Most reviewed: Here Comes Everybody and We-think

A duo of books on internet trends secured the Easter weekend’s "most reviewed" title, as Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (Allen Lane) and We-think by Charles Leadbeater (Profile) simultaneously grabbed reviewers' attention (21st to 23rd March).

Both are "essential guides to web society", http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/here-comes... target="_blank">remarked Pat Kane in the Independent, who enjoyed Shirky's "refreshing interest in activism", but found the tone of We-think "more like a benign guardian looking over the playground of the web, hoping gently to encourage or discourage particular behaviours".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xm... target="_blank">Julian Dibbell in the Daily Telegraph compared Leadbeater's approach to the web as a "love letter to its emergent culture of sharing" and believed the reader "might be caught up in his optimism", if they could overcome their "wikiphobia long enough (and forgive Leadbeater his lapses into management-consultant speak)".

Dibbell championed Shirky's book as "every bit as sure of the web's liberating social potential" as Leadbeater, but "far more convincing on the point, never letting speculation or wishful thinking do his arguing for him when there is so much evidence at his fingertips". He concluded that "Here Comes Everything is as crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the internet as has been written".

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2267... target="_blank">Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian found Shirky's book "terrifically clever" and "harrowing", as it spells the end for his profession of journalism, but he also thought that both Shirky and Leadbeater "seem naive about the desirable social changes being unleashed in new media"--neither sufficiently realises "that [web based social tools] and can just as easily be co-opted by The Man".

He also warned that not just journalists were doomed, if Leadbeater and Shirky were to be believed. "You too could go the way of the late 15th-century scribes. So don’t look so smug," he wrote.

MOST REVIEWED (21st March to 23rd March)

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
(Allen Lane 9780713999891 £20)
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/here-comes... target="_blank">"Shirky attempts to be as usable as the technology he writes about" Independent
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xm... target="_blank">"Might even cure your wikiphobia" Daily Telegraph
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2267... target="_blank">"Terrifically clever" Guardian

We-think by Charles Leadbeater
(Profile 9781861978929 £12.99)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xm... target="_blank">"A love leetter to the web’s emergent culture of sharing" Daily Telegraph
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/here-comes... target="_blank">"Raises some useful questions" Independent
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2267... target="_blank">"Hardly exemplars of the mass collaboration [he affects] to champion" Guardian

Petite Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson
(Michael Joseph 9780718153045 £12.99)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b9a7ce4c-f3c0-11dc-b6bc-0000779fd2ac.html" target="_blank">"Sanderson has a novelist’s gift for capturing certain eternal situations" Financial Times
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/petite-ang... target="_blank">"One sees immediately the edge Sanderson had over fellow web scribes" Independent

Italy’s Sorrow by James Holland
(HarperPress 9780007176458 £25)
"Holland tells this complex story vividly" Mail on Sunday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xm... target="_blank">"Italian version of Armageddon, Max Hastings' history of France and Germany between D-Day and VE-Day" Sunday Telegraph

Daisy by Sushila Anand
(Piatkus 9780749951696 £20)
"Anand has paced the life perfectly" Daily Express
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/books/authors.html?in_art... target="_blank">"A lively study"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/books/authors.html?in_art... target="_blank"> Daily Mail