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[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{Frontpage|author=Alastair Humphreys|title=Local|rating=5|genre=Travel |summary=Politics Alastair Humphreys has walked and society=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.|isbn=1785633678__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Norah VincentEdel Rodriguez|title=Voluntary MadnessWorm: My Year Lost A Cuban American Odyssey|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|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 Found 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 Loony Binkind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|isbn=1474616720}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Wilson|title=This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured world
|rating=3.5
|genre=Lifestyle|summary=My favourite Mary Oliver line is the one in which she asks ''Voluntary MadnessWhat 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 journalist Norah Vincent's account of her visits 'This! Precisely this.'' I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the way I want to three mental health facilities in America. The first Sarah Wilson is an urban, public hospital that houses mainly homeless, psychotic patients, many of whom are addicted to drugsequally lucky. In this hospital, the doctors are overworked and jaded and medication is always the answer. Soon, the author finds her book that takes Oliver's words as her latent depression title (which led her though I can't see that she acknowledges the source) she pushes us to do think about whether we really ''are'' living the book in life we want – the first place) best life that we could be living. Her answer is returningan unequivocal ''no, we are not''. The process of being institutionalised breaks her sense of self-worth down astonishingly fast. Indeed Don't care what you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she suggests that it is 's effing furious about the lack of autonomy in institutional life, even for those patients who voluntarily commit themselves, fact that makes it so hard for them to rebuild independent lives when they finally leave the institutionwe are not.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099513439</amazonuk>1785633848
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gabriel Weston1785633457|title=Direct RedCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyTravel|summary=Few people have Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the ability to convey idea of exploring the minutiae edges of their profession England in ways which engage the readeran electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, answer your unspoken questions and talk in such it should be a way that you're neither patronised nor overburdened with jargon. Gabriel Weston is one such – and ''Direct Red'' held me as though I was hypnotised pleasant holiday for several hours. She's a surgeon Clive and wehis wife, Joan, shouldn're pulled into the intricacies of her world without the need to don mask and gown.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520699</amazonuk>t it?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Hannah Edelstein 1529153050|title=Himglish and Femalese: Why Women DonBritain't Get Why Men Don't Get Thems Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson
|rating=4
|genre=LifestyleHumour|summary=Men arenSeeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards 't Martian and women don't hail from Venus. WeBritain're all Earthlings apparently; which seems like progress s Best Political Cartoons of a sort2022''. Even so we still Sharp eyes will have trouble understanding each other because noted that we speak different languages – Himglish and Femalese're not yet through the year: the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Luckily Jean Hannah Edelstein is fluent Who can imagine what there will be to come in both and has written this light hearted volume to define the problem and translate.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848091729</amazonuk>2023 edition?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chloe HooperB0B7289HKQ|title=The Tall ManConversations Across America: Life A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and Death on Palm Island300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America|author=Kari Loya
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=Cameron Doomadgee – Mulrunji – was just thirty six years old when he was arrested on Palm IslandKari (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. Quite why he The decision was arrested was never clearmade to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. He wasn't drunk, although he They had been drinking beer – and was walking along 73 days to do it - slightly less than the road singing ''Who Let the Dogs Out?'' Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley felt recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that there was reason to arrest Mulrunji it would be for creating as public nuisance and he was taken to the police stationmost people who considered taking it on. What happened next Merv Loya was to be the subject of intense media speculation 75 years old and legal proceedings over the coming years, but within forty five minutes Mulrunji he was deadsuffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520761</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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amy V Fetzer Jane Goodall and Shari AaronDouglas Abrams |title=Climb the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More SustainableThe Book of Hope |rating=45|genre=Business Politics and FinanceSociety |summary=With the abject failure of the Denmark Climate Change Conference fresh in our minds, it The done thing is perhaps time to turn away from read a book all the politicians and look back toward what we can doway through before you sit down to review it. The Conference may have finally got I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the likes experience of the USAreading this amazing book, India and China I want to acknowledge that they have to join in if we are going to save the planet capture it as a benevolent place for our species to live, but there it hits me. And it is still too much posturing and not enough commitmenthitting me. Clearly our governments and 'leaders' are not going to do this for us; we have to do it for ourselvesThis beautiful book has me in tears.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>047074801X</amazonuk>024147857X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicholas Stern1788360737|title=A Blueprint Artivism: The Battle for a Safer Planet: How We Can Save Museums in the World and Create ProsperityEra of Postmodernism|author=Alexander Adams|rating=4.52|genre=Politics and Society|summary=The hardback edition of 'A Blueprint for Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a Safer Planet' was published early in 2009 as an update vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to modifying the 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate changesocial environment in which he develops’’. Now here is the paperback editionTherefore, published too early to critique Copenhagenall art must be political, but nonetheless an interesting readeven implicitly. Stern is an expert witness who presents Alexander Adams in his evidence understandably new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the layman; he Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it is unemotional 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 very convincingprogressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099524058</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alex Hesz and Bambos Neophytou 1398508632|title=Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green BandwagonThe Wilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=Did you know that HorlicksIt 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, that great sleep aidparticularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, is sold in India as a start-world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: thearea 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 -day energy boost? Not another concoction under the same brandand fuel. Most importantly, but the Exact Same Productshe had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>047074622X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frank Furedi1529149800|title=WastedThings You Can Do: Why Education Isn't EducatingHow to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows|rating=3.54|genre=Politics Home and SocietyFamily|summary=It seems We begin with a telling story. All the more problems the school-aged generation pose to society, birds and animals fled when the more responsibility schools have to take, teaching not simply English forest fire took hold and Maths, but Personal Thinking most of them stood and Learning Skillswatched, Happiness Classes, and Emotional Educationunable to think of anything they could do. The duty tiny hummingbird flew to raise a child well is taken out 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 apparently best I can'incompetent' hands of parents, and given over to said the education systemhummingbird. And that, really, where values 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 regulated and controlled.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847064167</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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur Matthieu Aikins|title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global Misery|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floor.'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it has done for the world. You wonNaked Don't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth on them they will lambast the modern world, Fear the entire banking system, all those who failed to see it coming, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to high-interest, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, and back up the rich lists.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Winnett and Gordon Rayner|title=No Expenses SparedWater
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=It's always struck me as strange easy to forget at times that in a period of twelve months which saw Banks collapseThe Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, stock markets tumble and house prices slide the public have reserved most of their ire for because it reads very much like a relatively small group of people who were not exceptionally well-paid in the first placepaced thriller at times. This is not by any means a criticism, but many of whom took the opportunity rather a testament to how well Matthieu Aikins – a Canadian citizen who decided to make the most of the generous expenses which they could claimaccompany his friend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast and at times painful journey. There are only six hundred tense moments and forty six Members gripping accounts of Parliament – twelve months ago they were generally respected but many are now pariahsborder crossings which had me on edge the whole way through.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593065778</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alain de Botton |title=A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=A writer-in-residence at an airport is not as daft an idea as But it might first seem. After all, TV programmes, and whole series, have entertained millions 's written with what goes on in front of, a haunting and behind almost lyrical quality that allows the scenes at such places. So this book, which is reader to perfectly envisage the fruit of such a residency, could be expected to produce few surprisesenvironments and people described.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846683599</amazonuk>B09N9157T6
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anita Thompson (Editor)1785633074|title=Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S ThompsonStaggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyHumour|summary=It Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is almost 40 years since Dr Hunter S Thompsonrun by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's seminal work for those of you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''Fear And Loathing In Las Vegasprime'' first graced movers are the shelvesspecial advisers - the SPADS - who are the driving force behind the government. His gonzo style, putting himself at We are in the centre privileged position of having access to the storymemoirs of Rafe Hubris, should tell readers as much about the person doing man who was behind the skilful control of the writing as Covid crisis which was completely contained by the event he is describingend of 2020. If that's You might not know the case then what is to name now but he will certainly be learned from a selection of interviews with the main man himself then? The answer is plentyto watch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510711</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Jack1846276772|title=The Country Formerly Known As Great BritainEnd of Bias: How We Change Our Minds|author=Jessica Nordell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=I think IAnyone 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've now managed to master the maxim about not judging books by their coverss simply a part of everyday life. White men will always come first. I still struggle with The able will come before the one about not judging them by their titles and I very nearly cam unstuck and missed 'The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain'disabled. Being just about Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the preserve of an age with the author I worried that it might be a treatise about the fact that 'things werenwhite man. Even when those who wouldn't like this when I was pass the medical become a ladpart of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, that their concerns are acknowledged. I was even more worried that I might agree with himIt'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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087355</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=The Economist1529148251|title=Pocket World in Figures 2010Misfits: A Personal Manifesto|author=Michaela Coel
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's just about a year since as though I reviewed [[Pocket World In Figures 2009 by The Economist|Pocket World in Figures 2009]] and at the time – September 2008 – we were watching in horror as telling the world financial crisis unfolded before our eyestruth whilst simultaneously running away from it. Looking back now the surprise is that for most people what happened came out of the blue. The clues were plain to see and all here in this handy little book. There was the worrying state of the Iceland economy and different levels of mortgage lending in various parts of the world. Best of all it was presented as verified figures, without any accompanying narrative and it's consequently free of political spin. Bliss.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681367</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Arundhati Roy 0008350388|title=Listening We Need to GrasshoppersTalk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Stories can provoke many different reactions in the reader: pleasure''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, painless hireable, delight, horrorless intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts. The whole range of emotion is available to the fiction writer to ply and probe. Reactions to non-fiction works can be equally wide-ranging and can sometimes take the reader by surprise. Like most people I came to Roy via the Booker-prize-winning novel, ''The God of Small Things '', which it transpires, is her only novel We Need to date. In the intervening twelve years Roy has concentrated her undoubted literary abilities in the political arena, engaging with the less attractive side of her native India.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144620</amazonuk>}}Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
}}
{{newreview|author=Lucy Wadham |title=The Secret Life of France|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=I'm rather at a loss to describe this book for you, and I'm still uncertain how to categorise it. It's part personal memoir and part analytical. Whether you regard this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is down, I suppose, to personal taste and intellectual curiosity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571236111</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Hitchens |title=The Broken Compass: How British Politics lost its way|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=I've long held that there is no difference between the major political parties such that could command you to vote for one or the other. The new Labour party now seems to stand somewhere to the right of what I though of as the old Conservative party and the Lib Dems appear to be a coalition of those who don't fit comfortably into either of the other main parties. My voting patterns have changed radically from supporting a party because of its views to voting against another because of its actions. I was hoping that ''The Broken Compass'' might clarify my thoughts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847064051</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein |title=Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Choices are inevitable: from the lunch sandwich to the credit card and internet provider, to the house and car and pension plan, modern humans, particularly those living in technologically developed democracies are blessed (or cursed) with the freedom (and necessity) to choose all the time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141040017</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Davies|title=Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Do you remember a Y2K bug? When the world's computer systems were to melt down in an Armageddon of vital services failure and possible nuclear accidents? The Y2K panic is a great example of flat-Earth news: something that gets passed on in the media chain from those unsure to those who might have a vested interest in maintaining it as fact to those who are completely ignorant, and in the process gets bigger and bigger and – almost accidentally – assumes a status of orthodox, accepted truth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512688</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jennifer WorthBrook|title=Farewell To The East End|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell to the East End'' is a riveting read. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rania Al-Baz|title=DisfiguredUnderstanding Human Nature: A Saudi WomanUser's Story of Triumph over Violence|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Throughout her life Rania Al-Baz has been an unusual woman. She was married off by her father when she was still at school Guide to a man she hardly knew and was the only married pupil, forced to conform to the Saudi Arabian traditions of putting her husband first in all things but still expected to keep up with her school work. Pregnancy forced her to give up on her schooling but the marriage failed and Rania returned to her father. It might have been expected that she would fade quietly into the home, but in a most unusual step she became the smiling face on a Saudi television programme. No woman had ever been a news anchor before and it was only to be expected that there would be plenty of men wanting to marry her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844370755</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Brian Dunning|title=Skeptoid 2: More Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena |rating=3.5|genre=Popular Science|summary=Brian Dunning is the author responsible for a series of weekly podcasts debunking and analysing a variety of dubious, pseudo-scientific, un-scientific and downright loony ideas, claims and myths common or persistent in the pop (and not so pop) culture. ''Skeptoid 2'' is essentially a written version of those podcasts, a collection of fifty pieces of which many can be also read or listened to at his [http://skeptoid.com/ website].|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1440422850</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dan Gardner|title=Risk: The Science and Politics of FearLife
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular ScienceLifestyle|summary=Picture I am a world terrorised by just two words. A civilisedfirm believer that sometimes we choose books, healthy, wealthy world no less, in thrall to and under threat from two wordssometimes books choose us. Not what those two words represent evenIn my case, just this is one of the actual small phraselatter. It sounds ridiculousNot so very long ago, but when if I had come across this book I say those two words – 'd have skimmed it, found some of it interesting, but it would not have 'bird fluhit 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 [ '' – and youfull disclosure The Bookbag've stopped laughings u.s.p. is that people chose their own books rather than getting them randomly, you may well remember how so there is a predisposition towards expecting to like the panic startedbook, the non-existent worry was the biggest concern of the western media for some timeeven if it doesn't always turn out that way'' ] – but also because it is a book I needed to read, and then it went away againright now.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0753515539</amazonuk>1800461682
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine Ashenburg1787332098|title=Clean: An Unsanitised History of WashingHow to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World|author=Henry Mance
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=Although maybe not the first book you'd be drawn to – a history of personal hygiene perhaps doesn't seem that appealing – but if you had overlooked this excellent bookWhen we do think about animals, we break them down into species and groups: cows, dogs, foxes, you would have missed out elephants and so on. And we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on an enjoyable sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and informative bookmillions of wild animals stay out there, full of fascinating facts and a jolly good read''somewhere,'' hopefully on the next David Attenborough series.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Hatzfeld1523092734|title=The Strategy Of Antelopes: Rwanda After the GenocideA Women's Guide to Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''Life offers me smiles, and I owe it my gratitude for not having abandoned me She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in the marshesher life.'' ''I've known the defilement of a bestial existenceAgain and again and again.'' ''Who's going to say that word, forgiveness? It's outside of human nature.'' So say some of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by their fellow Hutu citizens. Jean Hatzfeld talked to both Tutsis and Hutus then(Alma Derricks, publishing two award-winning books. In The Strategy of Antelopesformer CMO, he returns to Rwanda to talk to the same people and explore life after genocide. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686865</amazonuk>}}Cirque du Soleil RSD)
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Sometimes Where do I wonder if authors set out to stop people reading their booksstart? I could start with where Barton herself starts, strange as this might seem. John Kay is an excellent example. He tells us that he expects his readers to be erudite and to be readers of popular science. They'll never knowingly have dealt with Goldman Sachs and will pay tax at the 40% rate. At the other end of the scale theyquestion ''Why Japan?''ll not be bad credit risks and just to cut out anyone hoping Japan has been on my radar for a quick buckwhile and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, they'll but I am not be tempted to make a living from Stock Market speculationhopeful. If you And like Barton, I don't qualify know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on all points therethe sound ''giro' ''s not even a hint – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of a pass mark which might allow ''every party where you have to sneak into the checkout queueintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954809327</amazonuk>1913097501
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sudhir VenkateshStephen Fabes|title=Gang Leader For A DaySigns of Life
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=If you've ever wondered why young people join gangs, I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and what it's like to bring up a family surrounded by armed drug dealerscuriosity. Unfortunately, youI didn'll find ''Gang Leader For The Day'' fascinatingt inherit what Dr. Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh wanted Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to learn by observing the poor, baulking at simply go out and do it. I also didn't inherit the abstract, mathematical research methods used by his professors in the University kind of Chicago. In 1989steady nerve, armed ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with a clipboard and a questionnaire, he visited the Robert Taylor Homes, a notorious housing project. Instead of neatly answering his carefully-prepared questions - requisite 'bottle'How does it feel to be black and poor?. In order words I'' by selecting from ''very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good'', he finds himself held hostage overnight by members m not the sort of the Black Kings, person who will get on a bike outside a crack-dealing gang, at the behest of its charismatic local leader, JLondon hospital and not come home for six years.T Fabes did precisely that.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141030917</amazonuk>1788161211
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alex Perry1504321383|title=Falling Off The Edge: GlobalizationSingle, World Peace and Other Lies|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=From Russia to a devastated sub-Saharan AfricaAgain, economic collapse and consequent protest in reaction threaten the established order. GlobalisationAgain, is putting the survival of populations in the world's poorest countries at risk.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706886</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor|title=On Kindness |rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=As a title, ''On Kindness'' doesn't pack quite the same punch as Adam Phillip's earlier: 'On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored'. It put me in mind of an eighteenth century treatise, and, give or take a couple of centuries, that is exactly what the book provides: a thought-provoking exposition on a currently unfashionable virtue.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144337</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAgain|author=Quentin Letts |title=50 People Who Buggered Up Britain|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=In a rather less permissive age, 20 or 30 years ago, I suspect that the author might have been at the top of some people's list of culprits for using that naughty b-word. Good grief, man, you can't possibly have that in a book title, what!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845298551</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nicola Sly |title=Dorset Murders (True Crime History)Louisa Pateman
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryAutobiography|summary=Having examined a number of true crime cases from Bristol in her [[Bristol Murders by Nicola Sly|last book]], the author now does the same for largely rural yet not always idyllic Dorset''You can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. Twenty two murders, committed between 1818 and 1946, come under the microscope in these pagesYou are not complete until you find a man''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750951079</amazonuk>}}
}}