==Politics and society==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=John L Locke
|title=Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521887135</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frank Furedi
|summary=Daniel Pennac's book discusses the issue of children who struggle at school, and offers some ideas on how teachers can and should help them. It is not a dry textbook on educational theory. He writes from personal experience, as a teacher and novelist who was once 'un cancre', translated here as a dunce or a bad student.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694648</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Lewis
|title=The Kid: A True Story
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Kevin Lewis grew up on a poverty-stricken London council estate in the sort of home that the neighbours complain about. His mother – inadequate by any measure – hated him more than most of her six children and he was beaten and starved by both of his parents. You might think that Social Services would have stepped in and removed him, but any relief was to be short-lived. Eventually he was put into care but even then the support was inadequate and Kevin found himself caught up in a criminal underworld where he was known simply as 'The Kid'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014104859X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Mullin
|title=Decline and Fall: Diaries 2005 to 2010
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=At the end of [[A View from the Foothills by Chris Mullin|A View from the Foothills]] we left Chris Mullin wondering why he was no longer Tony Blair's Africa minister at the Foreign Office. He was never to get a definitive answer to this, but was later told that Blair handed out the junior ministerial appointments rather like sweets, with few worries about how people would feel if they were missed out or sacked. In Decline and Fall we see Chris come down from the foothills of politics and return to the backbenches. He might no longer be in a position of power, but he's still in the thick of it. Perhaps though, some of the enjoyment is draining away from the job as he sees himself with years more of doing nothing very important.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683998</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Malalai Joya
|title=Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Forget entertainment – this is a book to read if you have any interest in the war in Afghanistan. My particular view has developed from a British armchair, comprising part emotional reaction, a smidgeon of history and an over-reliance on British media sources. In a war zone where truth has been a casualty throughout, this book gives the general reader an authentic view of conditions in Afghanistan over the past twenty five years of continual warfare. Written by a young and hot-headed, wildly patriotic 'ordinary' woman, this is no more reliable than any other partisan view, but its value is to help put official news sources into their proper context. I found it educative in several senses.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846041503</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patricia Nicol
|title=Sucking Eggs: What Your Wartime Granny Could Teach You About Diet, Thrift and Going Green
|rating=2.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=In the current economy, lots of people are trying to make ends meet in their own ways. Not since the days of Brownie badges has the word ''thrift'' been bandied around so much, but now it's not so much about saving money as it is about surviving. Actually, maybe it always was, but the Guiding Association thought a jolly piggy bank was a more appropriate badge emblem than a depressed family collapsed in front of their Sky TV with their supermarket-own curry struggling to fill the void left by a regular take away. What we all need is a return to the good old days, when life was simpler and people happier, the days when you didn't need to clear half an hour in your diary to navigate the olive aisle of the supermarket, and when you ate what was fresh and local, not because it was cheap or you were in the mood, but because it was all they had.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521121</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adam Phillips
|title=On Balance
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Essential for a tightrope walker, prized as an intellectual objective, balance is generally considered something to which we can aspire. We praise someone who makes a balanced decision, we envy people who have a 'good work/life balance' we offer an opinion 'on balance' to demonstrate that we have considered various arguments and options.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143888</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Robertson
|title=And The Land Lay Still
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The novel starts ... at the end. We see the fictional character, photographer Mike Pendreich collating many, many photographs which his late father took with his trusty camera. His father is generally acknowledged as the better of the two at the craft; he simply had the knack. And what his son is now in charge of are black and white photographs charting a social history at that time. And we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114356X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Green
|title=Murder in the High Himalaya
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=The Himalayan mountains mean many things to different people. To the people of Tibet, trapped under the atheist occupiers from China, who ran the Dalai Lama out in the 1950s in their consuming urge for lebensraum and mineral mining, they are a near-impenetrable barrier, protecting their country from history's prior ravages, but keeping people who want out, very much in. To rich Westerners, they are a sparkling challenge - a task of the highest order, a box to tick on the way to self-fulfilment - something to be climbed, because they're there.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586487140</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frances Woodsford
|title=Dear Mr Bigelow: A Transatlantic Friendship
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Meet Mister Bigelow. He's elderly, living alone on Long Island, New York, with some health problems but more than enough family and friends to get him by, and still a very active interest in yachting, regattas and more. Meet, too, Frances Woodsford. She's reaching middle-age, living with her brother and mum in Bournemouth, and working for the local baths as organiser of events, office lackey and more. I suggest you do meet them, although neither ever met the other. Despite this they kept up a brisk and lively conversation about all aspects of life, from the late 1940s until his death at the beginning of 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 comment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542293</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rebecca Skloot
|title=The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=In John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, in October 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a mother of five children, died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. However, a sample of her cancer cells taken the same year lived on, grew and reproduced. Often referred to as HeLa cells, cells with their origins in the original sample are still being used in medical and scientific research today, nearly sixty years on. 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 and on welfare, unable to afford basic health insurance. Understandably they feel a lot of anger at this injustice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230748694</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Garrett Keizer
|title=The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=What is noise? Do we count birdsong at sunrise as noise? And if so, what different term would we use to describe a jet aircraft taking off? Why do we respond so differently to the two? Even more intriguingly, would our response change if the birdsong woke us from an exhausted sleep but the aircraft was taking off to jet us on a long awaited holiday?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586485520</amazonuk>
}}
