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[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]==Politics and society==__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Frances WoodsfordAriel Saramandi|title=Dear Mr Bigelow: A Transatlantic FriendshipPortrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Meet Mister Bigelow. He's elderlyIn this powerful collection of essays, living alone on Long IslandSaramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, New York, with some health problems but more than enough family tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and friends slavery to get him by, and expose how these legacies still a very active interest in yachting, regattas and moreshape modern life. Meet, too, Frances Woodsford. SheSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting''s reaching middle-age, living with her brother and mum in Bournemouth, and working a blunt yet apt metaphor for the local baths as organiser systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of eventsracism, patriarchy, office lackey environmental degradation and moregovernmental dysfunction. I suggest you do meet them, although neither ever met the other. Despite Each essay in this they kept up collection serves as a brisk and lively conversation about all aspects kind of lifediagnostic, from the late 1940s until his death at charting the beginning of various diseases afflicting the 60s. And as a result comes this book, of heavily edited highlights, which opens up a world of social history and entertaining diary-style commentisland state.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099542293</amazonuk>1804271616

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca SklootGregor Hens and Jen Calleja (translator)|title=The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksCity and the World

|summary=In John Hopkins Hospital''The City and the World'', BaltimoreGregor Hens reveals how cities are as much imagined spaces as they are physical ones. With a deep affection for the urban landscapes that have shaped his life, in October 1951Hens reflects on places like Cologne, Henrietta LacksBerlin, and Goch on the Lower Rhine with a mother blend of five childrenpersonal memory and thoughtful observation. His writing, died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. Howevertimes abstract, a sample of her cancer cells taken captures not just architectural features but the same year lived on, grew emotional and reproduced. Often referred mental geographies tied to as HeLa cellseach location, cells with their origins in the original sample are still being used in medical and scientific research todayfor example, nearly sixty years onhis perspectives as a child as opposed to as an adult. Many of the scientific breakthroughs that have been made using HeLa cells are hugely profitable. But her children have spent their lives in low waged jobs From Belgium and Germany to Berkeley and on welfareColumbus, unable to afford basic health insurance. Understandably they feel Hens traces a lot map of anger at this injusticeexperiences, turning cities into reflections of identity and belonging.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230748694</amazonuk>1804271691

  {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Garrett KeizerPaul B Preciado|title=The Unwanted Sound of Everything We WantDysphoria Mundi

|summary=What ''It is noise? Do we count birdsong at sunrise never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''  Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as noise? And if soan offering to the new generation, what different term would we use to describe a jet aircraft taking off? Why do we respond so differently new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the two? Even more intriguinglyepistemological and political crack we are living through, would and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our response change if present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the birdsong woke us from an exhausted sleep but backdrop of the aircraft was taking off Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to jet us emerge on a long awaited holiday?global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1586485520</amazonuk>1804271454

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Douglas RushkoffJacqueline Feldman|title=Life Inc: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it BackPrecarious Lease

|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience'' in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The author of this book was mugged outside his apartment one Christmas Evereader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. He posted In particular, the prologue packs a note online to warn punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his neighbours to be extra carefulart, and was promptly berated yet despises for doing something so public that could potentially damage property values in his local areaactions. This model of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a thoughtpersonal, rather than collective voice.|isbn=1399715070}}{{Frontpage|author=Virginie Despentes|title=King Kong Theory|rating=4|genre=Autobiography |summary=''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-provoking snippethitting 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 if pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the whole book was like thiscan feel somewhat disjointed, I'm sure I would have been grippeda reflection of their original form as independent essays.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099516691</amazonuk>191309734X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Beaumont1009473085|title=The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)

|summary=Peter Beaumont is the Foreign Affairs editor at Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The ObserverConservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. He joined If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the paper in 1989 and has spent much of inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the intervening time dealing with the kind of book for you. If that'foreign affairss what you' that is better described as re looking for, I don'war reportingt 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 Secret Life of WarConservative Effect'' is a distillation of his years in the fieldan entirely different beast. It is '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 illfollows the well-served by both its title and its cover, except maybe insofar as both might serve to sneak it onto established format: a series of experts from various fields review the bookshelves state of those who really need to read itthe nation when the coalition took over in 2010, but probably wouldn't choose to do so were it more accurately wrappedthe changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520982</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gary YoungeAlastair Humphreys|title=Who Are We - And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?Local

|genre=AutobiographyTravel |summary=Journalist Gary Younge’s Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book draws heavily on his articles for the Guardian newspaper, as he mentions walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it. As he says in his acknowledgementsintroduction, but it isn’t just a collection of his journalism. Who Are We? the book is partly an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a memoir and partly year exploring a thoughtful and incisive exploration of the politics and political impact of identitysmall map. Nature loss, including racepollution, genderland use and access, language groupsagriculture, religionthe food system, sexuality in various countries around rewilding…'' One of the joys of the book for me was that the world. He sets out to explore biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong'To what extent can our various identities be mobilized , that every upside is likely to accentuate our universal humanity as opposed to separating us off into various, antagonistic camps?'have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917036</amazonuk>1785633678

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernhard SchlinkEdel Rodriguez|title=Guilt About the PastWorm: A Cuban American Odyssey

|genre=Politics and SocietyGraphic Novels|summary=ConsiderWe're in childhood, if you will, guiltand we're in Cuba. You might have it tainting youThe revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as 'beyond a saviour of the perpetratorscountry, every person who stands in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. The link might not strictly be has proven himself a legal oneCommunist, but concern 'norms of religion and morals, etiquette and custom as well as day-not done nearly enough to-day communications and interactions'create a level playing field for all. Hence a collective guilt like no other Well, those hours- that witnessed in Germanylong speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator'The assumption that membership to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like to accepts family weren', we read. However difficult it might have been back then t in its daythe happiest of places here, Germany had an uncle refusing to physically renounce anything be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to do with Nazismsome minor pro-Communism skirmish, to actively 'opt-out' of connections to avoid such as Angola) and the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider webfather being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. And since then it's linked in all The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the childrenheat, but in a ''bequeathal'' this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of guilt.the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>1474616720

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael WolffSarah Wilson|title=The Man Who Owns the NewsThis One Wild and Precious Life: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdochpath back to connection in a fractured world

|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=There can be few people who are unaware of My favourite Mary Oliver line is the name of Rupert Murdoch. Over four decades heone in which she asks 's built News International into a seventy billion dollar corporation from its original Australian base. His position in the UK media is such that he's courted by politicians and has what many believe to be an excessive amount of power for someone who is not elected and What is not even a UK citizen. He's now expanding into Southeast Asia and in his eightieth year it's still difficult you plan to imagine when – or where – he will stop.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523523</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neil MacFarquhar|title=The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday|rating=4.5|genre=Politics do with your one wild and Society|summary=precious life?''What are the chances of change in the Middle East? I get to love that line so much because my answer is '' is the question central to This! Precisely this book. '' Since Neil MacFarquhar spent thirteen years wandering the length I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and breadth of precious life the Islamic stronghold of the Middle East, way I feel inclined want to believe his in-depth assessment. In descriptive and reasoned terms, he identifies conservative forces which predominate in the region, primarily the religious and political machinery which condemns liberalization and modernizationSarah Wilson is equally lucky. This discussion of attempts to promote change, for example by individual dissidents or the media, is strengthened in the second half of the In her book by detailed case studies of six nations with particular reference to their readiness and motivation for change. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586488112</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Aaronovitch|that takes Oliver's words as her title=Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped The World|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=What shape is a conspiracy theory? Unusual question, I know, but (though I can't see that she acknowledges the source) she pushes us to think on this evidence it is roundabout whether we really ''are'' living the life we want – the best life that we could be living. A conspiracy theory Her answer is lumpenan unequivocal ''no, ragged, full of holes, and has a huge circular gap where the obvious and sensible has dropped through, leaving the believer or theorist with the implausible skeleton of what they choose to think insteadwe are not''. They certainly have a habit of coming round in circles - if I mentioned a heinous crime caused by a western leader that killed hundreds or more peopleDon't care what you're doing, purely to get their way and get a war startedshe thinks you (we, I ) could be referring to Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, Maggie Thatcher and doing more…And she's effing furious about the General Belgrano, or Bush etc and 9/11fact that we are not.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009947896X</amazonuk>1785633848

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Douglas Rogers1785633457|title=The Last ResortCharging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson

|genre=BiographyTravel|summary=Author Douglas Rogers is Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a Zimbabwean who moved awayfrom preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the country many years ago, but has never been able to persuadehis parents – two white farmers, Lyn and Roz – to follow him out idea oftheir homeland, despite exploring the resettlement policies edges of Robert Mugabe,the hyper-inflation, and the corruption England in the countryan electric car was not totally outrageous. InsteadIn fact, thepair just wanted to stay on the farm welcoming people to Drifters,their backpackers' lodge.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021910</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Archie Brown|title=The Rise and Fall of Communism|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary='A source of hope it should be a pleasant holiday for a radiant future or…the greatest threat on the face of the earth'. Whichever of these descriptions you would apply to Communism you will find Archie Brown's detailed Clive and largely objective study enlightening and engrossing. On one levelhis wife, Joan, this is a chronological description of how a political force grew to dominate a third of the worldshouldn's population then virtually disappeared within a period of less than a century.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950674</amazonuk>t it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave Eggers1529153050|title=ZeitounBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson

|genre=Politics and SocietyHumour|summary=Flicking through Seeking some light relief from the channels on the TV the other night current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I stumbled across an interview with George Bushwas nudged towards ''Britain's former Deputy Chief Best Political Cartoons of Staff, Karl Rove. After witnessing an especially cringe making hip hop turn at the Washington Correspondents2022' Dinner (if you haven't seen it take a look at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5RD9BhcCo here]. It really is jaw droppingly awful) attention turned to weightier matters, most notably Guantanamo Bay and Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the war on terror and year: the Bush administrations response cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to Hurricane Katrina31 August 2022.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144841</amazonuk> Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin BellB0B7289HKQ|title=Conversations Across America: A Very British Revolution: The Expenses Scandal Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and How to Save Our Democracy300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America|author=Kari Loya

|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=I've long thought it strange Kari (that of all rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the ills that have befallen way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the country over the last few years period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it was not really the bankers' follies or the swine flu that never really got off the ground but the venality of our MPs which caught the public's attention. Compared The decision was made to ride the amounts required Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to bail out a bank the sums involved were minuteAstoria, but moats, floating duck houses and flipping houses caught the imagination and our elected representatives became just a little wary Oregon - all 4250 miles of admitting what they did for a living.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848311281</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dominique Lapierre|title=A Rainbow it - in the Night |rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=A book integrating otherwise piecemeal news stories picked up over the past forty years into a coherent explanation is always welcome2015. This book explores South Africa's history and development, from the earliest Dutch arrivals in 1652 They had 73 days to the first racially integrated elections in 1994.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818477</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marina Hyde|title=Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over The World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy|rating=3.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=I have what is perhaps a regulardo it -sized interest in A and B-list celebrities. I can name slightly less than the offrecommended time -spring of many an actress, tell you who the spokespeople for certain brands are, write a list of celebs with publicly declared devotions to certain religions, even win the odd pub quiz thanks to knowing the birth names of various performers. I know all sorts of things about this rather small subset of society, but I know the ''what'' more than the ''why'', and that's exactly the problem, according to there were factors which pointed this book. After all, if up as more of us sat down to wonder about what a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it actually ''is'' that the likes of Geri Halliwell and Nicole Kidman bring to the UN, we might seriously question how and why they ever got involved in the first place.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532050</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Salman Rushdie|title=Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticisms 1981 - 1991|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=We read some authors because we know we're going to enjoy themon. Others, we feel somehow obliged to read. If we consider ourselves ''readers'', Merv Loya was 75 years old and certainly if we have any pretensions (I use the word advisedly) to being ''wellhe was suffering from early-read'', then there are some books and more particularly some authors with whom we are required to become familiar.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542250</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Carole White and Sian Williams|title=Struggle or Starve|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Struggle or Starve is a collection of autobiographical writings about girls' and womenstage Alzheimer's lives in South Wales between the wars. This is a new edition of a book first published in 1998 by Honno, an independent publisher set up to encourage Welsh women writers. Most of the contributors in this book came from miners' families and grew up in real poverty and economic insecurity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784094</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Richard Wilkinson 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 Kate Pickett|title=The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone |rating=4then forget to return to the book.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=If you asked people why it is (or might There's got to be) a good idea very compelling hook to reduce inequality in a society, many people would assume that reducing inequality works by making keep me engaged. Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the life of technology which takes centre stage along with the poorest betterworld-building. It's human beings who fascinate me: that the poor technology and the world scape are the ones who benefit from reduction purely incidental. So, what did I think of a book of inequalitytwenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141032367</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David ShieldsJane Goodall and Douglas Abrams |title=Reality Hunger: A ManifestoThe Book of Hope

|genre=Politics and Society|summary='The Novel done thing is Dead' is not really what a novelist wants to read first on picking up a new book – but I persevered with Shields' manifesto and I'm glad I did. This is a thought-provoking wake-up call that any artist, writer or book-lover will enjoy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114499X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chinua Achebe|title=The Education of a British-Protected Child|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=This book is a collection of autobiographical essays by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, whose best known work is all the novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958way through before you sit down to review it. Topics covered include NigerianI’m making an exception here, Biafran and Igbo history and culture, African literature and the legacy because I don’t want to lose any of colonialism in his country and the rest experience of Africa. Some of the essays are taken from guest lectures at universities around the world and conference papers, and others are written for reading this amazing book, particularly many of the more personal pieces about Achebe's familyI want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846142598</amazonuk>024147857X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Norah Vincent1788360737|title=Voluntary MadnessArtivism: My Year Lost and Found The Battle for Museums in the Loony BinEra of Postmodernism|author=Alexander Adams|rating=3.52|genre=LifestylePolitics and Society|summary=''Voluntary Madness'' Can art ever be apolitical? All art is journalist Norah Vincent's account of her visits to three mental health facilities political because art is not made in Americaa vacuum. The first It is an urban, public hospital made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that houses mainly homeless, psychotic patients, many of whom are addicted ‘’Every man… contributes to drugsmodifying the social environment in which he develops’’. In this hospitalTherefore, the doctors are overworked and jaded and medication is always the answerall art must be political, even implicitly. Soon, the author finds that her latent depression (which led her to do the Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the first place) Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it is returningart for art’s sake. The process recent trend of being institutionalised breaks her sense of selfso-worth down astonishingly fastcalled artivism has caused artists to become more overtly political (read: left wing). Indeed, she suggests that it is the lack of autonomy in institutional life, even for those patients who voluntarily commit themselves, that makes it so hard for them Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to rebuild independent lives when they finally leave the institutioncreate a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099513439</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gabriel Weston1398508632|title=Direct RedThe Wilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde

|summary=Men aren't Martian 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 women don't hail from Venusa pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains. We're all Earthlings apparently; She had electricity which seems like progress of allowed her to run a sortfridge, freezer and dehydrator. Even so we still have trouble understanding each other because we speak different languages – Himglish She had a car - and Femalesefuel. Luckily Jean Hannah Edelstein is fluent in both and has written Most importantly, she had shelter: this light hearted volume was not a plan to define the problem and translate''live'' wild just to live off its produce.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848091729</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chloe Hooper1529149800|title=The Tall ManThings You Can Do: Life How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia and Death on Palm IslandSara Boccaccini Meadows

|genre=Politics Home and SocietyFamily|summary=Cameron Doomadgee – Mulrunji – was just thirty six years old We begin with a telling story. All the birds and animals fled when he was arrested on Palm Islandthe 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. Quite why he The animals laughed: what good was arrested was never clearthat doing. He wasn't drunk, although he had been drinking beer – and was walking along the road singing 'I'Who Let m doing the Dogs Out?best I can'' , said the hummingbird. Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley felt And that there was reason to arrest Mulrunji for creating as public nuisance and he was taken to , really, is the police station. What happened next was to be only way that we will solve the subject problem of intense media speculation and legal proceedings over the coming yearsclimate change – by each of us doing what we can, but within forty five minutes Mulrunji was deadhowever small that might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520761</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dana Fowley1638485216|title=How Could She?Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement|author=Frederick Reynolds|rating=45

|summary=From the age of five Dana Fowley was subjected to unimaginable sexual abuse and before long her sister would be subjected to more of the same. She was raped by her mother's partner and taken to the homes of her grandparents where she was abused by them and others'Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. At other times she was forced to go to the homes of other men where she was raped and abused. Did her mother not know what was going on? Did she turn a blind eye? It was neither of those. Her mother was a willing participant in the abuse and organised much of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952225X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Amy V Fetzer and Shari Aaron|title=Climb the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More Sustainable|rating=4|genre=Business and Finance|summary=With the abject failure of the Denmark Climate Change Conference fresh in our minds, it is perhaps time has everything to turn away from the politicians and look back toward what we can dowith character. Period.''

The Conference may have finally got the likes of the USA, India and China to acknowledge that they have to join in if we are going to save the planet as a benevolent place for our species to live, but there is still too much posturing and not enough commitment''One more body just wouldn't matter''.

Clearly our governments and 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'leaderss death was an exception. The image of Chauvin kneeling on George' are s neck is not going to do this for us; we one which I'll ever forget and the protests which followed cannot have to do it for ourselvesbeen 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>047074801X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicholas SternMatthieu Aikins|title=A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How We Can Save The Naked Don't Fear the World and Create ProsperityWater

|summary=It's easy to forget at times that The hardback edition of Naked Don't Fear the Water isn'A Blueprint for t actually fiction, because it reads very much like a Safer Planet' was published early in 2009 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 an update to the 2006 Stern Review 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 economics of climate changewhole way through. Now here is But it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the paperback edition, published too early reader to critique Copenhagen, but nonetheless an interesting read. Stern is an expert witness who presents his evidence understandably for perfectly envisage the layman; he is unemotional environments and very convincingpeople described.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099524058</amazonuk>B09N9157T6

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alex Hesz and Bambos Neophytou 1785633074|title=Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green BandwagonStaggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry

|genre=Politics and SocietyHumour|summary=Did you know Members of Parliament like us to believe that Horlicksthe country is run by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that great sleep aid, 's for those of you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is sold in India as a startthat the ''prime'' movers are the special advisers -theSPADS -day energy boost? Not another concoction under who are the driving force behind the government. We are in the privileged position of having access to the same brandmemoirs 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 Exact Same Productman to watch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>047074622X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frank Furedi1846276772|title=WastedThe End of Bias: Why Education Isn't EducatingHow We Change Our Minds|author=Jessica Nordell|rating=34.5

|summary=It seems the more problems the school-aged generation pose to societyAnyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the more responsibility schools have extent to take, teaching not which they suffer from it: it's simply English and Mathsa part of everyday life. White men will always come first. The able will come before the disabled. Jobs, but Personal Thinking and Learning Skillspromotions, Happiness Classes, and Emotional Educationhigher salaries are the preserve of the white man. The duty to raise Even when those who wouldn't pass the medical become a child well is taken out part of the apparently an organisation it'incompetents rare that their views are heard, that their concerns are acknowledged. It' hands s personally appalling and degrading for the individuals on the receiving end of parents, and given over to the education system, where values can be regulated and controlledbias but it's not just the individuals who are negatively impacted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847064167</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bill Butterworth1529148251|title=Reversing Global Warming For Profit Misfits: A Personal Manifesto|author=Michaela Coel|rating=3.5

|summary=There aren't many climate change deniers left, are there? We all know it's there. We all know, too, that the world's population growth is How am I able to be so transparent on a collision course with the dwindling of its resources. The world's going to get hotterpaper about rape, its weather more extreme. Fossil fuels are going to run out. More malpractice and more people will compete for fewer and fewer of civilisationpoverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's luxuries. We're all worried. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312810</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen Baker|title=They've Got Your Number|rating=4.5|genre=Popular Science|summary=If you are in as though I were telling the slightest bit paranoid, worry that ''Big Brother'' is always watching or like to believe that you are not a number, but a free man (or woman), then this may not be the book for you, as truth whilst simultaneously running away from it will do nothing to dispel any of those worries. If, on the other hand, you think 'the mathematical modelling of humanity' sounds like one of the sexiest things ever, and are chomping at the bit to learn more about it, then you might well be interested in what Business Week journalist Baker has to say.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507021</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur |title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to Unremitting Global Misery|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=be in a certain frame of mind. You''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over re not going to read a book of essays or a wet kitchen floorself-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for s 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the credit crunch and all it has done for television industry at the worldEdinburgh TV Festival. You wonmight be ''reading''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, the entire banking system, all those who failed book but you need to see it coming, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all ''listen'' to revert to high-interest, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, words as though you're in the lecture theatre. The disjointedness will fade away and back up the rich listsyou'll be carried on a cloud of exquisite writing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Winnett and Gordon Rayner0008350388|title=No Expenses SparedWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=4.5

|summary=It's always struck me 'To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as strange that in a period of twelve months which saw Banks collapseless desirable, less hireable, stock markets tumble less intelligent and house prices slide the public have reserved most of their ire for a relatively small group of people who were not exceptionally wellultimately less valuable than my light-paid in the first place, but many of whom took the opportunity to make the most of the generous expenses which they could claimskinned counterparts... '' There are only six hundred and forty six Members of Parliament – twelve months ago they were generally respected but many are now pariahs.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593065778</amazonuk>}}''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba

{{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 it might first seem''0. After all, TV programmes, and whole series, have entertained millions with what goes on 7% of English Literature GCSE students in front England study a book by a writer of, and behind the scenes at such places. So this colour while only 7% study a book, which is the fruit of such by a residency, could be expected to produce few surpriseswoman.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683599</amazonuk>}}'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021

{{newreview|author=Anita Thompson (Editor)|title=Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S Thompson|rating=4Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine.5|genre=Autobiography|summary= It is almost 40 years since Dr Hunter S Thompson's seminal work ''Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas'' was her mother who came first graced the shelves, with her father joining them later. His gonzo style The family was hard-working, putting himself at principled and determined that their children would have the centre 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 storyfamily acquired a car. For Otegha, should tell readers as much about the person doing the writing as the event he is describing. If that's the case then what is education meant a scholarship to be learned from a selection of interviews with the main man himself private school in London and then? The answer is plentya place at New College, Oxford.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510711</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian JackRichard Brook|title=The Country Formerly Known As Great BritainUnderstanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to Life

|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=I think 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've d have skimmed it, found some of it interesting, but it would not have 'hit home' in the way that it does now managed to master the maxim about not judging books by their covers. I still struggle with the one about believe it came to me not judging them by their titles and just because I very nearly cam unstuck and missed was likely to give it a favourable review [ ''full disclosure The Country Formerly Known as Great BritainBookbag's u. Being just about of an age with the author I worried s.p. is that it might be people chose their own books rather than getting them randomly, so there is a treatise about predisposition towards expecting to like the fact book, even if it doesn't always turn out that way'things weren't like this when I was ] – but also because it is a lad'. book I was even more worried that I might agree with himneeded to read, right now.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087355</amazonuk>1800461682

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=The Economist1787332098|title=Pocket How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World in Figures 2010|author=Henry Mance

|summary=It's just 'When we do think about a year since I reviewed [[Pocket World In Figures 2009 by The Economist|Pocket World in Figures 2009]] animals, we break them down into species and groups: cows, dogs, foxes, elephants and at the time – September 2008 – so on. And we were watching assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, foxes in horror as the world financial crisis unfolded before our eyes. 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 rubbish bins, elephants in this handy little book. There was the worrying state of the Iceland economy zoos, and different levels of mortgage lending in various parts millions of wild animals stay out there, ''somewhere,'' hopefully on the worldnext David Attenborough series. 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>}}'

{{newreview|author=Scott Kilman I was going to argue. I mean, cows are for cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and Roger Thurow|title=Enough: Why I much prefer my elephants in the wild but then I realised that I was quibbling for the World's Poorest Starve in an Age sake of Plenty|rating=4it.5|genre=Politics Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and Society|summary=If you have ever wondered why famine is still widespread, so many years after Oxfam started nudging middle-class Britain into consciousness, then read ''Enough''I consider myself an animal lover. As a young woman, If I donated had to Oxfam at choose between the end company of humans and the 1960s in company of animals, I would probably choose the belief animals. I insisted that concerted international action through governments plus charities would eliminate hunger within a decade or soI read this book: no one was trying to stop me but I was initially reluctant. Four decades laterI eat cheese, it's impossible eggs, chicken and fish and I needed to comprehend why children are still dying at much either do so without guilt or change my choices. I suspected that making the same rate: one every five secondsdecision would not be comfortable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586485113</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Arundhati Roy 1523092734|title=Listening A Women's Guide to GrasshoppersClaiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort

|summary=Stories can provoke many different reactions ''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in the reader: pleasure, painher life. Again and again and again.'' (Alma Derricks, delightformer CMO, horror. The whole range of emotion Cirque du Soleil RSD) ''To claim space is available to live the fiction writer to ply life of choosing unapologetically and probebravely. Reactions It is to non-fiction works can be equally wide-ranging and can sometimes take live the reader by surpriselife you've always wanted.''

Like most people I came Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a time when violence against women is much in the news, ''A Women's Guide to Roy via the BookerClaiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now -prizeto be clear -winning novelthis 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'The God of Small Things'. I've always thought that women need to rise above this, which it transpiresto be people who don't need protection, is her only novel to datepeople who claim their own space. In the intervening twelve years Roy has concentrated her undoubted literary abilities in the political arenaIf all women did this, engaging with the less attractive side of her native Indiathose 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>0241144620</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rupert Wright Polly Barton|title=Take Me to the Source: In Search of WaterFifty Sounds|rating=34.5

|summary=Whatever you expect from a book about waterWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Take Me to the SourceWhy Japan?'' probably wonJapan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't provide itgone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. Neither a whimsical aquatic travelogueAnd like Barton, nor a polemic about I don't know the answer to the economics question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of waterthe question in the first essay, it still manages to produce unexpected insights into which is on the element sound ''giro' '' – which is so vitalshe describes as being, among other things, yet so often taken for grantedthe sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099512289</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maria Tatar Stephen Fabes|title=Enchanted Hunters: The Power Signs of Stories in ChildhoodLife|rating=35|genre=Home and FamilyTravel|summary=Like most avid readersI was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, I dondidn't remember inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the time before there were books. We were brought up with booksguts to simply go out and do it. There are family tales I also didn't inherit the kind of my father as a child eating his breakfast with one handsteady nerve, while trying ability to talk to tie his shoelaces strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the other and still contriving to read at the same timerequisite 'bottle'. They were In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a poor family, bike outside a London hospital and books weren't just expensive, they were valuablenot come home for six years. They were dear, in every sense of the word. Likewise my mother remembers her early school-years when every day ended with a chapter from one of the classicsFabes did precisely that. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0393066010</amazonuk>1788161211

{{newreview|author=Lucy Wadham |title=The Secret Life of France|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=I'm rather at a loss Move 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>}}[[Newest Popular Science Reviews]]