|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521170907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gary Armstrong and Tim Gray
|title=The Authentic Tawney: A New Interpretation of the Political Thought of R. H. Tawney
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402243</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Hewlett
|title=The Sarkozy Phenomenon
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=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 [[Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni: The True Story by Valerie Benaim and Yves Azeroual|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402391</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charles Emmerson
|title=The Future History of the Arctic: How climate, resources and geopolitics are reshaping the north, and why it matters to the world
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523531</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
|title=Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655344X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dambisa Moyo
|title=How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly And the Stark Choices Ahead
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Lewis
|title=The Big Short
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=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 {{amazonurl|title=Liar's Poker|isbn=0340839961}} 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043539</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Xinran
|title=Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535750</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Politkovskaya
|title=Nothing but the Truth: Selected Dispatches
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526689</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonny Steinberg
|title=Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224085662</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracy Kidder
|title=Mountains Beyond Mountains
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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. [http://www.pih.org/ Partners In Health], the healthcare organisation he set up with his colleagues, takes this work worldwide.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684315</amazonuk>
}}
