Reading Burleigh’s new polemic about myriad incidents of corruption and skulduggery in our world is both a bracing and depressing experience. Bracing, because he takes aim at a variety of targets obvious (Putin, Trump, Saudi Arabia) and less obvious (Obama) and manages to come up with endlessly revealing detail; we find out, for instance, that it costs about 60 times more to build roads in Russia than in the US due to the rampant corruption in the east.
Yet Burleigh’s book is also depressing because it spends most of its length articulating the many problems in the world today, most of which he argues arose from the financial crisis in 2008, but very little coming up with solutions. There is some vague gesturing towards greater accommodation with China and Burleigh certainly seems more impressed by the country’s president, Xi Jinping, than he is by most of the other statesmen and world leaders he denigrates. It might have been a more successful book had he allowed more optimism and sunshine into his entertainingly pessimistic account of our contemporary problems.
• The Best of Times, The Worst of Times by Michael Burleigh is published by Macmillan (£25). To order a copy for £21.25 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
