Books

Jacqueline Novogratz’s book approaches social investment with an entrepreneurial focus, and reading it inspired banker Katy Yung to set up a community of impact investors in Hong Kong.

When Bowie Lam read All About Love: New Visions, the executive director of NGO Teen’s Key Hong Kong changed its programmes used to help teens.

From the Hermès Birkin and the Lady Dior, to the Chanel 2.55 and the Fendi Baguette, the designer handbag is a fashion icon linked to some of the world’s most prominent women.

‘Fashioning Masculinities’, the catalogue from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s current exhibition, takes a trip through the history of men’s fashion, from sumptuous dandies to sobering suits.

‘China Adorned: Ritual and Custom of Ancient Cultures’ boasts almost 700 images that document and demystify the customs of more than 30 of China’s ethnic minorities.

Sophie Cunningham’s novel, ostensibly about a writer composing a Leonard Woolf novel, sees the Australian writer create space for topics not just close to her life, but to her fierce intellect and passionate heart.

A put-upon Japanese office worker pretends to be pregnant to get out of menial tasks – that’s the cue for Emi Yagi’s biting observations about male-dominated workplaces.

Adam Brookes uncovers some new heroes of the second Sino-Japanese war – the curators who catalogued the Forbidden City’s treasures, then packed them and ensured they were kept secure during years of conflict.

The American student protagonist of Hayao Miyazaki collaborator Steve Alpert’s diverting short story collection flirts with geishas, is invited to join a swingers club and burns down a traditional teahouse.

In a project initiated by Pope Francis, education scholars propose how the world’s most demanding challenges – climate breakdown and rising intolerance, among them – should be met in the classroom.

Born to Hong Kong immigrants to the United States, Alice Wong wasn’t supposed to live to adulthood. But live she did, and has become a formidable activist for disabled communities.

A new Rizzoli & Isles novel, Listen to Me, gothic ghost story Shape of Night, #MeToo thriller Choose Me and film production with her son Joshua – the Chinese-American writer put on a spurt while stuck at home.

China-based American explorer and writer Steven Schwankert tells Kate Whitehead about growing up watching Jacques Cousteau, and how his interest in shipwrecks led him into documentary-making.

China’s surveillance system may not be as advanced as the Communist Party claims, but the omnipresence of cameras has reaped rewards in controlling, coercing and cowing its vast and diverse public.

Mercury Pictures Presents, Anthony Marra’s third novel, is a sprawling work containing multiple narratives. It might have been better to have kept its focus on Maria, who emigrates from Italy and ends up in Hollywood.

Migrants fleeing climate change, walls erected to keep them out – events today have echoes in history, as Anthony Sattin sets out in Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World.