==Politics and society==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Anna Politkovskaya
|title=Nothing but the Truth: Selected Dispatches
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Anna Politkovskaya worked for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, becoming particularly famous for her critical reports on the wars in Chechnya, on Putin, on state corruption and on life in Russia under his regime. She never avoided controversy and received a number of death threats before she was murdered in October 2006. She had reason to know these were no idle threats – one of her articles here entitled 'Is Journalism Worth the Loss of a Life?' reports the attempted murder of one of her colleagues.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526689</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonny Steinberg
|summary=Flicking through the channels on the TV the other night I stumbled across an interview with George Bush's former Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove. After witnessing an especially cringe making hip hop turn at the Washington Correspondents' Dinner (if you haven't seen it take a look at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5RD9BhcCo here]. It really is jaw droppingly awful) attention turned to weightier matters, most notably Guantanamo Bay and the war on terror and the Bush administrations response to Hurricane Katrina.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144841</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Bell
|title=A Very British Revolution: The Expenses Scandal and How to Save Our Democracy
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=I've long thought it strange that of all the ills that have befallen the country over the last few years it was not really the bankers' follies or the swine flu that never really got off the ground but the venality of our MPs which caught the public's attention. Compared to the amounts required to bail out a bank the sums involved were minute, but moats, floating duck houses and flipping houses caught the imagination and our elected representatives became just a little wary of admitting what they did for a living.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848311281</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dominique Lapierre
|title=A Rainbow in the Night
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=A book integrating otherwise piecemeal news stories picked up over the past forty years into a coherent explanation is always welcome. This book explores South Africa's history and development, from the earliest Dutch arrivals in 1652 to the first racially integrated elections in 1994.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818477</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marina Hyde
|title=Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over The World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy
|rating=3.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=I have what is perhaps a regular-sized interest in A and B-list celebrities. I can name the off-spring of many an actress, tell you who the spokespeople for certain brands are, write a list of celebs with publicly declared devotions to certain religions, even win the odd pub quiz thanks to knowing the birth names of various performers. I know all sorts of things about this rather small subset of society, but I know the ''what'' more than the ''why'', and that's exactly the problem, according to this book. After all, if more of us sat down to wonder about what it actually ''is'' that the likes of Geri Halliwell and Nicole Kidman bring to the UN, we might seriously question how and why they ever got involved in the first place.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532050</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Salman Rushdie
|title=Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticisms 1981 - 1991
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We read some authors because we know we're going to enjoy them. Others, we feel somehow obliged to read. If we consider ourselves ''readers'', and certainly if we have any pretensions (I use the word advisedly) to being ''well-read'', then there are some books and more particularly some authors with whom we are required to become familiar.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542250</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carole White and Sian Williams
|title=Struggle or Starve
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Struggle or Starve is a collection of autobiographical writings about girls' and women's lives in South Wales between the wars. This is a new edition of a book first published in 1998 by Honno, an independent publisher set up to encourage Welsh women writers. Most of the contributors in this book came from miners' families and grew up in real poverty and economic insecurity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784094</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
|title=The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=If you asked people why it is (or might be) a good idea to reduce inequality in a society, many people would assume that reducing inequality works by making the life of the poorest better: that the poor are the ones who benefit from reduction of inequality.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141032367</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Shields
|title=Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary='The Novel is Dead' is not really what a novelist wants to read first on picking up a new book – but I persevered with Shields' manifesto and I'm glad I did. This is a thought-provoking wake-up call that any artist, writer or book-lover will enjoy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114499X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chinua Achebe
|title=The Education of a British-Protected Child
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=This book is a collection of autobiographical essays by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, whose best known work is the novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. Topics covered include Nigerian, Biafran and Igbo history and culture, African literature and the legacy of colonialism in his country and the rest of Africa. Some of the essays are taken from guest lectures at universities around the world and conference papers, and others are written for this book, particularly many of the more personal pieces about Achebe's family.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142598</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Norah Vincent
|title=Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin
|rating=3.5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=''Voluntary Madness'' is journalist Norah Vincent's account of her visits to three mental health facilities in America. The first is an urban, public hospital that houses mainly homeless, psychotic patients, many of whom are addicted to drugs. In this hospital, the doctors are overworked and jaded and medication is always the answer. Soon, the author finds that her latent depression (which led her to do the book in the first place) is returning. The process of being institutionalised breaks her sense of self-worth down astonishingly fast. Indeed, she suggests that it is the lack of autonomy in institutional life, even for those patients who voluntarily commit themselves, that makes it so hard for them to rebuild independent lives when they finally leave the institution.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099513439</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gabriel Weston
|title=Direct Red
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Few people have the ability to convey the minutiae of their profession in ways which engage the reader, answer your unspoken questions and talk in such a way that you're neither patronised nor overburdened with jargon. Gabriel Weston is one such – and ''Direct Red'' held me as though I was hypnotised for several hours. She's a surgeon and we're pulled into the intricacies of her world without the need to don mask and gown.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520699</amazonuk>
}}
