==Politics and society==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Sedley
|title=Ashes and Sparks: Essays On Law and Justice
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Some books are hard to read, and even harder to review. This is particularly true of what are essentially academic or "professional" books and you come to them as a lay reader. This then is my starting position on Ashes and Sparks.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521170907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gary Armstrong and Tim Gray
|summary=What is noise? Do we count birdsong at sunrise as noise? And if so, what different term would we use to describe a jet aircraft taking off? Why do we respond so differently to the two? Even more intriguingly, would our response change if the birdsong woke us from an exhausted sleep but the aircraft was taking off to jet us on a long awaited holiday?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586485520</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Douglas Rushkoff
|title=Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=The author of this book was mugged outside his apartment one Christmas Eve. He posted a note online to warn his neighbours to be extra careful, and was promptly berated for doing something so public that could potentially damage property values in his local area. This is a thought-provoking snippet, and if the whole book was like this, I'm sure I would have been gripped.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516691</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Beaumont
|title=The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Peter Beaumont is the Foreign Affairs editor at The Observer. He joined the paper in 1989 and has spent much of the intervening time dealing with the kind of 'foreign affairs' that is better described as 'war reporting'. 'The Secret Life of War' is a distillation of his years in the field. It is a book ill-served by both its title and its cover, except maybe insofar as both might serve to sneak it onto the bookshelves of those who really need to read it, but probably wouldn't choose to do so were it more accurately wrapped.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520982</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gary Younge
|title=Who Are We - And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Journalist Gary Younge’s book draws heavily on his articles for the Guardian newspaper, as he mentions in his acknowledgements, but it isn’t just a collection of his journalism. Who Are We? is partly a memoir and partly a thoughtful and incisive exploration of the politics and political impact of identity, including race, gender, language groups, religion, sexuality in various countries around the world. He sets out to explore 'To what extent can our various identities be mobilized to accentuate our universal humanity as opposed to separating us off into various, antagonistic camps?'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917036</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bernhard Schlink
|title=Guilt About the Past
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Consider, if you will, guilt. You might have it tainting you, as 'beyond the perpetrators, every person who stands in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. The link might not strictly be a legal one, but concern 'norms of religion and morals, etiquette and custom as well as day-to-day communications and interactions'. Hence a collective guilt like no other - that witnessed in Germany. 'The assumption that membership to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like to accept', we read. However difficult it might have been back then in its day, Germany had to physically renounce anything to do with Nazism, to actively 'opt-out' of connections to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider web. And since then it's linked in all the children, in a ''bequeathal'' of guilt.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Wolff
|title=The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=There can be few people who are unaware of the name of Rupert Murdoch. Over four decades he's built News International into a seventy billion dollar corporation from its original Australian base. His position in the UK media is such that he's courted by politicians and has what many believe to be an excessive amount of power for someone who is not elected and is not even a UK citizen. He's now expanding into Southeast Asia and in his eightieth year it's still difficult to imagine when – or where – he will stop.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523523</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neil MacFarquhar
|title=The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''What are the chances of change in the Middle East?'' is the question central to this book. Since Neil MacFarquhar spent thirteen years wandering the length and breadth of the Islamic stronghold of the Middle East, I feel inclined to believe his in-depth assessment. In descriptive and reasoned terms, he identifies conservative forces which predominate in the region, primarily the religious and political machinery which condemns liberalization and modernization. This discussion of attempts to promote change, for example by individual dissidents or the media, is strengthened in the second half of the book by detailed case studies of six nations with particular reference to their readiness and motivation for change.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586488112</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Aaronovitch
|title=Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped The World
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=What shape is a conspiracy theory? Unusual question, I know, but I think on this evidence it is round. A conspiracy theory is lumpen, ragged, full of holes, and has a huge circular gap where the obvious and sensible has dropped through, leaving the believer or theorist with the implausible skeleton of what they choose to think instead. They certainly have a habit of coming round in circles - if I mentioned a heinous crime caused by a western leader that killed hundreds or more people, purely to get their way and get a war started, I could be referring to Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, Maggie Thatcher and the General Belgrano, or Bush etc and 9/11.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009947896X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Douglas Rogers
|title=The Last Resort
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Author Douglas Rogers is a Zimbabwean who moved away
from the country many years ago, but has never been able to persuade
his parents – two white farmers, Lyn and Roz – to follow him out of
their homeland, despite the resettlement policies of Robert Mugabe,
the hyper-inflation, and the corruption in the country. Instead, the
pair just wanted to stay on the farm welcoming people to Drifters,
their backpackers' lodge.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021910</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Archie Brown
|title=The Rise and Fall of Communism
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary='A source of hope for a radiant future or…the greatest threat on the face of the earth'.
Whichever of these descriptions you would apply to Communism you will find Archie Brown's detailed and largely objective study enlightening and engrossing. On one level, this is a chronological description of how a political force grew to dominate a third of the world's population then virtually disappeared within a period of less than a century.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950674</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dave Eggers
|title=Zeitoun
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|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>
}}
