportunity — if workers are brave enough to take the initiative

  
• April 26 2026
  War in Ukraine

  Vladimir Putin’s regime turns on book publishers

  Kremlin crackdown targets even loyal publishing houses

  
• April 25 2026
  Robert Skidelsky

  Obituary. Robert Skidelsky, economic historian, 1939-2026

  The biographer of Keynes straddled disciplines and political parties in a lengthy and often controversial career

  
• April 25 2026
  Photography

  FT Magazine. How to trace a queer family history

  Hélène Giannecchini on the powerful everyday photographs of Donna Gottschalk

  
• April 24 2026
  Fiction

  Hey, Good Morning, How Are You? — an unsettling story of art and ageing

  A romance scam takes an unexpected turn in Martina Hefter’s German Book Prize-winning novel, her first translated into English

  
• April 24 2026
  French presidential election

  Rightwing media mogul rattles France’s literary scene

  Writers flee Paris publishing house Grasset in protest against conservative owner Vincent Bolloré

  
• April 24 2026
  Non-Fiction

  The Violence — Adriana Ramírez’s exceptional story of her grandmother’s Colombian war

  A vivid portrait of the civil conflict of the 1940s and 1950s — and how it opened the way for the armed groups that still control parts of the country