Politics and society
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea by Donovan Hohn
In January 1992 a container ship was on its way from China to the USA when it was caught in a storm and two containers broke loose from the deck. They held nearly thirty thousand bath toys - yellow ducks, green frogs, red beavers and blue turtles - which were freed when the containers broke up and have circumnavigated the globe for almost twenty years. Donovan Hohn was a teacher and when one of his students wrote an essay describing what had happened to the toys it caught Hohn's imagination. The rest is - as they say - history and a very good book. Full review...
The Library Book by Anita Anand, Julian Barnes, Bella Bathurst, Alan Bennett and others
I had better begin by saying that I had a vested interest in liking this book since I am a chartered librarian myself and so am wholeheartedly in support of saving our nation's public libraries. But you don't need to be a librarian to enjoy this book. It is rich with anecdotes from some wonderful writers and makes a pleasant read whether you're keen to save libraries or not. Full review...
Bubble Wrapped Children by Helen Oakwater
Bubble Wrapped Children takes a look at the state of adoption in the UK, and how aspects of it are being threatened by the use of social networks. The author, with over 20 years' experience in the adoption world, paints a broad picture of the issues facing adopters and adoptees. Peppering the text are some examples of unwanted Facebook contact from birth parents, which have had massive knock-on effects for the adopted children. Full review...
Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Advertisement by Francesca Beauman
You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalised, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L and a big H to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its history. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book. Full review...
Demystifying the Chinese Economy by Justin Yifu Lin
The success of the Chinese economy, and as Lin makes us aware, a success which contrasts strongly with what appeared major failure in the recent historical past, is something which needs explanation. No one can ignore it, and we are confronted with the effects of it from the ownership of Thames water to the faces of tourists in London and Stratford on a daily basis. And in the roots of its success are the potential seeds of future change, a change that now more than ever is crucial to the way the world economy works. Full review...
The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China by James Palmer
Welcome to China, where the populous are busy leaving a rural country full of prosperous mineral resources and coal mines, and shoddily-built hydro-electric dams in environmentally dubious locations, for the burgeoning, mechanised cities. But this isn't the birth of 2012, it's the dawn of 1976. Chairman Mao is dying, Premier Zhou Enlai has just died, and the cauldron of power is being stirred as never before. Among the momentous events of the year however will be a huge earthquake directly centred on the city of Tangshan, which will kill something like two thirds of a million people. Full review...
From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
Gene Sharp is an American politologist and a veritable (and venerable) guru of non-violent struggle. The story behind the From Dictatorship to Democracy is a fascinating one. The book, or a booklet really as it consists of 160 small pages, was apparently created in response to a request from Burmese dissenters in the early 1990's. Sharp responded to this request by producing a generic text, a manual for the subversive that lies out the theory and practical advice for those engaged in a struggle to bring down a dictatorship. Full review...
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson
Most people think about the subject of tax havens - if they need to think about them at all - as something which is unlikely ever to concern them and that they're for the super-rich and celebrities. What might surprise them is that more than half of world trade as well as most international lending is routed through them and that many common items in your everyday shopping will come to you via a tax haven. And we really should be thinking about them because tax havens are ensuring that wealth in unprecedented amounts is being transferred from the poor to the rich - greatly exceeding the aid which flows in the opposite direction. Full review...
Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years by Louise Foxcroft
We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: a history of dieting over 2000 years. Full review...
The Locked Ward by Dennis O'Donnell
Dennis O’Donnell spent 7 years working in a Scottish hospital and this is the account of his time there. It takes a special type of person to work in Mental Health services, and though O'Donnell ultimately leaves the Locked Ward, he clearly is one of those people, made all the more remarkable by the fact that this wasn’t his life long vocation, having previously worked as a school teacher (some might say an equally challenging role). Full review...
Signing Their Rights Away by Denise Kiernan
Many Americans believe that the Declaration of Independence is the cornerstone of the American democracy, the fountain-head of the American Way of Life and the American Dream. The 4th of July is the national holiday and often thought to be the single most important date in American history. Full review...
The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg
With the newspapers full of economic doom and gloom the last thing you might want is to pick up a book that reiterates it and then some. But while this book may seem at first glance to be a bit of a downer, it also provides an insight into how things might just work out ok in the end. Yes, they’ll be some big changes – there have to be because the direction we’ve been heading in is just not sustainable – but if we’re willing to adapt, we will survive was the main message I picked up as I flicked through the pages. Full review...
Out of the Ashes: Britain After the Riots by David Lammy
Just about everyone in the country was shocked as pictures of the 2011 riots (which began in Tottenham and spread to other major cities in the UK) unfolded on our television screens. Everyone, that is, except David Lammy, MP for the area. He might not have known when it would happen or what would trigger the riot, but a year before, he said that it would happen. This wasn't a lucky guess: Lammy was born in Tottenham and brought up on the Broadwater Farm Estate as one of five children raised by his single-parent mother and he knows what's happening on the ground. Full review...
Mafia State by Luke Harding
Luke Harding set himself a difficult task when he took up his post as the Guardian’s main man in Moscow. He had already put his name to a front page story which appeared in the Guardian in April 2007. This was an account of an interview with the arch-oligarch and Kremlin critic, Boris Berezovsky. Harding was not at the interview but added background to the article from Moscow. However, to be in any way associated with Berezovsky was sufficient to incur the wrath of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB – the successor to the KGB. The offending account was entitled, 'I am plotting a new Russian revolution - London exile Berezovsky says force necessary to bring down President Putin'. Full review...
Amexica: War Along the Borderline by Ed Vulliamy
More than 38,000 people have been killed in the last 3 years in what Ed Vulliamy argues is an unacknowledged war, on the long border (2,100 miles) between Mexico and the United States. The war is between drug trafficking gangs over control of the lucrative drugs trade from Mexico to the US. In this compelling and disturbing work of reportage Vulliamy travels through the borderlands meeting some of the people affected. Full review...
Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing by Jennifer Hayashi Danns and Leveque Sandrine
Before I can start, I should qualify that I have never been, nor tried to be, a lapdancer. Nor have I ever gone to a lapdancing club, nor ever tried to. I have no opinion on the matter, save that I can't imagine, in the world of free internet porn, paying some averagely attractive woman to wiggle her semi-nudity in the general direction of my face, and thinking it erotically arousing. So I come to this academically-designed volume on the matter with no prejudice. If only that were the case with the creators. Full review...
Geek Wisdom by Stephen H Segal
I am by no means a fully fledged geek, but on the Big Bang scale I'm probably more of a Leonard than a Penny. I was weaned on Star Trek , chose Hitchhiker’s Guide... as my reading aloud piece for a Year 7 exam, and think it would be more than a little fun to take a trip to Comic Con. At the same time, there are gaping holes in my knowledge. My first celeb crush might have been Blake’s 7’s Villa but I've never seen a Batman film, never read a comic book, never quite understood what all the Star Wars fuss was about. If Sci Fi is a religion, then this is the book that can fill me in one the stories, the parables, the rules, as it were, of geekdom. I had to have it. Full review...
The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London by Laurence Manley (editor)
The history of London is a long and storied one, and it's unsurprising that so many people have written about the capital. I've always loved the city, its history and novels and plays set within London, so was really keen to get my hands on this new volume in the Cambridge Companion series. Full review...
It Could Have Been Yours: The enlightened person's guide to the year's most desirable things by Jolyon Fenwick and Marcus Husselby
In a world of diamond-encrusted skulls, gold-leafed iPhones and luxury yachts ten a penny, of blingy shit (or should that be shitty bling?) it's a relief to know people are still spending money on unique one-offs that are more worthwhile. The records for costliest photo, artwork, musical instrument and manuscript have all been broken in the twenty four months leading up to this book's release. Our collators have scoured the press for those and other, similarly noteworthy auctions, and found what other people paid for what you didn't know you would have wanted given the money. Full review...
Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently by John L Locke
Locke's subtitle Why Men and Women Talk So Differently might lead you to think that this is just another self-help Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus tome. It's not. Rather than focussing upon what we all know from experience – that men and women do not communicate very well because of some fundamental difference in their respective approach to verbal expression – the New York City University Professor of Linguistics sets out to explain WHY that might be. Full review...
On Tolerance: The Life Style Wars: A Defence of Moral Independence by Frank Furedi
Furedi is a Professor of Sociology at a UK university so he'll know his subject matter inside out. The short preface tells us that 'tolerance has been emptied of its moral and intellectual meaning.' This publication's aim is to argue the case for tolerance in society. How its meaning has changed over the centuries until today's rather fuzzy and watered-down meaning. Professor Furedi was spurred on to writing this book because he firmly believes that tolerance has been lost somehow, to be almost invisible in some areas of public and private life. Full review...
A Walk-on Part: Diaries 1994 - 1999 by Chris Mullin
We tend to remember where we were and how we heard about the deaths of people like John F Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Princess Diana, but I'd add another person to the list: John Smith. I remember sitting in my office and a colleague coming in to tell me. She added 'I suppose we'll have that dreary Gordon Brown as leader now'. We'd many angst-ridden miles to go before that came about but Smith's death is the opening entry in this, the third volume (but first chronologically) of Chris Mullin's Diaries. This book covers the first period of 'New Labour', from Smith's death until Mullin's assumption into government in July 1999. Full review...
Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World by Tina Rosenberg
Teenagers in South Carolina have become involved in the anti-smoking movement, passing out information encouraging their peers to educate themselves about the ways big tobacco companies try to get them hooked. There are youngsters in South Africa who’ve refused to have sex without a condom because of the danger of HIV and AIDS. Minority students in Texas have challenged data going back years by succeeding at calculus where traditionally students of their race have struggled. Why? Because other people have done the same thing, and they want to fit in. Full review...
A Broken Childhood: A True Story of Abuse by Lydia Ola Taiwo
Mojisola – known to everyone as Ola – was born to a Nigerian couple in London in 1964 and spent the first five years of her life in a foster home in Brighton. Here she was loved, looked after and lived her life in a genuinely good family. This wasn't an unusual arrangement as it allowed the biological parents to earn money without worrying about childcare – and Ola was happy. It was all the more cruel when her biological father arrived to take her 'home' for the weekend – a weekend which would stretch into seven years of abuse and neglect. Full review...
The Doctor Will See You Now by Max Pemberton
The NHS is one of those things that everyone seems to have an opinion about, and this of course includes those of us who work for said organisation (the world's 3rd largest employer, don'tcha know). Max Pemberton is one of those people: a doctor, though despite what you might assume from the title, not a GP but a hospital medic. This is his third book on the subject of life (and death) within the walls of a hospital, plus the odd excursion to rather misnamed Care Homes, and it's not a bad read. Full review...
The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny by Shirin Ebadi
Dr Ebadi is currently living in exile, fearing for her safety, should she return to Iran in the foreseeable future. Her Prologue describes a violent and bloody reaction to what was a peaceful situation involving wives, mothers and sisters. Boulders and large stones were thrown at elderly, defenseless women without a moment's hesitation. A taste of things to come? Full review...
American Caesars: Lives of the US Presidents, from Franklin D Roosevelt to George W Bush by Nigel Hamilton
The Premise is simple: take twelve men (and unfortunately they are all men, but that's not the author's fault) who have achieved high office and look at each of them. Firstly, take a look at the road to the high office, then how they performed once they reached their goal and finally a look at their private life. Suetonius did it first when he wrote The Twelve Caesars and now Nigel Hamilton has taken the same journey with American Caesars, a remarkably in-depth look at twelve consecutive American presidents from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, starting with Franklin D Roosevelt and finishing with George W Bush. Full review...
Off Message: The Complete Antidote to Political Humbug by Bob Marshall-Andrews
Bob Marshall-Andrews entered Parliament in 1997, rather too late to be a career politician (he was already an established QC) and with a profound distrust of authority. He had no aspirations towards office, which was perhaps as well for all concerned as he would become best known for being a dissident. I occasionally enquired as to which party held his allegiance and eventually concluded that he went with his conscience. The last three Labour administrations have spawned more political memoirs than any other – and I did wonder if this would be just one more to add to the pile. Full review...
Out Of Africa by Karen Blixen
It's more than a quarter of a century since I first saw the film Out of Africa and it's one of the few that have stayed with me over the intervening years. It wasn't just the story, but the personality of Karen Blixen and the wonderful landscape of the Ngong Hills, south of Nairobi, in Kenya's Rift Valley. I remember looking for this book at the time, but being unable to find it, so the opportunity to read it now was too good to miss. Full review...
Ashes and Sparks: Essays On Law and Justice by Stephen Sedley
Some books are hard to read, and even harder to review. This is particularly true of what are essentially academic or "professional" books and you come to them as a lay reader. This then is my starting position on Ashes and Sparks. Full review...
The Authentic Tawney: A New Interpretation of the Political Thought of R. H. Tawney by Gary Armstrong and Tim Gray
The Authentic Tawney takes a fresh look at the political writing of R H Tawney, a left wing academic whose works were a big influence on the huge program of postwar reform engineered by the Labour Party, particularly the provision of universal secondary education. The authors assert that Tawney's ideas changed markedly through the course of his life and that they lack the consistency that other interpreters have erroneously attributed to them. They reject the notion that his writings have an essential unity, which is philosophically interesting - don't we tend to assume that an intellectual's life's work will contain a central 'core' of ideas? Discussion of an important pioneer in democratic socialism also seems relevant at a time when Labour has 'lost its way' and evolved into a watered down version of the Conservatives. Full review...
The Sarkozy Phenomenon by Nick Hewlett
The old saying is that 'cometh the hour, cometh the man' and whether or not it's the electorate's ability to pick the man or whether he was only seen as the right man in retrospect is a moot point. There are, though, some surprising people at the head of European countries at the moment – with Silvio Berlusconi and Nicholas Sarkozy at the head of my personal list. My last attempt to find out more about Sarkozy proved to be too light-weight for my tastes, but this time I've gone to the opposite end of the scale with a book from Nick Hewlett, Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick and published by Imprint Academic. I mention those points because there is no attempt to present this as populist writing: it's scholarly from beginning to end. Full review...
The Future History of the Arctic: How climate, resources and geopolitics are reshaping the north, and why it matters to the world by Charles Emmerson
Charles Emmerson examines the past history of Arctic exploration, economic exploitation and development and the policies of governments of countries which include Arctic territory (and others), with the aim of understanding the present and predicting the future better. He explains the apparently contradictory title in some detail in the Introduction. While history is about the past, 'ideas about the future have changed over time'. Also, the future of the Arctic will be shaped by its history. Full review...
Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet by Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
Fleeing your home can never be easy but when you are six, your only shoes are roughly hand-sewn and stuffed with hay, and your route is over the world's highest mountain range then it must be particularly challenging. This was the journey that Yangzom Brauen's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959. They were leaving behind all that they knew and travelling to India in the hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile. 'Across Many Mountains' is their story. Full review...
How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly And the Stark Choices Ahead by Dambisa Moyo
Moyo's first book, Dead Aid was a well regarded and oft discussed title when I worked in Development. In a country where it was hard to find any book at all, somehow every ex-pat household seemed to have at least one copy of this, and I followed the sheep and had a read. It was a great, insightful book that we could all identify with, and I was eager to read her second, if somewhat unrelated work. Full review...
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
So. The subprime mortgage crisis, the worldwide financial crisis, people losing their jobs, their money, their houses, their security. Unregulated greed, that went on and on and on. And the people who caused it all got rich during and after, very few felt any sort of consequences, and millions of other people worldwide suffered greatly. Strip away all the intentionally confusing terminology and it all amounts to bets with unbelievable amounts of money. How did it all come about and how did it play out? Michael Lewis explains the mess as only he can. Just as his earlier excellent work Liar's Poker encapsulated the excesses of Wall Street in the 1980s, so does The Big Short perfectly tell the tale of Wall Street in the 2000s. In fact, given the extent of the current global clusterfuck, it makes the shocking Liar's Poker look positively mild by comparison. Full review...
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love by Xinran
Xinran first came to my notice with her 2002 book "The Good Women of China" which retold tales of the women she had come across through her work in Chinese radio, where for many years she had hosted the local equivalent of a cross between Woman's Hour and a late night phone-in talk show. She has been busy bringing us other stories in the meantime, but in this latest work she returns to those early days in radio and the stories she learned. Many of these stories she decided were too painful to tell. They speak of children, specifically daughters, abandoned by their Chinese mothers one way or another. Full review...
Nothing but the Truth: Selected Dispatches by Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya worked for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, becoming particularly famous for her critical reports on the wars in Chechnya, on Putin, on state corruption and on life in Russia under his regime. She never avoided controversy and received a number of death threats before she was murdered in October 2006. She had reason to know these were no idle threats – one of her articles here entitled 'Is Journalism Worth the Loss of a Life?' reports the attempted murder of one of her colleagues. Full review...
Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City by Jonny Steinberg
South African Steinberg has won awards with previous non-fiction books and after reading the praise from various sources (New York Times, J M Coetzee) I came to the conclusion that I was in for a serious and thought-provoking read.
The preface tells us that the two Liberian men - Rufus and the younger Jacob left Liberian soil in vastly different circumstances and for different reasons. But as they meet up years later and thousands of miles away from their homeland, their Little Liberia in New York City has a tall order: to contain and accommodate their big personalities and to a certain extent, their big egos. Can it cope? Full review...
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Dr Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to helping the poorest and neediest in society. He works tirelessly to help people less fortunate than him. Dedicated his life and works tirelessly - phrases we've heard many times about many wonderful people, but when reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, you'll realise there's not a shred of hyperbole about these claims. Farmer began working with tuberculosis and AIDS patients in Haiti, and then worked with them, and worked for them, and worked with them, and worked for them, and worked with them. In an area where treating the disease is just one part of the problem, where poverty is rife, he has transformed an area, saved countless lives, and made an incredible difference to many people. Partners In Health, the healthcare organisation he set up with his colleagues, takes this work worldwide. Full review...