This is The Guardian.

Politics, as you may have noticed, isn't having much of a summer break this year.

But as the conservative leadership contest grinds on and fears rise about what we're going to face

this winter, politics weekly UK is snatching a brief pause.

So this week we thought we'd offer a service to anyone doing the same

and have a look at five political books you might want to read if you're on holiday,

escaping from the heat or simply a need of a bit of mental stimulation.

None of them are conventional Westminster-focused books.

You'd be pleased to hear that there's no biography of Liz Truss, Rishisunak or Keir Starmer.

But they do shine light on where the UK has ended up and some of the huge issues

our leaders can't seem to cope with, as well as big questions of history and the absurdity

and comedy of everyday politics.

Right, book one. Never mind the Truss-Sunak pantomime. The most fundamental political story of the

summer has surely been about heat and drought in the UK and Europe and similarly extreme weather

events all over the world. They've highlighted the dire shortcomings of how mainstream politics

is dealing with the climate emergency and also questions for the protest movements that now

fill the vacuum politicians have left. The most sobering thought-provoking book I've

recently read about all this is how to blow up a pipeline, but the Swedish writer, academic

and author, Andreas Malm. It isn't quite what its title suggests, but rather a call for action

that includes damaging property and sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure. It's also a rebuttal

of the myth that past waves of protest from the suffragettes to the anti-apar type movement

were non-violent. Malm invites us to imagine the world as it will be in four or five years time.

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