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[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]==Politics and society==__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert Winnett and Gordon RaynerAlastair Humphreys|title=No Expenses SparedLocal|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel |summary=It's always struck me as strange that Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it. As he says in a period of twelve months which saw Banks collapsehis introduction, stock markets tumble and house prices slide the public book is an attempt ''to share what I have reserved most of their ire for learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a relatively small group map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…'' One of people who were not exceptionally well-paid in the first place, but many joys of whom took the opportunity to make book for me was that the most biggest thing he learned about all of the generous expenses which they could claim. There these things was that there are only six hundred no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and forty six Members of Parliament – twelve months ago they were generally respected but many that there are now pariahssome hard choices ahead.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0593065778</amazonuk>1785633678

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alain de Botton Edel Rodriguez|title=A Week at the AirportWorm: A Heathrow DiaryCuban American Odyssey

|genre=Politics and SocietyGraphic Novels|summary=A writer-We're in childhood, and we're in-residence at an airport is not Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as daft an idea as it might first seem. After alla saviour of the country, TV programmeshas proven himself a Communist, and whole seriesnot done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, have entertained millions with what goes on those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren't in front the happiest ofplaces here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and behind the scenes at such placesfather being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. So The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this booksultry island country, which is it remains the fruit kind of such a residency, could be expected to produce few surprises.heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846683599</amazonuk>1474616720

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anita Thompson (Editor)Sarah Wilson|title=Ancient Gonzo WisdomThis One Wild and Precious Life: Interviews with Hunter S Thompsonthe path back to connection in a fractured world|rating=43.5|genre=AutobiographyLifestyle|summary=It My favourite Mary Oliver line is the one in which she asks ''What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'' I get to love that line so much because my answer is almost 40 years since Dr Hunter S Thompson's seminal work 'This! Precisely this.'Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas' I' first graced m lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the shelvesway I want to. His gonzo style, putting himself at Sarah Wilson is equally lucky. In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I can't see that she acknowledges the centre of the story, should tell readers as much source) she pushes us to think about whether we really ''are'' living the person doing life we want – the writing as the event he best life that we could be living. Her answer is describingan unequivocal ''no, we are not''. If that Don's the case then t care what is to you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be learned from a selection of interviews with doing more…And she's effing furious about the main man himself then? The answer is plentyfact that we are not.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330510711</amazonuk>1785633848

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Jack1785633457|title=The Country Formerly Known As Great BritainCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=I think I've now managed to master the maxim about not judging books Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by their coversunconventional means with a preference for slow travel. I still struggle with As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the one about edges of England in an electric car was not judging them by their titles and I very nearly cam unstuck and missed 'The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain'totally outrageous. Being just about of an age with the author I worried that In fact, it might should be a treatise about the fact that 'things werenpleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't like this when I was a lad'. I was even more worried that I might agree with him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087355</amazonuk>it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=The Economist1529153050|title=Pocket World in Figures 2010Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson|rating=54|genre=Politics and SocietyHumour|summary=ItSeeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards ''Britain's just about a Best Political Cartoons of 2022''. Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year since I reviewed [[Pocket World In Figures 2009 by The Economist|Pocket World in Figures 2009]] and at : the time – cartoons run from 4 September 2008 – we were watching in horror as the world financial crisis unfolded before our eyes2021 to 31 August 2022. Looking back now the surprise is that for most people Who can imagine what happened came out of the blue. The clues were plain there will be to see and all here in this handy little book. There was the worrying state of the Iceland economy and different levels of mortgage lending come in various parts of the world. Best of all it was presented as verified figures, without any accompanying narrative and it's consequently free of political spin. Bliss.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681367</amazonuk>2023 edition?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Scott Kilman and Roger ThurowB0B7289HKQ|title=EnoughConversations Across America: Why the WorldA Father and Son, Alzheimer's Poorest Starve in an Age , and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of PlentyAmerica|author=Kari Loya|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=If you have ever wondered why famine is still widespreadKari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, so many years after Oxfam started nudging middle-class Britain into consciousness, then read ''Enough''by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it. As a young womanThe decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, I donated Virginia to Oxfam at the end Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of the 1960s it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the belief recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that concerted international action through governments plus charities it would eliminate hunger within a decade or sobe for most people who considered taking it on. Four decades later, itMerv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's impossible to comprehend why children are still dying at much the same rate: one every five seconds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586485113</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Arundhati Roy 1739593901|title=Listening to Grasshoppers22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)

|genre=Politics and SocietyScience Fiction|summary=Stories can provoke many different reactions in the reader: pleasure, pain, delight, horror''Our future will be more complex than we expected. The whole range Instead of emotion is available to the fiction writer to ply flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and probe. Reactions automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to non-fiction works can be equally wide-ranging and can sometimes take the reader by surprisetrack grandma.''

Like most people I came 've got a couple of confessions to make. I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and then forget to return to Roy via the Booker-prize-winning novel, book. There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then there'The God of Small Thingss science fiction: far too often it'', s the technology which it transpires, is her only novel to datetakes centre stage along with the world-building. In It's human beings who fascinate me: the intervening twelve years Roy has concentrated her undoubted literary abilities in technology and the political arenaworld scape are purely incidental. So, engaging with the less attractive side what did I think of a book of her native Indiatwenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144620</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rupert Wright Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams |title=Take Me to the Source: In Search The Book of WaterHope |rating=3.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Whatever you expect from The done thing is to read a book about water, ''Take Me all the way through before you sit down to the Source'' probably won't provide review it. Neither a whimsical aquatic travelogueI’m making an exception here, nor a polemic about the economics because I don’t want to lose any of water, it still manages to produce unexpected insights into the element which is so vital, yet so often taken for granted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512289</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maria Tatar |title=Enchanted Hunters: The Power experience of Stories in Childhood|rating=3|genre=Home and Family|summary=Like most avid readersreading this amazing book, I don't remember the time before there were books. We were brought up with books. There are family tales of my father want to capture it as a child eating his breakfast with one hand, while trying to tie his shoelaces with the other and still contriving to read at the same timeit hits me. They were a poor family, and books weren't just expensive, they were valuableAnd it is hitting me. They were dear, This beautiful book has me in every sense of the word. Likewise my mother remembers her early school-years when every day ended with a chapter from one of the classicstears. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0393066010</amazonuk>024147857X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Wadham 1788360737|title=Artivism: The Secret Life Battle for Museums in the Era of FrancePostmodernism|author=Alexander Adams|rating=42|genre=TravelPolitics and Society|summary=I'm rather at Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a loss vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to describe this modifying the social environment in which he develops’’. Therefore, all art must be political, even implicitly. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for you, and I'm still uncertain how Museum in the Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to categorise itbecome more overtly political (read: left wing). It's part personal memoir Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and part analytical. Whether you regard this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is down, I suppose, media elites hoping to personal taste create a more globalist and intellectual curiosityprogressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571236111</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Hitchens 1398508632|title=The Broken Compass: How British Politics lost its wayWilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=I've long held that there is no difference between It had been on the major political parties such that could command you to vote cards for one or a while but it was the otherweek-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food. The new Labour party now seems to stand somewhere to the right end of what I though of as the old Conservative party and November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the Lib Dems appear best time to be start, in a coalition of those who don't fit comfortably into either of world where the other main partiesnormal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. My voting patterns have changed radically from supporting Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a party because variety of its views terrains. She had electricity which allowed her to voting against another because of its actionsrun a fridge, freezer and dehydrator. She had a car - and fuel. I Most importantly, she had shelter: this was hoping that not a plan to ''The Broken Compasslive'' might clarify my thoughtswild just to live off its produce.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847064051</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein 1529149800|title=NudgeThings You Can Do: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia and HappinessSara Boccaccini Meadows

|genre=Politics Home and SocietyFamily|summary=Choices are inevitable: from We begin with a telling story. All the lunch sandwich to birds and animals fled when the credit card forest fire took hold and most of them stood and internet providerwatched, unable to think of anything they could do. The tiny hummingbird flew to the house river and car began taking tiny amounts of water and pension planflying back to drop them into the fire. The animals laughed: what good was that doing. ''I'm doing the best I can'', said the hummingbird. And that, modern humansreally, particularly those living in technologically developed democracies are blessed (or cursed) with is the freedom (and necessity) to choose all only way that we will solve the timeproblem of climate change – by each of us doing what we can, however small that might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141040017</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Davies1638485216|title=Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes FalsehoodBlack, White, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Do you remember a Y2K bug? When the worldGray All Over: A Black Man's computer systems were to melt down in an Armageddon of vital services failure and possible nuclear accidents? The Y2K panic is a great example of flat-Earth news: something that gets passed on in the media chain from those unsure to those who might have a vested interest in maintaining it as fact to those who are completely ignorant, and Odyssey in the process gets bigger Life and bigger and – almost accidentally – assumes a status of orthodox, accepted truth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512688</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewLaw Enforcement|author=Jennifer Worth|title=Farewell To The East EndFrederick Reynolds|rating=45

|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell to the East End'' Corruption is a riveting readnot department, gender or race specific. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working It has everything to do with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950scharacter. Period.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Rania Al-Baz|title=Disfigured: A Saudi Woman's Story of Triumph over Violence|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Throughout her life Rania Al-Baz has been an unusual woman. She was married off by her father when she was still at school to a man she hardly knew and was the only married pupil, forced to conform to the Saudi Arabian traditions of putting her husband first in all things but still expected to keep up with her school work. Pregnancy forced her to give up on her schooling but the marriage failed and Rania returned to her father. It might have been expected that she would fade quietly into the home, but in a most unusual step she became the smiling face on a Saudi television programme. No woman had ever been a news anchor before and it was only to be expected that there would be plenty of men wanting to marry her'One more body just wouldn't matter''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844370755</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Brian Dunning|title=Skeptoid 2: More Critical Analysis The murder of Pop Phenomena |rating=3.5|genre=Popular Science|summary=Brian Dunning is the author responsible for George Floyd, a series of weekly podcasts debunking and analysing forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a variety of dubious, pseudoforty-four-scientific, unyear-scientific and downright loony ideasold police officer, claims in the US city of Minneapolis sent shock waves around the world. We rarely see pictures of a murder taking place but Floyd's death was an exception. The image of Chauvin kneeling on George's neck is not one which I'll ever forget and myths common or persistent in the pop (protests which followed cannot have been unexpected. There was a backlash against the police - and not so pop) culture. just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''Skeptoid 2all'' is essentially a written version of those podcasts, a collection of fifty pieces of which many can be also read or listened to at his [http://skeptoid.com/ website]tarred by the Chauvin brush.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1440422850</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dan GardnerMatthieu Aikins|title=Risk: The Science and Politics of Naked Don't Fearthe Water

|summary=It's easy to forget at times that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn'Life offers me smilest actually fiction, and I owe because it my gratitude for reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not having abandoned by any means a criticism, but rather a testament to how well Matthieu Aikins – a Canadian citizen who decided to accompany his friend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast and at times painful journey. There are tense moments and gripping accounts of border crossings which had me in on edge the marsheswhole way through.But it'' ''I've known the defilement of s written with a bestial existence.'' ''Who's going to say haunting and almost lyrical quality that word, forgiveness? It's outside of human nature.'' So say some of allows the survivors of reader to perfectly envisage the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by their fellow Hutu citizens. Jean Hatzfeld talked to both Tutsis environments and Hutus then, publishing two award-winning books. In The Strategy of Antelopes, he returns to Rwanda to talk to the same people and explore life after genocidedescribed. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846686865</amazonuk>B09N9157T6

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emmanuel Jal1785633074|title=War Child: A Boy Soldier's StoryStaggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry

|genre=AutobiographyHumour|summary=Emmanuel Jal, internationally successful rap artist, spent his childhood as a solider in his native Sudan. He has written his story in order Members of Parliament like us to help those children who are still fightingbelieve that the country is run by politicians, and headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's for those of you who have managed to get away. There are a number of books about the Sudan by western aid workers Eton and journalists, who do, I am sure, write fluently and passionately about Oxbridge educated) but the horror of Darfur. This reality is the first book that I have read which tells the story of war from ''prime'' movers are the point of view of a small boy carrying an AKspecial advisers -47, a gun taller than he is himself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700050</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ash Amin and Michael O'Neill|title=Thinking About Almost Everything|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A wonderful digest of ideas spawned by ongoing work at Durham University. The cross discplinary broad brush strokes give insight into the past, SPADS - who are the present, and driving force behind the future, and inspire personal and critical thinkinggovernment. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668188X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chris Mullin|title=A View from We are in the Foothills|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Chris Mullin's diaries cover the period from July 1999 privileged position of having access to May 2005 during which time he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department memoirs of the EnvironmentRafe Hubris, Transport and the Regions, for man who was behind the Department for International Development and after a period on skilful control of the back benches also at Covid crisis which was completely contained by the Foreign Officeend of 2020. As You might not know the name now but he says, there will certainly be no shortage of memoirs from those who have occupied the Olympian Heights. In A View from the Foothills he offers a refreshingly different perspective – that of a man at the lowest levels of government who's party to what's happening further up the hillside and down on the plainswatch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682231</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Iain Sinclair|title=Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report |rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''Documentary fiction'' is what Iain Sinclair oxymoronically calls this book. It's a lot of other things too: autobiography, history, psychogeography to name but three. His ''Hackney book'' as he self-referentially calls it throughout, is a dense collage of reportage and ''inaccurate and inventive'' transcriptions of interviews, peopled by film-makers, novelists, politicians and painters, not to mention booksellers, barbers and bus drivers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142164</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Kay1846276772|title=The Long and the Short End of itBias: A Guide to Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Aren't in the IndustryHow We Change Our Minds|author=Jessica Nordell

|summary=Sometimes I wonder if authors set out to stop people reading their books, strange as this might seem. John Kay Anyone who is not an excellent example. He tells us able, white man understands bias in that he expects his readers they may no longer even recognise the extent to be erudite and to be readers which they suffer from it: it's simply a part of popular scienceeveryday life. They'll never knowingly have dealt with Goldman Sachs and White men will always come first. The able will pay tax at come before the 40% ratedisabled. At Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the other end preserve of the scale theywhite man. Even when those who wouldn'll not be bad credit risks and just to cut out anyone hoping for t pass the medical become a quick buckpart of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, they'll not be tempted to make a living from Stock Market speculationthat their concerns are acknowledged. If you donIt't qualify s personally appalling and degrading for the individuals on all points therethe receiving end of the bias but it's not even a hint of a pass mark which might allow you to sneak into just the checkout queueindividuals who are negatively impacted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954809327</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sudhir Venkatesh1529148251|title=Gang Leader For Misfits: A DayPersonal Manifesto|author=Michaela Coel

|summary=If you've ever wondered why young people join gangs, and what it's like How am I able to bring up a family surrounded by armed drug dealersbe so transparent on paper about rape, you'll find ''Gang Leader For The Day'' fascinating. Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh wanted to learn by observing the poor, baulking at the abstract, mathematical research methods used by his professors in the University of Chicago. In 1989, armed with a clipboard malpractice and a questionnaire, he visited the Robert Taylor Homespoverty, a notorious housing project. Instead of neatly answering his carefully-prepared questions - ''How does it feel to be black and pooryet still compartmentalise? It'' by selecting s as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.''very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good'', he finds himself held hostage overnight by members of the Black Kings, a crack-dealing gang, at the behest of its charismatic local leader, J.T.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141030917</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Alex Perry|title=Falling Off The Edge: Globalization, World Peace and Other Lies|rating=3Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to be in a certain frame of mind.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=From Russia You're not going to read a book of essays or a devastated subself-Saharan Africa, economic collapse and consequent protest in reaction threaten help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the television industry at the established orderEdinburgh TV Festival. Globalisation, is putting You might be ''reading'' the book but you need to ''listen'' to the survival of populations words as though you're in the worldlecture theatre. The disjointedness will fade away and you's poorest countries at riskll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706886</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor0008350388|title=On Kindness We Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=45

|summary=As ''To be a titledark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...''On Kindness '' doesnWe Need to Talk About Money't pack quite the same punch as Adam Phillip's earlier: 'On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored'. It put me in mind of an eighteenth century treatise, and, give or take a couple of centuries, that is exactly what the book provides: a thought-provoking exposition on a currently unfashionable virtue.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144337</amazonuk>}}by Otegha Uwagba

{{newreview|author=Quentin Letts |title=50 People Who Buggered Up Britain|rating=3''0.5|genre=History|summary=In 7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a rather less permissive age, 20 or 30 years ago, I suspect that the author might have been at the top writer of some peoplecolour while only 7% study a book by a woman.''s list of culprits for using that naughty b-word. Good grief, man, you can't possibly have that in a book title, what!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845298551</amazonuk>}}'The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021

{{newreview|author=Nicola Sly |title=Dorset Murders (True Crime History)|rating=4Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old.5|genre=History|summary=Having examined a number of true crime cases from Bristol in Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came first, with her [[Bristol Murders by Nicola Sly|last book]]father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled and determined that their children would have the author now does best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the same for largely rural yet not always idyllic Dorsetfamily acquired a car. Twenty two murdersFor Otegha, committed between 1818 education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and 1946then a place at New College, come under the microscope in these pagesOxford.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750951079</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RobertsRichard Brook|title=The Wonga CoupUnderstanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to Life

|genre=HistoryLifestyle|summary=The chances are I am a firm believer that you've never heard sometimes we choose books, and sometimes books choose us. In my case, this is one of Macias Nguemathe latter. You probably donNot so very long ago, if I had come across this book I't know his nephewd have skimmed it, found some of it interesting, Obiang Nguema either. Theybut it would not have 'hit home're certainly up there in the Premier League of killing and disappearance, alongside the likes of Pol Pot and modern day tyrants like Robert Mugabeway that it does now. I believe it came to me not just because I was likely to give it a favourable review [ ''full disclosure The fact Bookbag's u.s.p. is that people chose their own books rather than getting them randomly, so there is a predisposition towards expecting to like the Nguemas are dictators from the tiny west African state of Equatorial Guinea meant they largely slipped off the radar of western consciousnessbook, even if it doesn't always turn out that way'' ] – but also because it is a book I needed to read, right now.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846682347</amazonuk>1800461682

{{newreview|author=Simon Schama|title=The American Future: A History|rating=4|genre=History|summary=After 9/11 America had the sympathy of most peopleI was going to argue. Whether or not you agreed with what I mean, cows are for cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and I much prefer my elephants in the country stood wild but then I realised that I was quibbling for was immaterial – the horror sake of what happened left few unmovedit. Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and I consider myself an animal lover. How then has If I had to choose between the country descended into being vilified around much company of the world humans and suspected even where it is not guilty? Simon Sharma has lived half his life in the States and he looks at four areas – War, Religioncompany of animals, I would probably choose the American identity and Economics in an attempt animals. I insisted that I read this book: no one was trying to understand how the country has reached this point when it seemedstop me but I was initially reluctant. I eat cheese, at least until the 2008 electioneggs, chicken and fish and I needed to either do so without guilt or change my choices. I suspected that many Americans did making the decision would not even like themselvesbe comfortable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920004</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin Lindstrom1523092734|title=Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is WrongA Women's Guide to Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort|rating=3.5

|summary=Considering the amount of money spent on advertising and the staggering sizes of corporate marketing budgets, it's astonishing to what extent it's unclear what exactly those huge amounts of money buyShe brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Lord Lever famously said that half of the money spent on advertising is wasted - but he had no way of knowing which halfAgain and again and again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847940110</amazonuk>}}'' (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD)

{{newreview|author=Antonio Negri and Raf Scelsi|title=Goodbye Mr Socialism |rating=3|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''Goodbye, Mr Socialism'' To claim space is a collection of conversations in which Antonio Negri and Raf Scelsi explore what it means to be 'left wing' today and whether ''the word "socialism" still has a political space''. Starting with an analysis of possible reasons for both live the monstrosities life of Stalinism choosing unapologetically and the actual collapse of the 'real socialism' in general and the Soviet Union in particular, Negri defines the challenge of the left as finding the answer bravely. It is to live the question life you''how development can occur in the future for people who have been liberated from capitalismve always wanted.'' to then move to discuss the newly re-emerging sense of ''the bio-political common'' as distinctly different from both the public (state) and the private.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852429526</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=James Polk|title=The Triumph of Ignorance and BlissSometimes the reviewing gods are generous: Pathologies of Public America|rating=3|genre=Politics and Society|summary=They still live at a time when violence against women is much in suburbs (that isthe news, those who don't live in third'A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now -worldto be clear -like squalor of inner city ghettos)this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, diet and workout obsessively (but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''. I've always thought that iswomen need to rise above this, those to be people who don't stand in food bank queues)need protection, buy bigger and shinier objects that consume more and more energy, more interested in celebrity bra sizes and nipple flashes than in people who rules the country and for whose benefitclaim their own space. Every so often If all women did this, especially when the crisis looms, they vote for CHANGE (as those few men who are violent to women would realise that we are not just an easy target to be used to prove that they have done just now), but essentially, whether in the ranks of Christian Taliban of the red states, or among Starbucks slurping and therapy-addicted in-crowd of the blue states, Americans are living their lives in a state of deluded ignorance and bliss, while their country is literally falling to pieces around thembig men.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1551643146</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=The Economist Polly Barton|title=Pocket World In Figures 2009Fifty Sounds

|summary=We live in a world Where do I start? I could start with where every pundit seems to have some figures Barton herself starts, with which to persuade or possibly bamboozle us. Occasionally the people using the figures don't fully understand what they're saying but that rarely stops them using them with an air of authority. Sometimes statistics are tainted by political spin and for people who need to know the truth it's increasingly difficult to find reliable information – with one exception. The Economist's question ''Pocket World in Figures 2009Why Japan?'' Japan has no political axe to grind been on my radar for a while and offers no narrative to accompany if the figures it presents – the statistics speak for themselvesworld hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681235</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mark Thomas|title=Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola|rating=4I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=And like Barton, I don't drink fizzy drinks, aside from know the odd mixer in a rare visit answer to the pub. There, I said it. Iquestion ''ve consigned myself to the dinosaur generation. I drink tea, and - gasp - water. From the tap. So I get to read Mark Thomaswhy Japan?'s coruscating indictment of the Coca Cola Company with a rather smug smirk on my blameless lips.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091922933</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Justin Scroggie|title=Tic-tac Teddy Bears and Teardrop Tattoos|rating=4|genre=Trivia|summary=Signs are everywhere. I wasn't really one She explains her feelings in respect of those who thought our roads were littered with too many traffic signs until the day I was driven past a pair of speed regulation signs, positioned at question in the exit end of a one-way street but facing the illegal way up it. Not all signs, of course, are quite as unnecessary, or indeed as blatantly visiblefirst essay, which is where this pictorial guide to countless coded messages, signifiers and other similar factoids comes in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340976489</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Lyall|title=A Field Guide To The British|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=I have a fascination - one that borders on an unhealthy obsession - with books written about the British: and that fascination is clearly, not just a personal foible of mine sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as such books are uncannily common: from travelogues to memoirsbeing, hefty historical analyses to short satirical sketchesamong other things, the subject sound of Britishness (and Englishness) carries a seemingly endless fascination for natives and foreigners alike. Many of those books, somehow expectedly, are written by Americans as so is ''The Field Guide'every party where you have to introduce yourself' by Sarah Lyall, an American journalist who married a Brit and came here for love in the mid/late 90's, exactly like I did, though I am sure that I move in slightly less elevated circles.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184724582X</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ben GoldacreStephen Fabes|title=Bad ScienceSigns of Life

|genre=Popular ScienceTravel|summary=Bad science is everywhereI was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. People buy more expensive brand name aspirin than an equal dose in a different packetI was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Cosmetic adverts are peppered with pseudoscientific breakthroughs Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and ostensibly positive statisticsdo it. Newspapers and TV news (and sadly not just I also didn't inherit the tabloids) are riddled with scare stories kind of cannabis being 25 times strongersteady nerve, or miracle cures ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that will make everyone and everything fit and healthy immediatelyI would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'. Ben Goldacre (NHS doctor and Guardian columnist) cuts through In order words I'm not the bullshit sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and gives people the tools to spot such nonsense not come home for themselvessix years. Fabes did precisely that.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007240198</amazonuk>1788161211

{{newreview|author=Alan Cowell|title=The Terminal Spy|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Find Bond bordering on This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasn't unkind: it was simply the trivial these days? adults in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best for her. Think It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued by the handsome prince who then marries her so that perhaps Le Carré is a little passé? they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'Spooks' too silly for words?  If you answered yes to any of those questions, I recommend you read The Terminal Spy: the Life expectation that they will marry and Death of Alexander Litvinenko – have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a true story of espionage, betrayal and murderbelief is a choice''.  If you think that because the Cold War is over and the Wall has been dismantled, then the Iron Curtain must be rusting away in an untidy heap at the bottom of the Black Sea – think again. That curtain still swishes as well-greased and unseen as ever. The spying game continues unabated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385614152</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Christina Thompson|title=Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=Subtitled ''an unlikely love story'', this was an interesting and inspiring memoir written by an American academic, who met and fell in love with a Maori - and what a beautiful tale it tells! Referred Move to as a 'contact' encounter (i.e., chance meeting) it sounds almost like a fairy tale, and in part it is - but a fairy tale which includes huge amount of hard work too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747582521</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Popular Science Reviews]]