The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic MountainMorten Hoi Jensen, Yale University Press, £22THIS is a whole new genre – a kind of Netflix-style academic book which reads scenically yet delivers a powerful historical analysis, fully referenced.It begins with a teenage Susan Sontag in an old Chevy, parked outside the exiled Thomas Mann’s palm-screened LA house, “a warm breeze blowing in from the Pacific, with its notes of orange and eucalyptus.”