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[[Category:New Reviews|Politics and Society]]==Politics and society==__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gabriel WestonEdward W Said|title=Direct RedRepresentations of the Intellectual |rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Few people have the ability to convey the minutiae Edward Said's ''Representations of their profession in ways which engage the reader, answer your unspoken questions and talk in such a way that youIntellectual''re neither patronised nor overburdened with jargon. Gabriel Weston is one such – less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and ''Direct Red'' held me as though I was hypnotised more a passionate argument for several hourswhat they should be. She's a surgeon and we're pulled into Said clearly rejects the intricacies comfortable image of her world without the need intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to don mask other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and gownunpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099520699</amazonuk>1804272248
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean Hannah Edelstein Ariel Saramandi|title=Himglish and Femalese: Why Women Don't Get Why Men Don't Get Them|rating=4|genre=Lifestyle|summary=Men aren't Martian and women don't hail from Venus. We're all Earthlings apparently; which seems like progress Portrait of a sort. Even so we still have trouble understanding each other because we speak different languages – Himglish and Femalese. Luckily Jean Hannah Edelstein is fluent in both and has written this light hearted volume to define the problem and translate.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848091729</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chloe Hooper|title=The Tall Man: Life and Death an Island on Palm IslandFire|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Cameron Doomadgee – Mulrunji – was just thirty six years old when he was arrested on Palm Island. Quite why he was arrested was never clear. He wasn't drunkIn this powerful collection of essays, although he had been drinking beer – and was walking along the road singing ''Who Let the Dogs Out?'' Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley felt that there was reason to arrest Mulrunji for creating as public nuisance and he was taken Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the police station. What happened next was to be the subject sociopolitical fabric of intense media speculation and legal proceedings over the coming yearsMauritius, but within forty five minutes Mulrunji was dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520761</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dana Fowley|title=How Could She?|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=From tunneling deep into the age of five Dana Fowley was subjected to unimaginable sexual abuse wounds left by colonialism and before long her sister would be subjected slavery to more of expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the same. She was raped by her mothercountry at one stage as ''rotting''s partner and taken to , a blunt yet apt metaphor for the homes of her grandparents where she was abused systemic decay brought about by them and others. At other times she was forced to go to the homes malignant forces of other men where she was raped racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and abusedgovernmental dysfunction. Did her mother not know what was going on? Did she turn Each essay in this collection serves as a blind eye? It was neither kind of those. Her mother was a willing participant in diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the abuse and organised much of itisland state.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009952225X</amazonuk>1804271616
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amy V Fetzer Gregor Hens and Shari AaronJen Calleja (translator)|title=Climb The City and the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More SustainableWorld
|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 to turn away from the politicians and look back toward what we can do.
 
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.
 
Clearly our governments and 'leaders' are not going to do this for us; we have to do it for ourselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>047074801X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Nicholas Stern
|title=A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How We Can Save the World and Create Prosperity
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=In ''The hardback edition of City and the World'A Blueprint for a Safer Planet' was published early in 2009 , Gregor Hens reveals how cities are as much imagined spaces as an update to they are physical ones. With a deep affection for the 2006 Stern Review urban landscapes that have shaped his life, Hens reflects on places like Cologne, Berlin, and Goch on the economics Lower Rhine with a blend of climate changepersonal memory and thoughtful observation. Now here is His writing, at times abstract, captures not just architectural features but the paperback editionemotional and mental geographies tied to each location, for example, published too early his perspectives as a child as opposed to critique Copenhagen, but nonetheless as an interesting readadult. Stern is an expert witness who presents his evidence understandably for the layman; he is unemotional From Belgium and Germany to Berkeley and Columbus, Hens traces a map of experiences, turning cities into reflections of identity and very convincingbelonging.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099524058</amazonuk>1804271691
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alex Hesz and Bambos Neophytou Paul B Preciado|title=Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green BandwagonDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Did you know that Horlicks, that great sleep aid, ''It is sold in India as a start-never too late to embrace the-day energy boost? Not another concoction under the same brand, but the Exact Same Product.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>047074622X</amazonuk>}}revolutionary optimism of childhood''
{{newreview|author=Frank Furedi|title=Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating|rating=3.5|genre=Politics Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and Society|summary=It seems the more problems brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the school-aged new generation pose to society, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the more responsibility schools have proportional, valid response to take, teaching not simply English ''the epistemological and Mathspolitical crack we are living through, but Personal Thinking and Learning Skills, Happiness Classes, the tension between emancipatory forces and Emotional Educationconservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The duty to raise a child well whole text is taken out framed against the backdrop of the apparently Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as 'incompetent' hands pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of parentsweakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, and given over Preciado urges his readers to the education system, where values can be regulated and controlled''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847064167</amazonuk>1804271454
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bill ButterworthJacqueline Feldman|title=Reversing Global Warming For Profit Precarious Lease
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyBiography|summary=There arenThe title of this novel refers to a French legal term (''t many climate change deniers left, are there? We all know itbail précaire's there. We all know, too, that the world's population growth is on a collision course ) associated with the dwindling of its resources. The world's going to get hottersquatters in France, affording them temporary suspension from eviction charges and processes, its weather more extremebut few scant property rights. Fossil fuels are going to run out. More Among mentions of other squats dotted around Paris like Le Carrosse and more people will compete La Miroiterie, Feldman takes particular interest in one squat of massive proportions which adopted an almost mythical status for fewer its inhabitants, admirers and fewer of civilisation's luxuries. We're all worried. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312810</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen Baker|title=They've Got Your Number|rating=4detractors alike: Le Bloc.5|genre=Popular Science|summary=If you are in the slightest bit paranoid, worry that ''Big Brother'' is always watching or Something like to believe that you are not a number, but a free man haven for artists and marginal members of society (or woman)as one character, then this may not be the book for youLe Général, as it will do nothing to dispel any of those worries. Ifrepeats throughout, ''I live on the other hand, you think 'margins of the mathematical modelling margins of humanitythe margins'' sounds like one ), Le Bloc was subject to the continual threat of the sexiest things ever, eviction and are chomping at the bit to learn more about itpressures from above which oppressed its inhabitants' lives. We follow Le Bloc from its opening in 2012 until its eventual dissolution, then you might well be interested framed as a tragedy in what Business Week journalist Baker has to saythis book.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099507021</amazonuk>1804271403
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur Claire Dederer|title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the FanMonsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?: 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 won'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 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 Spared
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=ItDederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience''s always struck me as strange that in a period deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of twelve months which saw Banks collapseseparating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, stock markets tumble the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and house prices slide exalts the public have reserved most director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of their ire ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for a relatively small group of people who were not exceptionally well-paid in the first placefew chapters, but many of whom took the opportunity to make interrogating the most likes of the generous expenses which they could claimWoody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. There are only six hundred Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and forty six Members of Parliament – twelve months ago they were generally respected but many are now pariahsa personal, rather than collective voice.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0593065778</amazonuk>1399715070
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alain de Botton Virginie Despentes|title=A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow DiaryKing Kong Theory
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and SocietyAutobiography |summary=A writer''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in-residence a phallocentric society broken at an airport is not as daft an idea as it might first seemits core. After all, TV programmes, and whole series, have entertained millions with what goes on Originally written in front ofFrench, and behind the scenes at such places. So this book, is a collection of essays in which is Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the fruit complex prism of such a residency, could be expected her varied life: from rape to produce few surprises.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683599</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anita Thompson (Editor)|title=Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S Thompson|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=It is almost 40 years since Dr Hunter S Thompson's seminal sex work ''Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas'' first graced the shelvesand pornography. His gonzo styleThough these discussions are intertwined, putting himself at their placement within the centre of the storybook can feel somewhat disjointed, 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 to be learned from a selection reflection of interviews with the main man himself then? The answer is plenty.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510711</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ian Jack|title=The Country Formerly Known As Great Britain|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=I think I've now managed to master the maxim about not judging books by their covers. I still struggle with the one about not judging them by their titles and I very nearly cam unstuck and missed 'The Country Formerly Known original form as Great Britain'. Being just about of an age with the author I worried that it might be a treatise about the fact that 'things weren't like this when I was a lad'. I was even more worried that I might agree with himindependent essays.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087355</amazonuk>191309734X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=The Economist1009473085|title=Pocket World in Figures The Conservative Effect 2010- 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=ItSometimes it's just about simpler to explain a year since I reviewed [[Pocket World In Figures 2009 book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Economist|Pocket World in Figures 2009]] and at the time – September 2008 – we were watching in horror as the world financial crisis unfolded before our eyesConservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. Looking back now If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the surprise is that for most people inside story about what ''really'' happened came out of on certain occasions, then this isn't the blue. The clues were plain to see and all here in this handy little bookfor you. 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 figuresIf that's what you're looking for, without any accompanying narrative and itI don't think Anthony Seldon's consequently free of political spin. Bliss.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681367</amazonuk>}} book, {{newreviewamazonurl|authorisbn=Scott Kilman and Roger ThurowB0BH7SKG2S|title=Enough: Why the WorldJohnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty|rating=4a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics.5|genre=Politics 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 ''EnoughThe Conservative Effect''is an entirely different beast. As It's the seventh book in a young woman, I donated to Oxfam series which looks at the end impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the 1960s nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the belief changes that concerted international action through governments plus charities would eliminate hunger within a decade or so. Four decades later, it's impossible to comprehend why children are still dying at much occurred and the same rate: one every five secondssituation in 2024.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586485113</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Arundhati Roy Alastair Humphreys|title=Listening to GrasshoppersLocal
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel |summary=Stories can provoke many different reactions in Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the reader: pleasure, pain, delight, horrorworld. The whole range of emotion is available to the fiction writer to ply and probeAnd then written about it. Reactions For this book he walked and cycled very close to non-fiction works can be equally wide-ranging home 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 then wrote about it transpires, is her only novel to date. In the intervening twelve years Roy has concentrated her undoubted literary abilities As he says in the political arenahis introduction, engaging with the less attractive side of her native India.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144620</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rupert Wright |title=Take Me to the Source: In Search of Water|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Whatever you expect from a book about water, is an attempt ''Take Me to the Source'' probably won't provide it. Neither share what I have learnt about some big issues from a whimsical aquatic travelogue, nor year exploring a polemic about the economics of watersmall map. Nature loss, it still manages to produce unexpected insights into the element which is so vitalpollution, yet so often taken for granted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512289</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maria Tatar |title=Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood|rating=3|genre=Home land use and Family|summary=Like most avid readersaccess, agriculture, the food system, I donrewilding…''t remember One of the time before there were books. We were brought up with books. There are family tales joys of my father as a child eating his breakfast with one hand, while trying to tie his shoelaces with the other and still contriving to read at book for me was that the same time. They were a poor familybiggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, and books werenno single 'right or wrong't just expensive, they were valuable. They were dear, in that every sense of the word. Likewise my mother remembers her early school-years when every day ended with upside is likely to have a chapter from one of the classicsdownside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0393066010</amazonuk>1785633678
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lucy Wadham Edel Rodriguez|title=The Secret Life of FranceWorm: A Cuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=TravelGraphic Novels|summary=IWe'm rather at 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 loss Communist, and not done nearly enough to describe this book create a level playing field for youall. Well, and I'm still uncertain how to categorise itthose hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. ItOur narrator's part personal memoir 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 part analyticalthe father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. Whether you regard The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is downsultry island country, I suppose, to personal taste and intellectual curiosity.it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571236111</amazonuk>1474616720
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Hitchens Sarah Wilson|title=The Broken CompassThis One Wild and Precious Life: How British Politics lost its waythe path back to connection in a fractured world
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=IMy favourite Mary Oliver line is the one in which she asks ''ve long held that there What is no difference between the major political parties such that could command it you plan to vote for do with your one or the otherwild and precious life?'' I get to love that line so much because my answer is ''This! Precisely this. '' The new Labour party now seems to stand somewhere I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the right of what way I want to. Sarah Wilson is equally lucky. In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though of as I can't see that she acknowledges the old Conservative party and the Lib Dems appear source) she pushes us to be a coalition of those who donthink about whether we really ''are''t fit comfortably into either of living the life we want – the other main partiesbest life that we could be living. My voting patterns have changed radically from supporting a party because of its views to voting against another because of its actionsHer answer is an unequivocal ''no, we are not''. I was hoping that Don't care what you'The Broken Compassre doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she'' might clarify my thoughtss effing furious about the fact that we are not.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847064051</amazonuk>1785633848
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein 1785633457|title=NudgeCharging Around: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and HappinessExploring the Edges of England by Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=Politics and SocietyTravel|summary=Choices are inevitable: from Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the lunch sandwich to idea of exploring the credit card and internet provideredges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, to the house and car it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and pension planhis wife, modern humansJoan, 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>shouldn't it?
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Davies1529153050|title=Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global MediaBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and SocietyHumour|summary=Do you remember a Y2K bug? When Seeking some light relief from the worldcurrent political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards ''Britain's computer systems were to melt down in an Armageddon Best Political Cartoons of vital services failure and possible nuclear accidents? The Y2K panic is a great example of flat-Earth news2022''. Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year: something that gets passed on in the media chain cartoons run from those unsure 4 September 2021 to those who might have a vested interest in maintaining it as fact 31 August 2022. Who can imagine what there will be to those who are completely ignorant, and come in the process gets bigger and bigger and – almost accidentally – assumes a status of orthodox, accepted truth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512688</amazonuk>2023 edition?
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer WorthB0B7289HKQ|title=Farewell To The East EndConversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America|author=Kari Loya
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyTravel|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a motherKari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the East End'' is period between two jobs seemed like a riveting readgood time to do it. The author Jennifer Worth decision was a midwife and nursemade to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the East End recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of London a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on. Merv Loya was 75 years old and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950she was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1739593901
|title=22 Ideas About The Future
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.''
{{newreview|author=Rania Al-Baz|title=Disfigured: A Saudi WomanI's Story ve got a couple of Triumph over Violence|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Throughout her life Rania Al-Baz has been an unusual womanconfessions to make. She was married off by her father when she was still at school I'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a man she hardly knew few stories and was the only married pupil, forced then forget to conform return to the Saudi Arabian traditions of putting her husband first in all things but still expected book. There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep up with her school workme engaged. Pregnancy forced her to give up on her schooling but Then there's science fiction: far too often it's the technology which takes centre stage along with the marriage failed and Rania returned to her fatherworld-building. It might have been expected that she would fade quietly into 's human beings who fascinate me: the home, but in a most unusual step she became technology and the smiling face on a Saudi television programmeworld scape are purely incidental. No woman had ever been So, what did I think of a news anchor before and book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved it was only to be expected that there would be plenty of men wanting to marry her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844370755</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brian DunningJane Goodall and Douglas Abrams |title=Skeptoid 2: More Critical Analysis The Book of Pop Phenomena Hope |rating=3.5|genre=Popular SciencePolitics and Society |summary=Brian Dunning The done thing is the author responsible for a series of weekly podcasts debunking and analysing to read a variety of dubious, pseudo-scientific, un-scientific and downright loony ideas, claims and myths common or persistent in book all the pop (and not so pop) cultureway through before you sit down to review it. ''Skeptoid 2'' is essentially a written version of those podcastsI’m making an exception here, a collection because I don’t want to lose any of fifty pieces the experience of which many can be also read or listened reading this amazing book, I want to at his [http://skeptoidcapture it as it hits me.com/ website]And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1440422850</amazonuk>024147857X
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dan Gardner1788360737|title=RiskArtivism: The Science and Politics Battle for Museums in the Era of FearPostmodernism|author=Alexander Adams|rating=4.52|genre=Popular SciencePolitics and Society|summary=Picture Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a world terrorised vacuum. It is made by just two wordspeople. A civilised, healthy, wealthy world no less, in thrall Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to and under threat from two words. Not what those two words represent even, just modifying the actual small phrasesocial environment in which he develops’’. It sounds ridiculousTherefore, but when I say those two words – ''bird flu'' – and you've stopped laughingall art must be political, you may well remember how even implicitly. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the panic started, the nonEra of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-existent worry was the biggest concern of the western wing” donors and media for some time, elites hoping to create a more globalist and then it went away againprogressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753515539</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine Ashenburg1398508632|title=Clean: An Unsanitised History of WashingThe Wilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryLifestyle|summary=Although maybe 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 first book you'd be drawn best time to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a history variety of personal hygiene perhaps doesn't seem that appealing – but if you terrains. She had overlooked this excellent bookelectricity which allowed her to run a fridge, you would have missed out on an enjoyable freezer and dehydrator. She had a car - and informative bookfuel. Most importantly, full of fascinating facts and she had shelter: this was not a jolly good readplan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529149800Attitudes towards |title=Things You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and rituals of cleanliness have certainly changed over Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia and Sara Boccaccini Meadows|rating=4|genre=Home and Family|summary=We begin with a telling story. All the birds and animals fled when the last two thousand years forest fire took hold and this book chronicles many most of themstood and watched, largely in Europe and the USunable to think of anything they could do. Cultural differences with regard The tiny hummingbird flew to cleanliness the river and body odour (began taking tiny amounts of water and yesflying back to drop them into the fire. The animals laughed: what good was that doing. ''I'm doing the best I can'', Napoleon and Josephine do get a mention heresaid the hummingbird. And that, although it transpires that they both took daily baths) are discussed at lengthreally, from is the Greeks and Romans to only way that we will solve the present dayproblem of climate change – by each of us doing what we can, however small that might be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681014</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Hatzfeld1638485216|title=The Strategy Of AntelopesBlack, White, and Gray All Over: Rwanda After the GenocideA Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement|author=Frederick Reynolds
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyAutobiography|summary=''Life offers me smilesCorruption is not department, and I owe it my gratitude for not having abandoned me in the marshesgender or race specific. It has everything to do with character. Period.''
''IOne more body just wouldn've known the defilement of a bestial existence.t matter''.
The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, in the US city of Minneapolis sent shock waves around the world. We rarely see pictures of a murder taking place but Floyd''Whos death was an exception. The image of Chauvin kneeling on George's going to say that word, forgiveness? Itneck is not one which I's outside of human naturell ever forget and the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected. There was a backlash against the police - and not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''all'' tarred by the Chauvin brush.}}So say some of {{Frontpage|author=Matthieu Aikins|title=The Naked Don't Fear the survivors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by their fellow Hutu citizensWater|rating=4. Jean Hatzfeld talked 5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=It's easy to both Tutsis and Hutus thenforget at times that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, publishing two awardbecause it reads very much like a well-winning bookspaced thriller at times. In The Strategy of AntelopesThis is not by any means a criticism, he returns but rather a testament to Rwanda how well Matthieu Aikins – a Canadian citizen who decided to talk accompany his friend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast and at times painful journey. There are tense moments and gripping accounts of border crossings which had me on edge the whole way through. But it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to perfectly envisage the same environments and people and explore life after genocidedescribed. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846686865</amazonuk>B09N9157T6
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emmanuel Jal1785633074|title=War Child: A Boy Soldier's StoryStaggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyHumour|summary=Emmanuel JalMembers of Parliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, internationally successful rap artist, spent his childhood as a solider in his native Sudan. He has written his story in order to help headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's for those children of you who are still fighting, Eton and those Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime'' movers are the special advisers - the SPADS - who have managed to get awayare the driving force behind the government. There We are a number in the privileged position of books about having access to the Sudan by western aid workers and journalistsmemoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who do, I am sure, write fluently and passionately about was behind the horror skilful control of Darfur. This is the first book that I have read Covid crisis which tells was completely contained by the story end of war from 2020. You might not know the point of view of a small boy carrying an AK-47, a gun taller than name now but he is himselfwill certainly be the man to watch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700050</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ash Amin and Michael O'Neill1846276772|title=Thinking About Almost EverythingThe End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds|author=Jessica Nordell|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary=A wonderful digest Anyone who is not an able, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise the extent to which they suffer from it: it's simply a part of ideas spawned by ongoing work at Durham Universityeveryday life. White men will always come first. The cross discplinary broad brush strokes give insight into able will come before the pastdisabled. Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the preserve of the presentwhite man. Even when those who wouldn't pass the medical become a part of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, that their concerns are acknowledged. It's personally appalling and degrading for the future, and inspire personal and critical thinkingindividuals on the receiving end of the bias but it's not just the individuals who are negatively impacted. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668188X</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529148251
|title=Misfits: 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 as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.''
{{newreview|author=Chris Mullin|title=A View from the Foothills|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Chris MullinBefore you start reading ''Misfits''s diaries cover the period from July 1999 you need to May 2005 during which time he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary be in a certain frame of State for the Department mind. You're not going to read a book of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, for the Department for International Development and after essays or a period on self-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the back benches also television industry at the Foreign OfficeEdinburgh TV Festival. As he says, there will You might be no shortage of memoirs from those who have occupied ''reading'' the Olympian Heights. In A View from the Foothills he offers a refreshingly different perspective – that of a man at the lowest levels of government whobook but you need to ''listen''s party to whatthe words as though you's happening further up re in the hillside lecture theatre. The disjointedness will fade away and down you'll be carried on the plainsa cloud of exquisite writing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682231</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain Sinclair0008350388|title=Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report We Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''Documentary fictionTo be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' is what Iain Sinclair oxymoronically calls this book. It ''s a lot of other things too: autobiography, history, psychogeography We Need to name but three. His Talk About Money''Hackney bookby Otegha Uwagba '' as he self-referentially calls it throughout, is 0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a dense collage writer of reportage and colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''inaccurate and inventiveThe Bookseller'' transcriptions of interviews29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came first, peopled by filmwith her father joining them later. The family was hard-makers, novelistsworking, politicians principled and paintersdetermined that their children would have the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the family acquired a car. For Otegha, not education meant a scholarship to mention booksellersa private school in London and then a place at New College, barbers and bus driversOxford.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142164</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John KayRichard Brook|title=The Long and the Short of itUnderstanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Aren't in the IndustryLife
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyLifestyle|summary=Sometimes I wonder if authors set out to stop people reading their am a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, strange as this might seemand sometimes books choose us. John Kay In my case, this is an excellent example. He tells us that he expects his readers to be erudite and to be readers one of popular sciencethe latter. TheyNot so very long ago, if I had come across this book I'll never knowingly d have dealt with Goldman Sachs and will pay tax at skimmed it, found some of it interesting, but it would not have 'hit home' in the 40% rateway that it does now. At the other end of the scale they'll I believe it came to me not be bad credit risks and just because I was likely to cut out anyone hoping for give it a quick buckfavourable review [ ''full disclosure The Bookbag's u.s.p. is that people chose their own books rather than getting them randomly, they'll not be tempted so there is a predisposition towards expecting to make a living from Stock Market speculation. If you donlike the book, even if it doesn't qualify on all points therealways turn out that way''s not even ] – but also because it is a hint of a pass mark which might allow you book I needed to sneak into the checkout queueread, right now.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954809327</amazonuk>1800461682
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sudhir Venkatesh1787332098|title=Gang Leader For A DayHow to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World|author=Henry Mance
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=If you've ever wondered why young people join gangs'When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and what it's like to bring up a family surrounded by armed drug dealersgroups: cows, dogs, foxes, you'll find ''Gang Leader For The Day'' fascinatingelephants and so on. Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh wanted to learn by observing the poorAnd we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, baulking at the abstractfoxes in rubbish bins, mathematical research methods used by his professors elephants in the University of Chicago. In 1989zoos, armed with a clipboard and a questionnairemillions of wild animals stay out there, he visited the Robert Taylor Homes, a notorious housing project. Instead of neatly answering his carefully-prepared questions - ''How does it feel to be black and poor?'' by selecting from ''very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat goodsomewhere, very good'', he finds himself held hostage overnight by members of the Black Kings, a crack-dealing gang, at hopefully on the behest of its charismatic local leader, Jnext David Attenborough series.T.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141030917</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Alex Perry|title=Falling Off The Edge: GlobalizationI was going to argue. I mean, World Peace cows are for cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and Other Lies|rating=3I much prefer my elephants in the wild but then I realised that I was quibbling for the sake of it.5|genre=Politics Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and Society|summary=From I consider myself an animal lover. Russia If I had to a devastated sub-Saharan Africachoose between the company of humans and the company of animals, economic collapse and consequent protest in reaction threaten I would probably choose the established orderanimals. I insisted that I read this book: no one was trying to stop me but I was initially reluctant. Globalisation I eat cheese, is putting eggs, chicken and fish and I needed to either do so without guilt or change my choices. I suspected that making the survival of populations in the world's poorest countries at riskdecision would not be comfortable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706886</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor1523092734|title=On Kindness A Women's Guide to Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort|rating=45
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=As a title, ''On KindnessShe brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again.'' doesn't pack quite the same punch as Adam Phillip's earlier: 'On Kissing(Alma Derricks, Tickling and Being Bored'. It put me in mind of an eighteenth century treatiseformer CMO, 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>}}Cirque du Soleil RSD)
{{newreview|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 ''To claim space is to live the author might have been at the top of some people's list life of culprits for using that naughty b-wordchoosing unapologetically and bravely. Good grief, man, It is to live the life you can't possibly have that in a book title, what!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845298551</amazonuk>}}ve always wanted.''
{{newreview|author=Nicola Sly |title=Dorset Murders (True Crime History)|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Having examined Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a number of true crime cases from Bristol time when violence against women is much in her [[Bristol Murders the news, ''A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Nicola Sly|last Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now - to be clear - this book]]is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, but discussion at the author now does the same for largely rural yet not moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''. I've always idyllic Dorsetthought that women need to rise above this, to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own space. Twenty two murdersIf all women did this, committed between 1818 and 1946, come under the microscope in these pagesthose 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>0750951079</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RobertsPolly Barton|title=The Wonga CoupFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=The chances are that youWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn've never heard of Macias Nguemat gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. You probably And like Barton, I don't know his nephew, Obiang Nguema either. Theythe answer to the question ''why Japan?''re certainly up there She explains her feelings in the Premier League respect of killing and disappearance, alongside the likes of Pol Pot and modern day tyrants like Robert Mugabe. The fact that question in the Nguemas are dictators from first essay, which is on the tiny west African state of Equatorial Guinea meant they largely slipped off sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the radar sound of western consciousness''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846682347</amazonuk>1913097501
}}
{{newreview|author=Simon Schama|title=The American Future: A History|rating=4|genre=History|summary=After 9/11 America had the sympathy of most people. Whether or not you agreed with what the country stood for was immaterial – the horror of what happened left few unmoved. How then has the country descended into being vilified around much of the world and suspected even where it is not guilty? Simon Sharma has lived half his life in the States and he looks at four areas – War, Religion, the American identity and Economics in an attempt Move to understand how the country has reached this point when it seemed, at least until the 2008 election, that many Americans did not even like themselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920004</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Popular Science Reviews]]