The Budapest File (Bloodaxe, £9.95 UK) gathers into one powerful volume the poems George Szirtes has written in and out of his own past and his returns to Hungary since going to England as a refugee in 1956. An important epic story in verse. The Library of America, in a fashion inconceivable this side of the choppy Atlantic, has just published in two volumes American Poetry (US$35 each). I think the word is "awesome".
Music
By Arminta Wallace
`We always did dirty little things on our records . . . on Girl, we sang `Tit-tit-tit-tit' in the background and nobody noticed . . . " No doubt about it: music book of the year has to be The Beatles Anthology (Cassell, £35 UK), a great joyous gathering of anecdotes, information and shameless puns, of which the chapter-heading Mersey Beaucoup springs immediately to mind. Fans will have it already, of course, so if you're buying for one, it might be wise to opt for Keith Badman's The Beatles Off The Record instead (Omnibus Press, £19.95 UK). Not nearly as handsome, but still packed full of the wacky quotes for which the Fab Four were noted.
On the classical front, T.E. Carhart's The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: the hid- den world of a Paris atelier (Chatto & Windus, £15.99 UK) is the sort of stylish, affectionate homage to keyboard culture which could only have been written by an American in Paris. Great gift for a pianist - but an even better one for a lapsed pianist, to remind them what they're missing. Music critics have afforded an unusually harmonious welcome to Christoph Wolff's Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Oxford University Press, £25 UK), a "biographical essay" which sets out to examine the intellectual principles of Bach the composer, but in doing so provides an endearing portrait of Bach the man, a pudgy pipe-smoker who, as Irish Times reviewer Raymond Deane pointed out, "was never without a bottle of brandy when he retired to compose". Finally, jazz buffs will want to investigate Peter J. Levinson's Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James (OUP, £20 UK).
Travel
By Angela Long
How refreshing to read a travel book in which the inhabitants of the country visited are described as filthy, caked in dirt even, with none of the contemporary political correctness which insists that one must not be so judgmental. Such is the joy of vintage travel writing. Yet Secret Tibet (Harvill, £20 UK) by Fosco Maraini also boasts passages of lyrical beauty, such as his description of white orchids in the Himalayas: "They are beautiful but sinister - flowers with poisonous scent, the kind of flowers to send to an enemy." Maraini's book is a composite of his impressions (including the dirt), in the 1930s and 40s, and again in 1998: A classic of the genre. In Sicily by Norman Lewis (Jonathan Cape, £14.99 UK) is the latest work on his special subject by a man described by more than one of his peers as the greatest travel writer living. This is a scrumptiously presented and easy to read tale of Sicily, which Lewis has known intimately for decades. Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography (Random House, £25 UK) is placed in the history sections of some bookshops, but for anyone who wants to know about the wonderful capital this is a brilliant source. In similar vein is Philip Knightley's Australia: A Biography of a Nation (Jonathan Cape, £20 UK). Also looking south, Bill Bryson's bestseller on Australia, Down Under (Transworld, £16.99 UK) is something for a sunny-minded winter browse and a chuckle.
Architecture And Design
By Robert O'Byrne
If knowledge is power, as has sometimes been claimed, then the advocates of architectural conservation in Ireland should be in a much stronger position at the end of the present year than at any time before. Certainly their struggles - only occasionally successful - to encourage greater awareness of the capital's historic building stock were meticulously chronicled by Frank McDonald in The Construction of Dublin (Gandon Editions, £25 hbk/£15 pbk) which looks at the astonishing changes to the city since the current economic boom began and at the various players who were responsible for introducing so many cranes to the urban skyline. Pat Liddy's Dublin: A Celebration (Dublin Corporation, £25 hbk/£17 pbk) is, as the title implies, inherently upbeat in tone, a large, extensively illustrated (often with the author's own drawings) volume which takes in not only the old but also the new.
Peter Pearson's The Heart of Dublin: Resurgence of an Historic City (O'Brien Press, £30) is equally eclectic, demonstrating the author's extensive research as well as his boundless enthusiasm for the capital's old centre. One of the architects primarily responsible for giving Dublin the appearance it still enjoys, even after decades of neglect and abuse, was James Gandon. His contribution to the capital is scrutinised by Hugo Duffy in James Gandon and His Times (Gandon Editions, £25). Finally, daily existence in the big house is wonderfully described in Valerie Pakenham's entertaining The Big House in Ireland (Cassell, £25 UK).
Science
By Dick Ahlstrom
The growth of good quality popular science titles has been nothing short of astounding, and you should have little trouble catering for those with a scientific bent on your Christmas list. Give them a shock with a copy of Kenan Malik's Man, Beast and Zombie (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20 UK), a look at what science can and can't tell us about human nature. It is a nifty blend of philosophy, science and history. Try something completely different with A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems About Science (Faber and Faber, £6.99 UK), edited by Maurice Riordan and Jon Turney. Or go deeper with a copy of I Think Therefore I Laugh: The Flip Side of Philosophy (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, £9.99 UK) by John Allen Paulos.
It is summed up beautifully by author, Brian Butterworth, who said, "I've never laughed so much while thinking so hard." David Bainbridge's A Visitor Within: The Science of Pregnancy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18.99 UK) will give you everything and anything you ever wanted to know about being great with child. Other tempting reads over the holiday period include The Second Creation: The Age of Biological Control by the Scientists who cloned Dolly (Headline, £18.99 UK) by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and Colin Tudge, and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics (Jonathan Cape, £18.99 UK) by George Johnson. You might also consider Stardust by John Gribbin (Penguin Press, £18.99 UK) and The Private Life of the Brain by Susan A. Greenfield (Penguin Press, £18.99 UK).
Wine
By Mary Dowey
However useful wine reference books may be, they're the socks and hand cream of the wine present world. Approach with caution - especially when there are a couple of new books that wine enthusiasts should find far more inspiring. A Century of Wine, edited by Stephen Brook, (Mitchell Beazley, £25 UK) is precisely the sort of volume most winos would enjoy curling up with in a deep armchair around December 27th, when drinking activity is winding down. In a series of essays from a star line-up of contributors (Michael Broadbent, James Halliday, Andrew Jefford, etc), wine's progress is charted through the most frantic period in its history. It emerges as a vigorous survivor - of phylloxera and Prohibition; snobbery and scandal.
Have the Blairs and other Chiantishire Brits taken the good out of Tuscany? Hardly. As Hugh Johnson writes in Tuscany and its Wines (Mitchell Beazley, £16.99 UK), it remains "half the world's icon of Arcadia" - and the wine-drinking half of that world will love this book. In a text as concentrated and elegantly fashioned as the smoothest Super-Tuscan, he paints the historical background, then describes the changes which have turned Tuscan wine from a rustic, hit-or-miss effort into the liquid equivalent of an Armani suit. Remarkable photographs by Andy Katz should have lucky readers combing the villa brochures for that perfect hideaway near Siena before the year is out.
Irish Language
By Pol O Muiri
Liam Mac Con Iomaire's biography Breandan O hEithir: Iomramh Aonair (Clo IarChonnachta, £20) is a fitting tribute to this important journalist. Published ten years after his untimely death, it will give much pleasure to those who were familiar with his work. For the likes of myself who were only dabbling in journalism and neither knew O hEithir personally nor professionally, the book provides an excellent opportunity to come to know the man and his talents. Two collections of poetry worth having are Cathal O Searcaigh's Ag Tnuth leis an tSolas (Clo Iar-Chonnachta, £12) and Liam O Muirthile's Walking Time agus danta eile (Clo Iar-Chonnachta, £9). O Searcaigh is an original and evocative voice and this collection - his work between 1975 and 2000 - includes previously unpublished material. O Muirthile, a columnist with this paper, is a writer of great ability whose Thursday column frequently provides food for thought. Walking Time, a collection in which he explores the arts of crafting wood and verse, proves itself to be the poetic foil to his weekly prose. (An added bonus is that both books come with CDs of the poets reading.)
Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's Dunmharu sa Daingean (Cois Life, £10). The title explains all and Ni Dhuibhne's light touch should keep the attention of even the least diligent reader.
Thrillers
By Vincent Banville
There are plenty of novels around by heavyweights of the genre, a selection being the latest Kay Scarpetta offering from Patricia Cornwell, The Last Precinct (Little Brown, £10.99 UK); Carl Hiaasen's Sick Puppy (Macmillan, £16.99 UK); Purple Cane Road (Orion, £16.99 UK) by James Lee Burke; Michael Connolly's A Darkness More Than Night (Orion, £16.99 UK); and the new Alex Delaware novel by Jonathan Kellerman, Doctor Death (Little Brown pbk, £10.99 UK). Thomas Harris's Hannibal (Arrow, £6.99 UK) came out in paperback in June and is still sure to send a shiver down the spine, while in The Remorseful Day (Pan, £5.99 UK) by Colin Dexter, we said goodbye forever to dear old Inspector Endeavour Morse. Another couple worth recommending in paperback are Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon (HarperCollins, £5.99 UK), a thinking man's thriller, and Laura Lippman's The Sugar House (Orion, £9.99 UK), which features feisty P.I. Tess Monaghan in another wise-cracking adventure.
If you're looking for something with an Irish slant, then there's Barry Troy's Dirty Money (Piatkus, £16.99 UK, but also simultaneously out in paperback), with its tale of the murder of a devious financial operator; the latest psychological thriller by Julie Parsons, called Eager to Please (Town House, £11.99), and Paul Carson's new medical thriller, Final Duty (Heinemann, £10 UK). Finally, my five-star recommendation for the most satisfying mystery/espionage novel of the year has to be Alan Furst's Kingdom of Shadows (Gollancz, £16.99 UK). This is Furst's sixth volume in a loosely connected series dealing with the time just before and during the second World War, and in my opinion out-strips any other thriller written during the past year.
Foreign Affairs
By Bill McSweeney
Two books on the Middle East - one a scholarly account of the last century by an Israeli historian, the other a critique of the Oslo Peace Accords by a Palestinian academic - converge in a common censure of Israeli policy. In Righteous Conflict: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1999 (John Murray, £25 UK), Benny Morris chronicles the brutality of his country's pursuit of security and revenge. Edward Said's collection of essays, The End of the Peace Process (Granta Books, £15 UK), concentrates on the last six years of the century and exposes the cynical betrayal of Palestinians by their own leaders and the international community under the rubric of a "peace process". The possibility of a humanitarian foreign policy, long an oxymoron in mandarin circles, has become an article of faith since the end of the Cold War. The Kosovo war and the shuttle trial of General Pinochet are significant case studies readably explored in Tim Judah's Kosovo: War and Revenge (Yale University Press, £12.95 UK) and Hugh O'Shaughnessy's Pinochet: The Politics of Torture (Latin American Bureau, £8.99 UK).
Foreign Affairs can be riveting, entertaining in the original sense of the word, but seldom good for a laugh. The exception this year is Gore Vidal's witty, erudite, scabrous The Golden Age (Little Brown, £17.99 UK) - the Cold War by a fly on the wall, diplomatic history at its funniest. Pick of the bunch must be Naomi Klein's fascinating account of the global politics of corporate branding and its impact on human rights in No Logo (Harper Collins, £14.99 UK). The logo is the trap, the lifestyle is the product, the poor are the victims.
Business
By Jim Dunne
The most entertaining business book of the year was Branson by Tom Bower (4th Estate, £17.99 UK). His thesis is that Richard Branson's companies are a whiff of financial smoke, based in a Caribbean tax haven that makes the Cayman Islands look like a model of openness and transparency. Entertaining though the book is to the reader, Branson found it unfunny: the "grinning pullover" threatened libel proceedings against a London newspaper which published extracts. Branson published an autobiography called - archly - Losing My Virginity (Virgin, £7.99 UK). Using your own company to publish your memoirs ensures that the editors are dutifully reverential.
Anita Roddick came out with Business as Unusual (Thorsons, £17.99 UK): the Body Shop founder believes turning business theory on its head can be very successful, while The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism by Philip Augar (Penguin Books, £20 UK) traced the decline of the old British merchant banks and their inexorable fall into (mainly) American hands. Mrs Thatcher's dislike of the City of London was partly to blame.
She considered the bankers to be snobs with an unshakeable belief in gifted amateurism. She deregulated the City with all the enthusiasm she employed in smashing the miners. The Americans spotted the opportunity.
Art
By Aidan Dunne
Frances Borzello's A World of Our Own (Thames & Hudson, £28 UK) is a very good, well illustrated, readable account of how women have fared as artists in the Western world from 1500 to the present day. Rather than bemoaning the obstacles faced by women, she takes the problems for granted - and describes how they set about overcoming them and the work they chose to do. Sculptor Oliver Sheppard (1865-1941) provided the fledgling Irish State with an icon in the form of his heroic bronze of the dead Cuchulain which was first installed in the GPO in 1934. John Turpin's new study (Four Courts Press, £29.95) provides a concise biography and an extensive if selective illustrated catalogue of his work. The indispensible annual of the Irish art world,
Irish Arts Review Yearbook 2001 (£26 pbk/£40 hbk) features a profile of painter Mark Francis, a look at 19th-century watercolourist Frederick Collier, Michael Wynne investigating a hitherto overlooked artist mentioned in Strickland, plus numerous other features. There's also S.B. Kennedy's Paul Henry (Yale University Press, £30). Kirk Varnedoe's Gustave Caillebotte (Yale, £22.50 UK) is an exemplary, richly illustrated account of the "forgotten man" of Impressionism, while Mary Ann Caws's Dora Maar: With and Without Picasso (Thames & Hudson, £24.95 UK) chronicles another episode in the vampiric history of Picasso's relationships with women, detailing how Maar sacrificed her feelings and her career to him, though the argument that he thwarted a potentially brilliant career is less than convincing. Finally, Danny Moynihan's Boogie-Woogie (Duck Editions, £9.99 UK) is a brilliant, very funny satire on the New York art scene of the 1990s, and on the strange world of contemporary art in general.
Cinema
By Michael Dwyer
Compelling and solidly researched, Kate Buford's Burt Lancaster: An American Life (Aurum Press, £19.99 UK) is an informative and comprehensive account of one of American cinema's most interesting actors, an often underestimated talent who broke the typecasting mould and was unusually willing to play unsympathetic or morally weak characters. In addition to looking at his riveting perfomances in such remarkable movies as Sweet Smell of Success, Elmer Gantry, The Leopard and Atlantic City, the book relates how the temperamental actor took control of his own career by setting up his own production company at a time when the majority of his colleagues were studio property.
Less illuminating, though not without merit, is Gavin Lambert's reticently titled Mainly About Lindsay Anderson: A Memoir (Faber & Faber, £18.99 UK). Over 500 film-makers are featured in the useful new quick-reference volume, The Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary North American Directors (Wallflower Press, £17.99 UK, pbk/£50 hdk). Over 100 contributors were involved in compiling the book's generally succint and commendably up-to-date series of critical guides to these film-makers. While it is primarily concerned with the careers of Americans and Canadians, the book also features filmmakers from other countries who work mostly in the US, such as Peter Weir, John Woo, Paul Verhoeven and Milos Forman, and it is particularly strong on the work of emerging US film-makers.
There probably are more books on the great Alfred Hitchcock than any other film-maker in history, yet, on the evidence of the parts of it I have read, the new film book I most want to savour is Peter Conrad's The Hitchcock Murders (Faber, £16.99 UK), which has just been published to highly enthusiastic reviews. In describing what he refers to as Hitchcock's "surreal genius", Conrad notes: "He knew how to rescind reality, and to make you afraid".
The prices for British published books given in these pages are in UK sterling, as prices in Irish pounds can vary with ex- change rates.
Sports
By Tom Humphries
Big names in pursuit of other big names was the general trend in sportswriting this year as the quirky and the interesting stuff got pushed to the margins. David Beckham Inc. was the subject of two tomes, one, My World (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 UK) written by himself, the other, Posh 'n' Becks (Michael O' Mara books, £16.99 UK) written by Andrew Morton. Neither was very good: both sold by the skipload. Why should the Americans help clean up the environment when we're chopping down trees for this sort of stuff?
From all the happy mayhem of the Jack Charlton years it is astonishing that we never got a half-decent biography of a player or a single book to put the whole story into context. At last the biography deficit has been remedied in some style. Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino (Simon & Schuster/Townhouse £9.99) by Cascarino and Paul Kimmage is an extraordinary book, beautifully written and brutally honest - a sports book for grown-ups. Cascarino sheds light into the darkest corners of his brain and then invites us in. A new standard for soccer biographies. Also recommended is David Halberstam's Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made (Yellow Jersey, £12.50 UK) a largely successful attempt at contextualising the life and the influence of the pre-eminent athlete of the late 20th century.