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{{Frontpage|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingauthor=Stephen Fabes|title=Signs of Life|rating=5|genre=Travel|summary="15" <!I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->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.|isbn=1788161211}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1504321383|title=Single, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Louisa Pateman|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=''You can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find a man''.

<!-- Bremner -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Bremner_UsThis was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0525533184/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Us vs Them: The Failure of Globalism by Ian Bremmer]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]]  It wasn't supposed to be like this, unkind: it was it? Every day seems to bring yet more news of doom and gloom. The spectre of terrorism hangs over most of simply the world, fuelling refugee crises and worries about national security. People keep saying that robots are coming to take all our jobs. Anti-establishment political parties are making huge gains adults in countries all around the world. And inequality is as much of a problem her life advising her as it ever was – if not more so. [[Us vs Them: The Failure of Globalism by Ian Bremmer|Full Review]] <!-- Wolff -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Wolff Trump.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1408711400?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1408711400]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] As I began listening to ''Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House'' we were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the President of the United States taking to Twitter to establish that he was ''a stable genius'', as opposed, we must conclude to being an unstable... Well, let's not go therewhat they thought would be best for her. Itwas reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's a little too frightening: this usually fairly young) is rescued by the most powerful man in the worldhandsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever after. So what made me listen Few girls are lucky enough to this book? Well, Donald Trump didn't want me to read it: US presidents don't often go down that road and rarely to a good destination (I'm thinking of Richard Nixon here) and that made me really want to know what was between the covers. But how did the book stack be brought up? [[Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Anderson -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Anderson_Fantasyland.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785038656?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1785038656]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:History|History]], [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] Fantasyland covers the history of America from 1517 to 2017 in awesome detail. Covering five centuries of tempestuous history, Andersen paints the conjuring of America in vivid relief. Discussing everything from pilgrims to politicians, the exhilarating gold rush to alternative facts, seminal episodes are explored in forensic detail with razor sharp wit. [[Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen|Full Review]] <!-- Connolly -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Connolly_working.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1911585363?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1911585363]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class by Nathan Connolly]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] Simple summary: ''Know Your Placewithout'' is an anthology of essays on the working class by the working class. There are twenty-three disparate pieces talking about everything you can imagine: day trips to the seaside, access to the arts, food poverty, pub culture, glass ceilings, housing estates, vulgarity-as-class-marker, expectation that they will marry and much morehave children.  And a full disclosure: ''Know Your Place'' was brought to fruition by crowdfunding and I It was a contributor. I read the proposed spec belief and just ''knew'' I it would be many years before Louisa would love the book, should it reach its fundraising target, and conclude that's why I stumped up some cash. I think class 'a belief is both an under- and mis-discussed topic with working class people defined externally and talked about rather than listened to or allowed to define themselves. And I really did love the book just as I thought I would. So you know - there's a possible reviewer bias here that you should know about. I like to think I would have criticised ''Know Your Place'choice' had it fallen short of my hopes for it but just in case, I'm letting you know. [[Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class by Nathan Connolly|Full Review]]}}<!-- Smith -->{{Frontpage|-| styleauthor="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|Sakinu Ahronglong[[image:Smith_Dont.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/147212345X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASINtitle=147212345X]] Hunter School| style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Don't Let My Past Be Your Future: A Call to Arms by Harry Leslie Smith]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]]  Don't Let My Past Be Your Future: A Call to Arms is part autobiography and part rallying call for society to tackle the systemic, endemic and debilitating inequality faced by the people of the United Kingdom, particularly in the North. Through reflecting on his own experiences during his childhood, Harry Leslie Smith has painted a frank and uncompromising picture of the grim, appallingly miserable childhood he had to endure due to the poverty faced by his family contrasted with the, shamefully still, grim and miserable lives many people endure today in a country ravaged by cuts, austerity and political turmoil. [[Don't Let My Past Be Your Future: A Call to Arms by Harry Leslie Smith|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Bristow -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Bristow China.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co4.uk/gp/product/1910985902?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1910985902]] 5| style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser by Michael Bristow]]==genre=Autobiography [[image:4star.jpg|linksummary=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]], [[:Category:Travel|Travel]] Having worked for nine years in Bejing as a journalist for the BBC, author Michael Bristow decided to write about Chinese history. Having been learning the local language for several years, Bristow asked his language teacher for guidance - the language teacher, born in the early fifties, offered Bristow a compelling picture of life in Communist China - but added The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that, Bristow was greatly surprised to find that his language teacher also enjoyed spending his spare time in ladies clothing. It soon becomes clear that the tale told here it is immensely personal - yet also paints a fascinating portrait work of one of the world's most intriguing nationsfiction. [[China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser by Michael Bristow|Full Review]] <!-- Landreth -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Landreth_Swell.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1472938941?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1472938941]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Swell by Jenny Landreth]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]], [[:Category:Sport|Sport]], [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] I love JennyThat's own description of her book as a waterbiography and I love her encouragement that we should each write our ownpossibly misleading. This is more than just (I say ''just''!) a recollection of the author's own encounters with water; it's also a history of women's fight for the right to swim. That sounds absurd until you start reading about it, then am not sure whether it becomes serious. Not too serious though – because Jenny Landreth is clearly a lover of the absurd. Not a lover of book blurbs myself, I do always seek to give a shout-out to those who get it dead right: in this case I'm definitely with Alexandra Heminsley's ''giggles-on-the-commute funny''. [[Swell by Jenny Landreth|Full Review]] <!-- Maconie -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;fiction"|[[image:MACONIE_lONG.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785030531/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Long Road From Jarrow by Stuart Maconie]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Travel|Travel]], [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] I cancelled my ''Country Walking'' magazine subscription about a year ago and in the only thing I miss is Stuart Maconie's column. His down-to-earth approach and sharp wit belie an equally sharp intellect and a soul more sensitive than he might be willing to admit. Let's be honest, though, I picked this one up because of someone else's review, in which I spotted names like Ferryhill and Newton Aycliffe. Places I grew up in. Like Maconie I have no connection (sense that I know of) to the Jarrow Crusade but when he talks about Ahronglong made it being ''a whole matrix of events reducible to one word like Aberfan, Hillsboroughall up, or Orgreave'' then somehow whether it does become part of my history too. Tangentially, at least. [[Long Road From Jarrow by Stuart Maconie|Full Review]] <!-- Grindrod -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Grindrod Outskirts.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1473625025/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Outskirts by John Grindrod]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Animals and Wildlife|Animals and Wildlife]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]] ''Outskirts'' is an interesting take on a phenomenon of the modern age: the introduction of the green belt of countryside surrounding inner city housing estates. John Grindrod grew up on the edge of one such estate in the 1960's and '70's, as he puts it, ''I grew up on the last road in London.'' Grindrod explores the introduction of the green belt, and the various fights and developments it has gone through over the subsequent decades, as environmental and political arguments have affected planning decisions. Within this topic, he has somehow managed to wind around his personal memories of childhood, producing a memoir with a lot of heart. [[Outskirts by John Grindrod|Full Review]] <!-- Elkin -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Elkin_Flaneuse.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099593378?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0099593378]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:History|History]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]] Lauren Elkin is down blurb goes on suburbs: they're places where you can't or shouldn't be seen walking; places where, in fiction, women who transgress boundaries are punished (thinking of everything from ''Madame Bovary'' to say ''Revolutionary Road''). When she imagines to herself what the female version of that well-known historical figurerecollections, the carefree ''flâneur'', might be, she thinks about women who freely wandered the world's great cities without having the more insalubrious connotation of the word folklore and autobiographical stories'streetwalker' applied to them. [[Flaneuse: Women Walk It feels like the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Noor -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Noor_Surgerylatter.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1521173192?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1521173192]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Surgery on It feels like the Shoulders of Giants: Letters from a doctor abroad by Saqib Noor]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]], [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] The letters begin much in the fashion of any young man away from home, perhaps in a quite exciting country, writing back to family and friends to tell them of stories he tells about his experiences, the sights he's seen and the people he's met. It's just as a little different in ''Surgery on the Shoulders of Giants'' though: Saqib Noor is a junior doctorchild, training to be as an orthopaedic surgeon and over a period of ten years he visited six countriesadolescent, not as a tourist but to give medical assistancean adult are real and true. They're countries which Noor describes as ''fourth world'' - third world with added disaster - and their need But memory is desperate. [[Surgery on the Shoulders of Giants: Letters from a doctor abroad by Saqib Noor|Full Review]]<br> <!-- O'Gorman -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Ogorman_Forgetfulness.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1501324691/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia by Francis O'Gorman]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics fickle thing, and Society|Politics maybe poetic licence has taken over here and Society]] After a glut of books about mindfulness it came as something of a relief to encounter ''Forgetfulness'', Francis O'Gorman's thinking on why the twenty-first century is losing touch with the past, on why what is likely - or could be made - to happen is so much more important than what has gone before. The book is supremely intelligentthere, but with the knowledge worn lightly and maybe calling it's eminently readable, regardless of how you feel about the conclusions he draws. [[Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia by Francis O'Gorman|Full Review]] <!-- Williams -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Williams_Culture.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784870811/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Culture fiction means that its safer and Society 1780-1950 by Raymond Williams]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] From the last decades of the eighteenth century to the final words of modernism, this book tracks societal changes through exploring five key words: industry, democracy, class, art and culture. The meanings of such things, their essence, changes as per their use and the era in which their implications were considered. [[Culture and Society 1780-1950 by Raymond Williams|Full Review]] <!-- West -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:West_Get.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1845409337/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche for our times by Patrick West]]=== [[image:1star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] ''Get Over Yourself'' considers Nietzsche's imagined perceptions of modern society and uses our society to explain his philosophy. I'm sorry if that sounds vague but therefore more people will read it's the best I can do from the blurb on the back. After reading Get Over Yourself from cover to cover, I am still none the wiser about the purpose of this book. It appears to be a series of personal opinions held together with quotes, which don't always appear relevant, from Nietzsche, Chumbawumba and newspaper articles. [[Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche for our times by Patrick West|Full Review]] <!-- Scott-Clark -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Levy_Exile.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co More people should.uk/dp/1408858762/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Exile by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy]]==isbn=1999791282 [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]] An account of the fate of Al Qaeda and the Bin Laden family since the events of 9/11, ''The Exile'' plunges into the murky waters of international terrorism, espionage and politics. Detailed and meticulous, the book tackles the subject from all angles, providing a panoramic view of the subject and acting to enlighten and inform the reader. [[The Exile by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy|Full Review]]  <!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->|} {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emily ClarksonFrederic Gros|title= Can I Speak to Someone in Charge?A Philosophy of Walking|rating= 4.5

|summary=''Can I Speak to Someone confess I picked this one up from the library in Charge?'', blogger Emily Clarkson's debut book, is a fierce, witty and laughmy pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to go out-loud funny ode to feminism. In a series of open letters, she addresses an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the issues faced by every modern woman, discussing everything from dealing with body hair pages I have marked and return to being made its varying wisdom when I need to feel uncomfortable . Some books draw you in slowly. This one had me in the gymfirst two pages, as well as more personal issues, like her experiences of being wherein Gros explains why 'catfished' and sent abuse online. This walking is not a vital read for any girl born in the 1990s, tackling some very serious social injustices beneath its fun exteriorsport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471156907</amazonuk>1781688370

{{Frontpage|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.|isbn=1684056993}}{{Frontpage|author=Sharon Blackie|title=If Women Rose Rooted|rating=5|genre= Biography|summary= I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|isbn=1912836017}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rebecca AsherLinda Scott|title= Man UpThe Double X Economy|rating= 5

|summary= When ''Women are economically disadvantaged in every country in the world''. It's a couple of years ago my university introduced compulsory consent workshops along with bold statement for an option of opening chapter, but it'good lad' sessions for boyss far from hyperbole as the following pages explain. This book shines a light on what is happening in different places, all debate broke looseand the impact on the local and world economy. Shouldn't consent What can be selflearnt from the great strides in gender-evident for everyone? Would equalising legislation in the workshops reinforce the stereotype of 'laddish' boyswest? Would it all What can be done about pointing fingers at boys the selling of young women into marriage, and victimizing girls? What what can chimpanzees and bonobos teach us about non-binary people? In short, how could these workshops be anything else than a mission doomed to failuremothering?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784701807</amazonuk>0571353606

  {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Carolina de RobertisDanny Dorling|title= Radical HopeSlowdown|rating= 4|genre= Politics and Society|summary= On 8th November 2016We are living in a time of rapid change, and we're worried about it. Dorling tells us that the latter is normal, Donald Trump was elected as natural and probably good for us. We are designed to worry and with the 46th President current state of what we're doing in the United Statesworld we have much to be worried about. Since then many Americans have been overcome with fear However, over the next three-hundred-and-some pages, if you can follow the arguments, it sets out in scientific detail why either we shouldn't be as worried as we are, or in some cases that we're worrying about what the wrong things. Mostly. Because mostly, things are not changing as rapidly as we think they are. In fact, the rate of change in many things is slowing down and the direction of change will become in some cases go into reverse.|isbn=0300243405}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of American society during Trumptheir two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's administration. Carolina de Robertis was no exception natural to seek a solution close to this fear and in response home, but eventually, it became clear to the newly elected President and his policies she put family that they were ''burned-out people on a call for actionburned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. Radical Hope is At the outcome time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to this callsail with her parents and three brothers. De Robertis reached Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out to fellow writers of school. She was the only child in the household and activists asking for lettersher childhood was glorious. By contrast, predominantly letters her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of lovethe United States and life was hard, addressed as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the citizens of today family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and those of past died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and future generations in order to help spread hope during times of uncertaintyWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349010102</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew d'Ancona183895015X|title=Post-TruthA Bit of a Stretch: The New War on Truth and How to Fight BackDiaries of a Prisoner|author=Chris Atkins|rating=3.5

|summary=Documentary filmmakers don''Our own postt usually get the run of establishments within the Mountbatten-Windsor Hotel Group, but after getting involved in an illegal tax scheme to fund his latest film, Chris Atkins was invited for a five-truth era year stay. The first nine months were spent in HMP Wandsworth, which is probably the oldest, largest and most dysfunctional prison in Europe.}}{{Frontpage|author=Michael Harris|title=Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary= This is not the book I was expecting it to be. For some reason I expected it to be another self-help manual on how to find calm, how to step outside the mainstream, but it is not that at all. Instead of telling us how it is more about the ''why''. Harries examines how we're eroding solitude, which used to be a natural part of our human life, and why that matters. Of course, he talks about how some people have found solitude and what happens when society relaxes its defence has come of values that underpin cohesion, namely veracityand eventually in the final chapter he talks about his own experience of having deliberately sought it out, honesty but mostly he wanders down the alleys and accountabilityby-ways that his thinking about this lost art led him.|isbn=1847947662}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1783784350|title=This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain''s Knitted History|author=Esther Rutter|rating=5 |genre=HistoryI|summary=It was December and Esther Rutter was stuck in her office job, writing to people she'm old enough or perhaps naive enough d never met and preparing spreadsheets. The job frustrated her and even her knitting did not soothe her mind. January was going to believe be a time for making changes and she decided that when making she would travel the length and breadth of the British Isles with occasional forays abroad, discovering and telling the story of wool's history and how it had made and changed the landscape. She'd grown up on a sheep farm in Suffolk - '' a decision about political votingfree-range child on the farm'' - and learned to spin, you should be able knit and weave from her mother and her mother's friend. This was in her blood.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008294011|title=How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to rely absolutely on Dictatorship|author=Ece Temelkuran|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question ''Discuss the candidate tells youfactors which led to... '' Iagreed that she was right and wasn've been suspicious for t certain whether it was a decade good or morebad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, but itparticularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's become difficult teeth.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786893452|title=The Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to ignore the change world and the situations that refugees find themselves in. It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in political attitudes since Brexit this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the election middle of Donald Trumpa revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as a ten-year-old. With regard to }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1846045576|title=Walks In The Wild|author=Peter Wohlleben and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (Translator)|rating=4|genre=Animals and Wildlife|Animals and Wildlife|summary=''An instruction manual for the forest'' is how Wohlleben's publisher described the latteridea for this book, when Trump was challenged on a statement heand that'd made which was subsequently found s basically what it is – although right at the end the author says that it is not intended to be incorrecta reference book, his response was but an appetiser.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786331608|title=Hard Pushed: A Midwife's Story|author=Leah Hazard|rating=4|genre=Lifestyle|summary=Over the past few years, we've had a rash (sorry - no pun intended) of books by medical practitioners. Doctors have been at the forefront, but ''Hard Pushed''Who cares if is the first book I got 've seen by a midwife. It's an unusual profession in that it wrong?'s one of the few callings within the medical system where most of the patients are healthy and the only one where one person comes into the system and (for the most part) more than one goes out. It' He was s an amazing thing to be able to tap do - to escort new life into the fading concept of 'the American Dream' world - those Americans who were used and an enormous responsibility. Leah Hazard came to waiting patiently it after a career in line television and who had found themselves overtaken by ''women, immigrants and public sector workersHard Pushed''is the story of her career as a midwife - and the title tells more than one story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785036874</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Stephen Moss1785903357|title= Wild Kingdom: Bringing Back Britain's WildlifeConfessions of a Recovering MP|author=Nick de Bois|rating= 4|genre= Animals Politics and WildlifeSociety|summary= Wildlife has been declining I should warn you in Britain over advance: this may not be the best time for me to review the last few decades; memoir of a Tory MP. Not only am I a left-of-centre - to put it is an unfortunate bymildly -product voter and so probably have next to no points of human population growthpolitical agreement with Nick de Bois, which in but I, along with everyone else, am currently subject to the modern world has increased significantly. Through this book Moss suggests debacle of parliament, government and Brexit, a few ways dog and pony show currently revealing in which we can start to bring back some hideous technicolour the absolute dearth of Britaincompetent leadership among our political classes. And yes, opposition parties: I'm looking at you as well. You's wildlife without compromising re just as useless. Sigh. Desperate cry into the human way of life: we can co-exist with naturevoid over. Sorry about that. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581639</amazonuk>At least Nick de Bois made me laugh!