Peter Frankopan Author of The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (Bloomsbury) Top of my list of gifts to give is Frank McDonough’s The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933 (Bloomsbury), a sparkling if unsettling account of the years after the end of the first world war, which were marked by economic desperation and repeated false dawns before the terrible reality of Hitler’s ascent to power.