The Ancient Greeks stole their culture from Africa. They didn’t just learn from the Africans, or borrow from them. They committed grand — very grand — larceny. Then they hushed up their crime, and Western historians have been labouring to maintain the myth of Greek originality ever since.

Such is one of the major contentions of Afrocentrism, a movement which has gained considerable ground (not least in American universities) over the past 40 or 50 years. It is also the thesis which Mary Lefkowitz subjected to critical scrutiny in her book Not Out of Africa, which was published in 1996.

This is a big book on a huge subject ­­­— so huge, in fact, that one has to wonder whether it is a subject at all. According to the subtitle, it is about “the 2,500-year struggle between East and West”; according to the blurb, “when the Persian emperor Xerxes tried to conquer Greece, a struggle began which has never ceased”. The selling-point of the book is that it claims to explain the deep historical background to the present-day conflict between the West and Islamist terrorism. But would Osama bin Laden really accept the idea that he is keeping up a “struggle” initiated by a pagan Persian?

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle between East and West
Anthony Pagden OUP, 548 pp, £20

“Reserve is my habitat — I am a one-man reservation”, says Ferdinand Mount, early on. One might think that this would be a disabling trait in an auto­biographer, but in fact it is what gives this book its deep interest. This memoir has innumerable incidental pleasures, because it is so subtle, exact and funny, but its great theme is reserve, that characteristic for which the English were once world-famous. It is therefore about England, especially old England. And it is about the identity of someone who hates being identified, the feelings of the person who does not wish to disclose his feelings. That, indeed, is what lies behind the title of the book which, I think, it would be spoilsporty to disclose.

Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes
Ferdinand Mount Bloomsbury, 384pp, £20

Ozersky has written a breezy book on the history of this most American of culinary delicacies, but he imbues the burger with a social significance that goes well beyond the simplicity of beef on bread. The story of the hamburger, he says, reflects all the important cultural developments in America since the early 19th century, so that this once-humble sandwich now ranks right up there with the Stars and Stripes and the Statue of Liberty as an iconic symbol of the great Republic. “Nothing says America like a hamburger,” he writes. Think America , think Whopper.

The Hamburger: A History
Josh Ozersky Yale University Press, 208 pp, £14.99

Anyone who has ever yearned to escape Britain and immerse themselves in the healing countryside of la France profonde had better not read Adam Thorpe’s new novel. Or perhaps they should, and instead of envying former compatriots who have leapt the Channel, enjoy a frisson of gratitude for the comfortable familiarity of our land of constant drizzle, slow trains and strong tea on tap.

The Standing Pool
Adam Thorpe Jonathan Cape, 432pp, £17.99