Difference between revisions of "Newest Politics and Society Reviews"

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
 
(165 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
 
[[Category:Politics and Society|*]]
 
[[Category:Politics and Society|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]
+
[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove  -->
__NOTOC__
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Virginie Despentes
|author=The Economist
+
|title=King Kong Theory
|title=Pocket World in Figures 2015
+
|rating=4
|rating=4.5
+
|genre=Autobiography
|genre=Reference
+
|summary=''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in a phallocentric society broken at its core. Originally written in French, the book is a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form as independent essays.
|summary=There are people who don't understand the joy of raw data: no accompanying analysis (or spin) - just a collection of figures relevant to a particular circumstance. If you're one of those people then this book will mean little to you, but if you want a pocket (well, certainly handbag or briefcase) work of reference then this book will be a treasure.  I once gave a copy to a diplomat and he kept his wife awake until the early hours as he came across another gem which she had to know without delay.  The 2015 edition is the twenty fourth in the series - and diplomatic (and similar) spouses everywhere should prepare themselves for the onslaught.
+
|isbn=191309734X
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781252734</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1009473085
|title=Stand and Deliver: A Design for Successful Government
+
|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024
|author=Ed Straw
+
|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Confidence in politicians is at an all-time low. In fact, an alarming number of Britons express outright contempt, not just for their leaders, but for the entire political class - for the politicans themselves, for the civil servants standing behind them, even for the Westminster bubble of commentators and policy wonks. We vote for them in ever-decreasing numbers and even those who continue to vote often do not feel represented. Worse still, the younger you are, the more likely you are to be politically disengaged. We're in danger of losing an entire generation from the political process. How can this be good for a democracy?
+
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you.  If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years.  It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast.  It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>099294760X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Alastair Humphreys
|title=Harry's Last Stand
+
|title=Local
|author=Harry Leslie Smith
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Travel
|summary=RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith rose to prominence last year with a famous Guardian article 'This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time' about the way in which the remembrance of those who died in the great wars has been co-opted to justify today’s military conflicts. Here, he tackles themes of poverty, political corruption, unemployment, and a lack of hope felt by so many people today.
+
|summary= 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 his introduction, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map.  Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…''   One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848317263</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1785633678
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Edel Rodriguez
|title=Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her World
+
|title=Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
|author=Stefan Kornelius
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
+
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=You have to admire the lady, this rather awkward and shy daughter of a staunch Lutheran pastor who himself had been born as a Polish Catholic. His daughter studied with such intelligence and application that soon brought her academic success particularly in Russian and finally in Quantum Chemistry. At the age of 26, she obtained her doctorate and - in passing, it rather seems - her first husband, the physicist Ulrike Merkel. Her rise to power was rapid and took place through the period in which the DDR collapsed as Russian policy under Gorbachev changed. Along with a wry and dry sense of humour Angela Merkel’s personality is the embodiment of the characteristic known in German as ''fleissig'' - hardworking, sedulous, diligent and assiduous.
+
|summary=We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away.  Our narrator's family weren't in the happiest of places 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 the father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883180</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1474616720
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=An Atheist's History of Belief
 
|author=Matthew Kneale
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=I’ve been an atheist since I was old enough to take a view on the subject. (Many atheists would argue that we’re all atheists at birth, but that’s not a subject for a book review). I did have to take Religious Studies at school but have entirely forgotten almost everything I learned!
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584425</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Sarah Wilson
|title=Notebooks, 1922-86
+
|title=This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured world
|author=Michael Oakeshott
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre= Lifestyle
|summary=Michael Oakeshott is usually described as a conservative thinker. According to Perry Anderson, his work influenced John Major's style of politics; he named him in the London Review of Books in 1992 as one of four ‘outstanding European theorists of the intransigent Right’. Luke O’Sullivan, who edited this collection of notebooks, has often said that he considers such descriptions limiting. O’Sullivan is clearly enthusiastic about Oakeshott’s work and strove to enable these notebooks, spanning a period of over sixty years, to be published.
+
|summary= 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 ''This!  Precisely this.''  I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the way I want to.  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 source) she pushes us to think about whether we really ''are'' living the life we want – the best life that we could be living. Her answer is an unequivocal ''no, we are not''. Don't care what you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she's effing furious about the fact that we are not.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845400542</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1785633848
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1785633457
|title=The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life
+
|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|author=Uri Gneezy and John List
+
|author=Clive Wilkinson
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Travel
|summary=Wow! This is a most surprising economics book.
+
|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
 
+
}}
Behavioral economists (if you’ll excuse the American spelling) investigate people’s buying behaviour and consuming patterns.  I guess we know about that already because supermarkets here lull us into buying three for the price of two, to come back next week for £10 off a £100, or to garner extra points on a loyalty card (Oh why can’t they just go for a cheaper price at the point of sale? Why do profits have to be in double percentage point increases year on year?). A fair bit of manipulation to ensure that a company survives is already part and parcel of our lives. If you’d asked me before I read this book, I would have lined up that sort of consumer marketing psychology alongside banking as profiteering. However … these guys are different: they really do seem to care about the plight of the underprivileged, and they come from an academic setting, rather than a commercial one.
+
{{Frontpage
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946747</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1529153050
 +
|title=Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022
 +
|author=Tim Benson
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Humour
 +
|summary=Seeking 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 Best Political Cartoons of 2022''. Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year: the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B0B7289HKQ
|author=Alain de Botton
+
|title=Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America
|title=The News: A User's Manual
+
|author=Kari Loya
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Travel
|summary=Alain de Botton maintains that 'the news' has assumed the position in our lives which was once occupied by religion, with some consumers viewing it as often as every fifteen minutes (slight blush there - let's say about every hour...)Furthermore, we do it completely unprotected against every political scandal or celebrity storyThe sub-title 'A User's Manual' sets out to remedy this.
+
|summary=Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, 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.  The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it onMerv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00HYGYIGA</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1739593901
 +
|title=22 Ideas About The Future
 +
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Science Fiction
 +
|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected.  Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.''
  
{{newreview
+
I'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 the book.  There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged.  Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building.  It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are purely incidental.  So, what did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories?  Well, I loved it.
|author=Robert A Caro
+
}}
|title=The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent
+
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
 +
|title=The Book of Hope 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
+
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=It's only a matter of days since I finished listening to [[The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A Caro|The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power]], the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on the President and despite having just spent over forty hours on the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second book in a series is not often as good as the first and it struck me that these might not be the most exciting years in Johnson's life. Was this book going to be the link which took us on to the more exciting times?  Not a bit of it.
+
|summary= The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00GSHD0U6</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=024147857X
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1788360737
|title=A Good African Story: How a Small Company Built a Global Coffee Brand
+
|title= Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism
|author=Andrew Rugasira
+
|author=Alexander Adams
|rating=3
+
|rating=2
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre= Politics and Society
|summary=There are few billionaire black African entrepreneurs. As Andrew Rugasira points out in ''A Good African Story'', the people who make money from African exports are virtually always white Westerners. Even Fair Trade participants remain skewed by the status quo of trade barriers which discriminate against Third World countries.
+
|summary= Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to 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 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 become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099571927</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1398508632
|title=Play It Again: An Amateur Against The Impossible
+
|title=The Wilderness Cure
|author=Alan Rusbridger
+
|author=Mo Wilde
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=I’ve maintained for a long time that I’ll read anything, if it’s well-enough written. So it was with this fascinating memoir, even though it’s a year in the life of an amateur pianist, and I don’t play the piano – or indeed a note of music.   I couldn’t even have placed the name Alan Rusbridger in his professional role before I read the bookA quick browse through the first couple of pages on Amazon revealed that the author could indeed tell a clear story: it is his stock-in-trade as Editor of the GuardianAnd the book duly held me through a messy, interrupted week of bedtime reading.
+
|summary=It had been on the cards for a while but it was the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food.  The end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic.  Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and dehydratorShe had a car - and fuelMost importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554747</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529149800
|title=Winter
+
|title=Things You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste
|author=Adam Gopnik
+
|author=Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Reference
+
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=In this collection of five essays, each one offering a unique and fascinating perspective on the season of winter, Adam Gopnik takes the reader on a captivating journey, exploring history, art and society, through ''Romantic Winter'', ''Radical Winter'', ''Recuperative Winter'', ''Recreational Winter'' and ''Remembering Winter''. In each essay, Gopnik focuses on one or two central themes, whilst also touching on surrounding ideas. For example, in Romantic Winter his central topics are art and poetry, however, issues such as changing society, technology, sex and culture are also explored, in relation to these pivotal notions. He also includes two sections featuring collections of artwork to illustrate his viewpoints, which add a charming, individual touch to this book.
+
|summary=We begin with a telling story.  All the birds and animals fled when the forest fire took hold and most of them stood and watched, unable to think of anything they could do.  The tiny hummingbird flew to the river and began taking tiny amounts of water and flying 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, really, is the only way that we will solve the problem of climate change – by each of us doing what we can, however small that might be.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780874472</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1638485216
 +
|title=Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement
 +
|author=Frederick Reynolds
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Autobiography
 +
|summary=''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific.  It has everything to do with character. Period.''
  
{{newreview
+
''One more body just wouldn't matter''.
|title=Outraged of Tunbridge Wells: Original Complaints from Middle England
+
 
|author=Nigel Cawthorne
+
The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, 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 the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected.  There was a backlash against the police - and not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''all'' tarred by the Chauvin brush.
|rating=4
 
|genre=Humour
 
|summary=It was ever thus…  cyclists go too fast, without using a hooter or lights; there are hoodlums everywhere one looks, and no public conveniences; people pretend to have qualifications and degrees they haven't rightfully earned; buses are too busy with shopping women who should be indoors already, cooking for their working menfolk… It's a very clever idea to show exactly what is behind the 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' tag, and as a book to be shelved alongside those with the wackier letters sent to the ''Daily Telegraph'', these selections from the Royal town's press itself make a great eye-opener to the complaints and complainants of Kent.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908096918</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Matthieu Aikins
|title=How Much have Global Problems Cost the World?: A Scorecard from 1900 to 2050
+
|title=The Naked Don't Fear the Water
|author=Bjorn Lomborg (Editor)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=The authors are leading researchers in their fields, and their papers have been critiqued by peer-reviewers. Each of the chapters reports the results of a modelling exercise, examining progress or decline in one of ten key areas, including armed conflict, trade barriers, malnutrition, air pollution, ecosystem and biodiversity, health, water and sanitation. Key economic, growth and other variables from credible sources provided a common set of data and assumptions, used in each study.
+
|summary=It's easy to forget at times that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not 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 on edge the whole way through. But it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to perfectly envisage the environments and people described.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1107679338</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= B09N9157T6
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1785633074
|author=Tony Benn
+
|title=Staggering Hubris
|title=The Last Diaries: A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine
+
|author=Josh Berry
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
+
|genre=Humour
|summary=Throughout my life I've found that whilst I might not always agree with Tony Benn's politics, whatever he had to say would give me food for thought - and frequently changed the way that I viewed a situation.  He's a wonderful mixture of supreme intelligence and humanity which is so rarely found - particularly in modern-day politics and it was with some misgivings that I opened this volume of his diaries, given that the slipcover speaks of the ''compensations and challenges of old age'' and ''the disadvantages of growing older, the loneliness of widowhood, the upheaval of moving from the family home of sixty years and the problems of failing health.'' I've always been relieved that Benn has never ''quite'' achieved the status of national treasure, but surely he couldn't be in decline?
+
|summary=Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's for those of you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime'' movers are the special advisers - the SPADS - who are the driving force behind the government.  We are in the privileged position of having access to the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who was behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the man to watch.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091943876</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1846276772
|title=What Should We Tell Our Daughters?: The Pleasures and Pressures of Growing Up Female
+
|title=The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds
|author=Melissa Benn
+
|author=Jessica Nordell
|rating=3
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary='I am shocked when I read young feminists today blithely admitting that they don't know what second-wave feminists wrote.'
+
|summary=Anyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the extent to which they suffer from it: it's simply a part of everyday life.  White men will always come first. The able will come before the disabled. Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the preserve of the white man.  Even when those who wouldn't pass the medical become a part of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, that their concerns are acknowledged. It's personally appalling and degrading for the individuals on the receiving end of the bias but it's not just the individuals who are negatively impacted.
 
 
As a twenty-something year old feminist, it pains me to admit how much this quote applied to me. Having grown up knowing that college and university were paths I could definitely take, never being told that settling down and finding a husband was an important goal to have, and always getting the same opportunities as my male peers in the workplace, I'd never seen – or, at least, ''thought'' I'd seen – the inequalities, misogyny and chauvinism that were still apparently abundant in today's society. The feminist movement had always seemed like an amazing wave of new ideas that had happened forty or fifty years ago. It was the reason my mother and I were now able to work and find a role outside of the home.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546270</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529148251
|title=Peas and Queues: The Minefield of Modern Manners
+
|title=Misfits: A Personal Manifesto
|author=Sandi Toksvig
+
|author=Michaela Coel
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Dear Sandi
+
|summary=''How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise?  It's as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.''
  
You are my all time favourite celebrity lesbadyke, and one of the reasons I’m so very excited to be heading to Denmark this coming weekend (are all people there like you? Please say yes). For this alone, I had to get my mitts on your latest offering. I wasn’t that fussed about obtaining a book on manners previously, having always thought mine were quite ok, but I knew your take on the matter would be suitably hilarious and well worth a read. I was not wrong.
+
Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to be in a certain frame of mind. You're not going to read a book of essays or a self-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 Edinburgh TV Festival. You might be ''reading'' the book but you need to ''listen'' to the words as though you're in the lecture theatre.  The disjointedness will fade away and you'll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781250324</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008350388
|title=Global Modernity and Other Essays
+
|title=We Need to Talk About Money
|author=Tom Rubens
+
|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=It’s been difficult to write this review. The book’s eclectic nature, with subject matter ranging from Nietzsche to the English Police Force, makes it difficult to summarise and secondly, I’m no academic and philosophy is just HARD
+
|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...''  ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845405633</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.''  ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021
|title=Education Under Siege: Why There is a Better Alternative
 
|author=Peter Mortimore
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=Peter Mortimore's thoroughgoing analysis of the absurdities of current educational practice and prescriptions for finding a far better alternative deserves a wide readership. It is not just an organisation which is under siege but as his personal anecdotes indicate, more vigorously than his rigorously argued statistics, people are suffering. Parents are anxious, teachers badly led and burdened with confused policies and worst of all pupils are pressurised from early infancy. Reading his book you might be forgiven for wondering a) why so many young students are being abused by such distress and b) as Cicero might have asked, ''Cui bono'', to whose benefit? Professor Mortimore outlines the positive alternatives suggested by international comparisons especially with Scandinavian methods. He argues that their procedures are more effective, that support students and produce a fairer, harmonious society.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447311310</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine.  It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled and determined that their children would have the 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 family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxford.
|title=Inventing the Enemy: Essays on Everything
 
|author=Umberto Eco
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=Imagine a sumptuous Italian feast in the sunlit-bathed ancient countryside near Milan. Next to you a gentleman talks and eats with furious energy. He tells of Dante, Cicero, and St Augustine and quotes a multitude of obscure troubadours from the Middle Ages. He repeats himself, gestures flamboyantly, nudges you sharply in the ribs, belches and even breaks wind. His conversation contains nuggets of information but in the flow of his discourse there is a fondness for iteration and reiteration. He throws bones over his shoulder and when he reaches the cheese course - definitely too much information on the mouldy bacteria! When you finally get up things the elderly gentleman has said prompt your imagination. You are better informed, intrigued and prodded to examine his discourse again and again, even if only to challenge what you have heard. Such are the effects of reading Eco’s essays in ''Inventing the Enemy''.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553945</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=George Brock
+
|author=Richard Brook
|title=Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age
+
|title=Understanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to Life
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=At about the turn of the century most people on the street where I live had a morning paper delivered and a good number also got an evening paperThe queue at the newsagent in the village would be out of the door each morning as people picked up a paper on their way to work. I can't remember when I last saw a newspaper boy (or girl) on their rounds and we only buy the weekend papers as an indulgence with a more leisurely breakfast.  Times have changed - and there's no sign that the situation is likely to settle in the near future.
+
|summary= I am a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, and sometimes books choose usIn my case, this is one of the latter. Not so very long ago, if I had come across this book I'd have skimmed it, found some of it interesting, but it would not have 'hit home' in the way 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 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 book, even if it doesn't always turn out that way'' ] – but also because it is a book I needed to read, right now.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749466510</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1800461682
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1787332098
|title=Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America
+
|title=How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World
|author=Allen M Hornblum, Judith L Newman and Gregory J Dober
+
|author=Henry Mance
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=If I told you that doctors had been using human beings in the most horrible of medical experiments, that they had done things like tie toddlers to beds to insert live pathogens into their eyes, injected children with radiation, sterilised those thought to be subhuman and even castrated a child just to  get a  supply of tissue for a lab experiment, you might very reasonably assume I am talking abut Nazi Germany. I am not.
+
|summary=''When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and groups: cows, dogs, foxes, elephants and so on. And we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and millions of wild animals stay out there, ''somewhere,'' hopefully on the next David Attenborough series.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230341713</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
I was going to argue. I mean, cows are for cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and I much prefer my elephants in the wild but then I realised that I was quibbling for the sake of it.  Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and I consider myself an animal lover.  If I had to choose between the company of humans and the company of animals, I would probably choose the animals. I insisted that I read this book: no one was trying to stop me but I was initially reluctant. I eat cheese, eggs, chicken and fish and I needed to either do so without guilt or change my choices. I suspected that making the decision would not be comfortable.
|title=Across the Pond
 
|author=Terry Eagleton
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=Terry Eagleton is a Brit (Manchester born, no less) who now lives in Dublin with his American wife and children, so he seems well placed to write a book about the difference between us and them, there Yanks. Mid way through the pages, he even stops to tell us that in a way he had to write this, because when he wishes to read a book, he writes it. To read someone else’s, he suggests, is ‘an unwarranted invasion of their personal space’. That’s how so very British he is.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393347648</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1523092734
|author=Jill Stark
+
|title=A Women's Guide to Claiming Space
|title=High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze
+
|author=Eliza Van Cort
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Lifestyle
 
|summary=On the first of January 2011 Jill Stark woke up with the hangover from Hell.  She was no stranger to them: at thirty five she'd been binge drinking for more than twenty years and was in the dubious position of being the health reporter who wrote herself off at weekends.  And by 'wrote herself off' I mean being seriously drunk on a very regular basis, having consumed vast quantities of alcohol and having regularly put herself in danger of serious illness, unwanted pregnancy and assault.  But on that first day in January Stark decided that she was going to do something about it and the initial decision was that she would spend three months on the wagon.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922247030</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa
 
|author=A T Williams
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=History
+
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Almost ten years ago on a Sunday morning back in September 2003, British Troops raided a hotel in Basra. It was a difficult period in the occupation, six months on from the U.S. led invasion. Temperatures were more than 50 degrees centigrade. Members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment (QLR) took ten suspects in for questioning from a hotel in the vicinity of insurgent weaponry. The Iraqis were hooded, plasticuffed, forced into stress positions and subjected to karate chops and kidney punches by the British. Other men and officers watched, walked by or wondered at the stench that resulted from vicious punishment. After 36 hours of torture, a 26 year-old hotel receptionist lay dead by asphyxiation. His grossly disfigured body bore 93 individual injuries. There are now in the region of another 250 individuals, men and women, whose families are making legal claims to have been killed in further encounters with British patrols or prison guards.
+
|summary=''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again.'' (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD)
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575116</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ryu Murakami
 
|title=From The Fatherland, With Love
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=From The Fatherland, With Love is a 2005 Japanese novel set in the then-near future of 2011. Fatherland (as I will abbreviate it) explores the social and political ramifications of one speculative scenario: what if North Korea invaded Japan?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968451</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
''To claim space is to live the life of choosing unapologetically and bravely.  It is to live the life you've always wanted.''
|author=Polly Morland
 
|title=The Society of Timid Souls: Or, How to be Brave
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Reference
 
|summary='I see no reason why the shy and timid in any community couldn’t get together and help each other.'
 
  
The above words were uttered in 1943 by a gentleman called Bernard Gabriel. Mr Gabriel was a piano player who founded a unique club, ''The Society of Timid Souls'' that encouraged timid performers and fear-wracked musicians to come in out of the cold 'to play, to criticise and be criticised in order to conquer that old bogey of stage fright.' The method evidently worked, as many a timid soul claimed to be cured by these unorthodox methods and club membership grew considerably in the years that followed.
+
Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a time when violence against women is much in the news, ''A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now - to be clear - this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''.  I've always thought that women need to rise above this, to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own space.  If all women did this, 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 are big men.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251908</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Polly Barton
|author=Rithy Panh
+
|title=Fifty Sounds
|title=The Elimination
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Three years ago I went to Cambodia.  I went to S21, because you cannot go to Phnom Penh and not go to the former high school Tuol Sleng (Tuol Slav Prey as it had been) and see what it became. I went to Choeung Ek, because you cannot NOT know about the killing fields, and you cannot really know about them until you have stood there.
+
|summary= Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689295</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1913097501
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Stephen Fabes
|author=Ivo Mosley
+
|title=Signs of Life
|title=In the Name of the People: Pseudo-Democracy and the Spoiling of Our World
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Travel
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|summary= I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity.  Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and do it.  I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'.  In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years.  Fabes did precisely that.
|summary=On the spectrum ranging between democracy and totalitarianism, Ivo Mosley upholds that the system of elective oligarchy lies closer to the latter. And yet, he essentially says, Western democracy as we know it today is ''nothing'' but this form of representative government, excluding a large proportion of the people whose freedoms it claims to protect.
+
|isbn=1788161211
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402626</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1504321383
|author=Paul McMahon
+
|title=Single, Again, and Again, and Again
|title=Feeding Frenzy: The New Politics of Food
+
|author=Louisa Pateman
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=It's predicted that the world's population will reach nine billion by 2050 and given that there are regular appeals for money to relieve a famine in some part of the world it's not unreasonable to wonder whether or not we will be able to feed nine billion people.  Recent turmoil in food markets adds to the worry, but the truth is that we could feed that number people ''now'' if different approaches were taken and there was cooperation rather than an unseemly scramble to secure access to food even if this results in starvation for the neighbour.  Paul McMahon looks at how in this very readable book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781250340</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mac Carty
 
|title=The Vagaries Of Swing (Footprints on the Margate Sands of Time)
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Mac Carty tells us that the catalyst for 'The Vagaries of Swing' was the BBC television series 'True Love' which portrayed a series of romantic encounters all set by the sea in his home town of Margate.  But Carty has taken the original idea - about relationships between people - and run with it, extending ''love'' into ''passion'', say for cricket, or (at the other end of the scale) as a human encounter which ends in violence.  Whilst the television series might have been the catalyst for the book there was another and probably more compelling reasonWhen his friend Mike died he realised that he had no one with whom to share his fund of stories about growing up in Margate, all of which had been revisited on a regular basis and usually over a pint.  I've just read the result.
+
|summary=''You can't be happy and fulfilled on your ownYou are not complete until you find a man''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1291336761</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe.  It wasn't unkind: it was simply the adults in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best for her. 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 they can live happily ever after.  Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'' the expectation that they will marry and have childrenIt was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a belief is a choice''.
|author=Emily Cockayne
 
|title=Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=As Emily Cockayne emphasises at the beginning of the first chapter, almost everyone has a neighbour; if you have a neighbour, you are one yourself; and neighbours can enrich or ruin our livesIn this engaging book, she takes various case studies and anecdotes of living side by side in Britain from around 1200 to the present day.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546949</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move to [[Newest Popular Science Reviews]]
|author=Jonathan M Katz
 
|title=The Big Truck That Went By
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|summary=It was January 12, 2010 and AP correspondent Jonathan M. Katz was preparing to ship out of Haiti after spending the last two and a half years reporting about political instability, riots and disasters. He was preparing for a change of scene, a stint in Afghanistan, concluding that ''It sounded like a good place for a break''. Nature had other plans.
 
 
 
When the earthquake struck, Katz was unexpectedly thrown into the thick of the action. As the only American reporter on the ground at the time of the quake, he felt duty-bound to break news of unfolding events to an oblivious world.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023034187X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 09:49, 29 September 2024

191309734X.jpg

Review of

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

4star.jpg Autobiography

King Kong Theory is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in a phallocentric society broken at its core. Originally written in French, the book is a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form as independent essays. Full Review

1009473085.jpg

Review of

The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024 by Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)

5star.jpg Politics and Society

Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it isn't and that applies to The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what really happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, Johnson at 10, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. The Conservative Effect is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024. Full Review

1785633678.jpg

Review of

Local by Alastair Humphreys

5star.jpg Travel

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 his introduction, the book is an attempt to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding… One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead. Full Review

1474616720.jpg

Review of

Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez

4star.jpg Graphic Novels

We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren't in the happiest of places 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 the father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen… Full Review

1785633848.jpg

Review of

This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured world by Sarah Wilson

3.5star.jpg Lifestyle

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 This! Precisely this. I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the way I want to. 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 source) she pushes us to think about whether we really are living the life we want – the best life that we could be living. Her answer is an unequivocal no, we are not. Don't care what you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she's effing furious about the fact that we are not. Full Review

1785633457.jpg

Review of

Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car by Clive Wilkinson

5star.jpg Travel

Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it? Full Review

1529153050.jpg

Review of

Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022 by Tim Benson

4star.jpg Humour

Seeking 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 Best Political Cartoons of 2022. Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year: the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition? Full Review

B0B7289HKQ.jpg

Review of

Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America by Kari Loya

4star.jpg Travel

Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, 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. The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on. Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's. Full Review

1739593901.jpg

Review of

22 Ideas About The Future by Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)

5star.jpg Science Fiction

Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.

I'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 the book. There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the world-building. It's human beings who fascinate me: the technology and the world scape are purely incidental. So, what did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it. Full Review

024147857X.jpg

Review of

The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams

5star.jpg Politics and Society

The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears. Full Review

1788360737.jpg

Review of

Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism by Alexander Adams

2star.jpg Politics and Society

Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to 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 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 become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes. Full Review

1398508632.jpg

Review of

The Wilderness Cure by Mo Wilde

5star.jpg Lifestyle

It had been on the cards for a while but it was the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food. The end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and dehydrator. She had a car - and fuel. Most importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to live wild just to live off its produce. Full Review

1529149800.jpg

Review of

Things You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste by Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows

4star.jpg Home and Family

We begin with a telling story. All the birds and animals fled when the forest fire took hold and most of them stood and watched, unable to think of anything they could do. The tiny hummingbird flew to the river and began taking tiny amounts of water and flying 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, really, is the only way that we will solve the problem of climate change – by each of us doing what we can, however small that might be. Full Review

1638485216.jpg

Review of

Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement by Frederick Reynolds

5star.jpg Autobiography

Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. It has everything to do with character. Period.

One more body just wouldn't matter.

The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, 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 the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected. There was a backlash against the police - and not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were all tarred by the Chauvin brush. Full Review

B09N9157T6.jpg

Review of

The Naked Don't Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins

4.5star.jpg Politics and Society

It's easy to forget at times that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not 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 on edge the whole way through. But it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to perfectly envisage the environments and people described. Full Review

1785633074.jpg

Review of

Staggering Hubris by Josh Berry

4.5star.jpg Humour

Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the primus inter pares (that's for those of you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the prime movers are the special advisers - the SPADS - who are the driving force behind the government. We are in the privileged position of having access to the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who was behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the man to watch. Full Review

1846276772.jpg

Review of

The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds by Jessica Nordell

4.5star.jpg Politics and Society

Anyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the extent to which they suffer from it: it's simply a part of everyday life. White men will always come first. The able will come before the disabled. Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the preserve of the white man. Even when those who wouldn't pass the medical become a part of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, that their concerns are acknowledged. It's personally appalling and degrading for the individuals on the receiving end of the bias but it's not just the individuals who are negatively impacted. Full Review

1529148251.jpg

Review of

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto by Michaela Coel

5star.jpg Politics and Society

How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.

Before you start reading Misfits you need to be in a certain frame of mind. You're not going to read a book of essays or a self-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 Edinburgh TV Festival. You might be reading the book but you need to listen to the words as though you're in the lecture theatre. The disjointedness will fade away and you'll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing. Full Review

0008350388.jpg

Review of

We Need to Talk About Money by Otegha Uwagba

5star.jpg Politics and Society

To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts... We Need to Talk About Money by Otegha Uwagba

0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman. The Bookseller 29 June 2021

Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled and determined that their children would have the 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 family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxford. Full Review

1800461682.jpg

Review of

Understanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to Life by Richard Brook

4.5star.jpg Lifestyle

I am a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, and sometimes books choose us. In my case, this is one of the latter. Not so very long ago, if I had come across this book I'd have skimmed it, found some of it interesting, but it would not have 'hit home' in the way 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 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 book, even if it doesn't always turn out that way ] – but also because it is a book I needed to read, right now. Full Review

1787332098.jpg

Review of

How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World by Henry Mance

5star.jpg Politics and Society

When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and groups: cows, dogs, foxes, elephants and so on. And we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and millions of wild animals stay out there, somewhere, hopefully on the next David Attenborough series.

I was going to argue. I mean, cows are for cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and I much prefer my elephants in the wild but then I realised that I was quibbling for the sake of it. Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and I consider myself an animal lover. If I had to choose between the company of humans and the company of animals, I would probably choose the animals. I insisted that I read this book: no one was trying to stop me but I was initially reluctant. I eat cheese, eggs, chicken and fish and I needed to either do so without guilt or change my choices. I suspected that making the decision would not be comfortable. Full Review

1523092734.jpg

Review of

A Women's Guide to Claiming Space by Eliza Van Cort

5star.jpg Politics and Society

She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again. (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD)

To claim space is to live the life of choosing unapologetically and bravely. It is to live the life you've always wanted.

Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a time when violence against women is much in the news, A Women's Guide to Claiming Space by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now - to be clear - this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be protected. I've always thought that women need to rise above this, to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own space. If all women did this, 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 are big men. Full Review

1913097501.jpg

Review of

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

4.5star.jpg Politics and Society

Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question Why Japan? Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question why Japan? She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound giro' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of every party where you have to introduce yourself. Full Review

1788161211.jpg

Review of

Signs of Life by Stephen Fabes

5star.jpg Travel

I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and do it. I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'. In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely that. Full Review

1504321383.jpg

Review of

Single, Again, and Again, and Again by Louisa Pateman

4.5star.jpg Autobiography

You can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find a man.

This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasn't unkind: it was simply the adults in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best for her. 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 they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up without the expectation that they will marry and have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that a belief is a choice. Full Review

Move to Newest Popular Science Reviews