Non-Fiction

Savage Kingdom:
Virginia and the Founding of English America
By Benjamin Woolley

According to America's foundation myth, the birthplace of the nation was Plymouth, Virginia, the settlement built by the Mayflower pilgrims. The true origins, however, lay along the coast at Jamestown, a colony established in 1607. Benjamin Woolley's fascinating history tells the story of this ill-favoured township which started as a result of a private-public partnership that sent 105 colonists across the Atlantic to harvest the riches of the New World. It was a badly prepared project and the adventurers were reduced by starvation and sickness. Relations with the local Indians were fractious and marred by savagery on both sides (though Pocahontas saw merit in the newcomers, marrying the tobacco planter John Rolfe) and investor returns were non-existent. It makes for a rich tale that shows how the future of America was long in the balance.

Harper Press, £25

The Trojan War: A New History
By Barry Strauss

It is worth remembering that Homer's Iliad - if indeed it was his - is an oral poem composed around 700BC that tells the story of a war that supposedly took place 500 years earlier. It is a work of literature, not of history, and its characters are fabulous because they belong to fable. This has not stopped academics from treating the tale as a factual document to be unpicked to reveal threads of real people, places and events: Professor Barry Strauss is the latest. In a book larded with 'must have thought/done/felts' he retells the story of Agamemnon, Achilles, Priam, Hector et al by approaching the Iliad as established fact and bolting on details of politics, war and daily life in Mycenaean times - he even describes Helen's "pearly skin" and "full breasts", which is no mean feat. If it's proper history you want, then beware this academic bearing gifts.

Hutchinson, £20

What Would Barbra Do?
By Emma Brockes

Emma Brockes, an interviewer for the Guardian, used to cross the road while her mother sang excerpts from The Sound of Music to keep her safe - and so, in this sugary little scenario, was her love of show tunes born. This book mixes a hymn to musicals with personal reminiscences: there are plot descriptions alongside memories of Brockes's first trip to see Starlight Express and of banalities such as spilling a plate of tomatoes. According to the author's mother, musicals were "old friends who could always be relied on to say the right things" - a gift her daughter lacks. She promises an analysis of why musicals, for all their kitsch, hold such an appeal but fails to deliver. It all falls rather flat, and the reader sides with Lemmy from Motörhead, one of Brockes's interviewees, who commented when she revealed her musical tastes: "You deserve to be nailed to the fucking cross."

Bantam Press, £14.99

Happiness
By Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard is a French-born scientist who converted to Buddhism and turned native. He abandoned the Left Bank for study with a Tibetan master and has subsequently produced a clutch of volumes dealing with the interaction of philosophy and the cognitive sciences. This latest is subtitled "a guide to developing life's most important skill". So what is the word from his Nepalese fastness? Happiness, apparently, is not an emotion but a skill that can be learned, and he has developed a series of 20-minute exercises to teach it - think diet books or aerobics videos for the mind. Tolerance figures large, as do listening, subsuming the ego, imagining calming scenarios etc. It's a hotchpotch of Buddhism lite and self-help and for the type of person who likes this kind of thing - George Soros, oddly, is one - this is just the kind of thing they'll like. Others might call it common sense dressed as faux profundity.

Atlantic, £8.99