Meltdown Iceland: How the Global Crisis Bankrupted an Entire Country by Roger Boyes
Bloomsbury, £11.69; 244pp Buy the book

Before 2007 Iceland was a good place to be: cerebral pop musicians, cool crime novelists, hot thermal springs, a global gene bank and – oh – a profitable and safe place to stash your money. What could go wrong? When the world went into financial meltdown, Iceland’s happy population of 300,000 learnt that their country was as bankrupt as its banks and the world wanted its money back. The British invoked anti-terrorist laws to recover their cash and Icelanders realised that they had lost control of their lives. Boyes efficiently analyses Iceland as a microcosm of a bigger problem and considers its next moves.

The Last Veteran: Harry Patch and the Legacy of War by Peter Parker
4th Estate, £14.99; 328pp Buy the book

When Harry Patch died this year there was a sense of national closure. He was born in 1898 and conscripted in 1916. He fought at Passchendaele and was wounded in September 1917. After the First World War he returned to Somerset, where he worked as a plumber and lived to become, as “the last veteran”, a focus for British national identity. “The war has become part of who we are,” writes Peter Parker, whose moving homage to Patch is an occasion for thoughtful reflection on our recent military history, the echo of war down the generations and our sense of ourselves in the modern world.

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy