Luscious, fascinating, wonderful novel. Like a quantum particle, it seems to occupy two states at once, being both a dystopian story and a piece of liLuscious, fascinating, wonderful novel. Like a quantum particle, it seems to occupy two states at once, being both a dystopian story and a piece of literary fiction. Written in 2014 about a global flu-like pandemic it is creepily prescient (except they don't discover a vaccine and nearly everybody dies). But it also delves into deep themes about life and hope, and it does so with some beautiful, understated prose. What a lovely book. You look at the author pic on the back and think, how does she do it? Hey ho. ...more
Compelling novel, which we enjoyed in audio over several long car journeys. We found finely-drawn, spikey characters, a taut and elegant plot, that onCompelling novel, which we enjoyed in audio over several long car journeys. We found finely-drawn, spikey characters, a taut and elegant plot, that only wobbled slightly, and that near the end. And loads of fun. Most and best of all, though, it's a story of female inequality in the 1950s and 1960s, with Elizabeth Zott as its brilliant and focussed, if not exactly warm and empathetic, protagonist. The extent of misogyny, sexism and exploitation is sh0cking (to this male reader) but also convincing. This is a better read than any number of worthy treatises, a really satisfying, eye-opening, shocking, yet life-affirming novel....more
It covers moderately familiar territory for me, but was set apart by the quality of the prose, the depth of I loved this book and it opened my eyes.
It covers moderately familiar territory for me, but was set apart by the quality of the prose, the depth of scholarship and the freshness and quality of the argument. It sent me spinning, really. To see human rights, gay rights, enlightenment values, humanism and atheism all as products of the prolonged Western dunking in Christian thought (and only universal in the sense that Christianity is) and to see how radical Christian thought was to the mindeset of the classical period, is paradigm-shifting stuff.
To see this done in such a delightful, story-led way is better yet. One of the best books I've read in years. ...more
This is the professional biography of Maria Ressa, a Filipina/American citizen who served as a journalist in the early days of CNN in the Philippines,This is the professional biography of Maria Ressa, a Filipina/American citizen who served as a journalist in the early days of CNN in the Philippines, and then co-founded Rappler, a Filipino internet news source that pioneered news-gathering in the internet age. Coming up against dictatorship, she now is the recipient of both a Nobel Peace Prize and an extensive list of criminal charges.
She is smart, tough, and worryingly, perhaps a harbinger of the future. Rappler was an enthusiastic early user of Facebook, with Facebook's 97% coverage of the Filipino population, using it to distribute news, measure responses, and build a community of citizen journalists. But that soured. One day she met a young guy who created false Facebook personas, got these false people to join many groups, and then started dropping news stories into the groups. At first this guy was intoxicated by the power he had to shape the opinions of millions. Then his methods were taken up by politicians.
Facebook wanted responses, rather than truth. Lies and division stirred up responses. This was being discovered around the world. Lies are tastier, and travel further. Such methods powered Trump and Brexit in 2016 as well as helping Duterte to attain high office and his dream of shooting people he didn't like.
So the battle-lines: Maria Rappler and her friends on one side; President Duterte and Facebook on two other sides. It's chilling and gripping and you burst with pride to see how this tough lady refuses to bend.
So how do you stand up to a dictator? She doesn't want to become a monster to fight a monster. Let's not create false personas and spread lies. Instead she suggests:
1. The governments should regulate Facebook just as (here in the UK perhaps) the broadcast media is regulated. Free speech is oxygen, but free lies are carbon monoxide, taken in preferentially to oxygen and turning us red and poisoning us. If government had ways to contest proven lies with fines or some such, I imagine the creative spirits in Facebook would find ways to self-moderate.
2. Protect and grow proper journalism. While this speaks to government views on journalists, it also speaks to us consumers of news. Perhaps to be a good citizen is to pay for news. Too many of us perhaps are free-riders in 0ur consumption of both news and politics, and that leaves us vulnerable to those long on money and ambition and short on goodness and justice.
3. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. Instead of false personas, mobilize real people in real groups to spread truth, truth that journalists recognize, with balance and sources.
A book worth your time; a cause demanding our time....more
Thoroughly enjoyed this history of the Middle Ages, which was beautifully structured around common themes - survivors (after the plague), renewers andThoroughly enjoyed this history of the Middle Ages, which was beautifully structured around common themes - survivors (after the plague), renewers and so on. I thought it successfully carried us from the sack of Rome right to the invention of printing and Protestant era, joining lots of dots for me, and with a lovely momentum to it and also the journalist's ability to stoop down into a single scene or event and see what sequence of things followed.
My only qualm was its euro-centric-ness with the rest of the world relegated either to supplying fierce nomads or the plague (that's the East's role in the narrative) or fabulous riches and cultures to be pillaged or infected (that's the West's). It's not, then, a world history. Perhaps (in defence), it was only the European peoples who actually had a Middle Ages, with a Roman Empire, a long gap, then an Age of Discovery and a Renaissance and the invention of printing. The Chinese, the Central Asians, the original Americans perhaps see the rolling centuries forming different peaks and troughs, so the 'Middle Ages' can't be about them because they didn't have a one.
So, definitely a history of Europe in that period rather than the world. Great fun though. ...more
This is a wonderful, moving book that I imagine will stick long in the memory. Lucy Easthope is a disaster planner, one of the hidden squadron of peopThis is a wonderful, moving book that I imagine will stick long in the memory. Lucy Easthope is a disaster planner, one of the hidden squadron of people who try to prepare our communities for the worst. After a disaster, someone has to figure out where to put the bodies, how to identify the dead, what to do with little personal momentoes, how to help the community response. It's a singular career and vocation, no doubt attracting rather singular and special people. (She shares how both her aunt and uncle were coroners and she did work experience with them as a young woman, when others of us are manning photocopiers or working as cleaners' assistants.)
The book is actually a road-trip around most of the headline-grabbing disasters of the past couple of decades, the tsunami and 7/7 and Grenfell Tower and a last, rather provisional, chapter about global pandemic. Lucy turns up at them all. Sometimes disasters happen around her, or just after (as at Grenfell) she has delivered training on the subject (the Grenfell training was criticized as too grim and unrealistic). Sprinkled throughout are some of her own personal griefs around child-bearing and infirmity. Reading it you could be forgiven for thinking that if you ever did come across Lucy Easthope socially, it would mean something terrible was either about to happen or just had happened, and you might be tempted to cross the road and meet someone else instead. But that would be a loss.
It helps that Lucy Easthope is a gifted writer, avoiding the danger of overwriting, and (we heard the audio version) a careful and sensitive reader with, as it happens, a lovely voice.
I don't think I have every cried so much reading a book (and that is not why I read books). Nor do I usually feel about a book that the world would be a rather better place if everyone read it. But her words on the tender care of the dead and the grieving and the traumatized, on the scandal of emergency planning falling victim to government cuts, on the likelihood that leadership will tend to fail to listen, and on the great worth of small acts like providing showers and clothes and cups of tea make this a book to put somewhere on your reading or listening list, whoever you are. It's really good....more
Like her Guardian columns, this is very funny and she has a wonderful gift for comedy. The novel has no plot. I feel on the whole she would be happierLike her Guardian columns, this is very funny and she has a wonderful gift for comedy. The novel has no plot. I feel on the whole she would be happier with life if concubinage was restored, so that she could have someone around the house to look after the kids in emergencies, take stains off sofas and make sympathizing noises when required. A touch of smugness, 'tis true, with her upper-middle-class probs. But a lot, lot of fun....more
I so loved this book I would save it for when I had an undisturbed half-hour. It's a lucid, irenic, generous, walking-pace tour of British and Irish cI so loved this book I would save it for when I had an undisturbed half-hour. It's a lucid, irenic, generous, walking-pace tour of British and Irish church history, stopping off, as it were, at twenty sites, each resonant of a century. Peter Stanford's writing is longer on church history than on church architecture, which I liked, and like many others, I found it put in order for me the jumble of names --Augustine and Cuthbert and John Knox and Wesley-- that had gathered in my head like an untidy sock drawer. Lovely book....more
Though not really a biography (as many have pointed out) this excellent book tells the story of John von Neumann and his work in maths, quantum theoryThough not really a biography (as many have pointed out) this excellent book tells the story of John von Neumann and his work in maths, quantum theory, atomic bomb design, computers, and automatons or self-replicating machines. The author shows where von Neumann fits in each subject, and where things went afterwards. An unusual mathematician whose fruitful years spanned almost his whole life, at times shuttled around the US by plane from project to project, his story is eye-opening. This is a really enjoyable, worthwhile, contribution to the history of 2oth century science....more
This book is a simple snapshot of the lives of Pan Am stewardesses in the '50s, '60s and early 1970s. It's a gentle, enjoyable read. Most striking to This book is a simple snapshot of the lives of Pan Am stewardesses in the '50s, '60s and early 1970s. It's a gentle, enjoyable read. Most striking to me was how constrained the lives of working women were back then. For a smart, capable woman with a sense of adventure or wanderlust, it opened a (usually short) career, so long as you could put up with the dress codes, the serving, the body-shape requirements, the lack of much career pathway and the fact that you were expected to give up when you became a mum.
Pan Am comes across as a more conservative and caring kind of employer than some of the other airlines who played more frankly on the stewardesses' sex appeal.
Slowly, as the book describes, the airline industry changed - Pan Am is no more - and flight attendants fought their way up the organizations and to more equal working conditions, while losing many of the delicious flight privileges that the early days offered. Along the way it sounds they had a lot of fun; and they also gave remarkable service around the edges of the the Vietnam War, which this book talks about a lot. An enjoyable, easy read, a window on a different world. ...more
This book had lots of big things right and a few little things that were annoying, possibly made worse by me listening to it in audio form while stuckThis book had lots of big things right and a few little things that were annoying, possibly made worse by me listening to it in audio form while stuck in a traffic jam. Definitely worth your time and money though.
Fiona Hill is fascinating and talented and this book charts her course from the Northeast of England in one of its worst decades to studies in Russia, work in think-tanks in the USA, and finally to the White House. She really has a unique life history. Along the way she has collected helpful insights about poverty, inequality and populism. Of the many books I've read that try to explain what happened to democracy in 2016, this is perhaps the most insightful. Her background and research enable us to see the similarities between the US, the UK and Russia. Perhaps we all lost out after the Cold War, each in our own way. She narrates the audio herself and thankfully has not lost her beautiful Geordie accent, one of the softest and loveliest accents in England, and great on the ear.
The book had special resonance for me because, like Fiona Hill, I was brought up in an old industrial town (our main industry was making asbestos conveyor belts for the coal industry). Like her, I grew up in the 1970s, went to a comprehensive school, failed to get into Oxford. When I read her account (at those points so similar to mine) I found a sob rising in my chest, quite unexpected. All these years I've blamed myself for failing my Oxford interview; I never thought that inequality might have played a part, that others might have had their way smoothed for them, and I didn't know what I'd bottled up inside me all these years. So it's a good read with unique insights and well worth your time and I will probably be buying it for others.
Now the annoyances. It's too long. The stuff at the end, about Covid-19, is unremarkable. It has a flavour of being written to a deadline, and with prose, like code, I'm not sure that's ever a good idea. When she starts calling Canada an 'economic country' rather than an 'advanced economy' or a 'country' you want to say, go to bed, work on this in the morning. Miss your deadline. Publishers will cope. I also fear that Think-Tank World values size as well as content ('I read his 135-page report'). A pity some of that outlook dribbles into here. A shorter book would be better and punchier. Also (but these are just niggles) there's a bit too much repetition. She is not often capable of saying 'where I was brought up' without also adding 'in Bishop Auckland in the Northeast of England'. Possibly some of us readers may already be retaining that fact. And, for all the moving insight about inequality, I do wander if Dr Shaw occasionally wanders into special pleading. Geordies find it harder to settle in London than Poles, because Polish people have support networks... I think not. Polish people have support networks because it's very hard to move countries and learn a new language and they need them. Another example might be her discovery that if you slum around in jeans when everyone else is in a suit, no-one listens to you. This is not discrimination because you are a woman. It is discrimination because you are not quite getting the point of professional uniform.
Don't be put off by my whinges. She's great company and worth your time and I mostly really enjoyed this book....more
This is an excellent and refreshing book that I think will become a landmark in studies about this Bible book. Thank goodness. Walton carefully examinThis is an excellent and refreshing book that I think will become a landmark in studies about this Bible book. Thank goodness. Walton carefully examines the Biblical language, and the worldviews prevalent at the time, and concludes that 'Creation' in the Genesis account is something like 'inauguration'. Genesis 1 records the opening ceremony of the Universe as a place of divine and human habitation. Ex nihilo creation by God (a Christian belief) is taught elsewhere in the Bible, but Genesis 1 is concerned with other things, namely establishing the Universe as God's temple where God and people meet.
This point is patiently and rather irenically argued, and some of the consequences are unpacked. I have never been attracted to Biblical (so called) Creationism, or its unnerving, unblinking, robotic cousin (so called) Intelligent Design. Yet members of my (Christian) family defend these unbiblical and unintelligent dogmas. At last this book allows us to get on with things together....more
Just a gorgeous masterpiece of a book that reminds you that sometimes (rarely, but..) authors can hit the high notes and come up with something compleJust a gorgeous masterpiece of a book that reminds you that sometimes (rarely, but..) authors can hit the high notes and come up with something complete and special. Variously described as a coming-of-age tale or a crime mystery, really it's an extended meditation on abandonment and solitude, set in swampland. Character, plot, background, dialogue all do their thing in harmony with each other. I loved it, and I hope she doesn't write another because it can't be as good as this....more
**spoiler alert** Rebecca McLaughlin is a fresh and informed voice and she's worth reading on some of the hardest questions about the veracity and cre**spoiler alert** Rebecca McLaughlin is a fresh and informed voice and she's worth reading on some of the hardest questions about the veracity and credibility of the Christian faith. I enjoyed this book. I thought her best chapters were also the most personal: 'Doesn't Christianity denigrate women?' and 'Isn't Christianity homophobic?' As a super-smart, same-sex-attracted woman with leadership gifts (and married to a man) this all felt like stuff she'd worked through personally and emotionally as well as intellectually and I learnt a lot from her.
A few caveats? 1. Verbal tics. I heard the Audible version and perhaps it emphasizes all the 'moreover's, 'furthermores' and 'to be clear's that she hasn't shaken out of her text. Where are the editors these days? She could purge all this stuff and suddenly find her prose was all tautened up and even better than before. 2. Possibly this is personal choice, but I felt the book was a tad too confrontational. I like things more laid back, an author taking herself a bit less seriously, enticing readers with the smell of good coffee rather than presenting a case to a jury. And recognizing that, although Christ is both true and Truth, there's still mystery and mess out there. We know in part. We see dimly. It's OK not to have everything sewn up. And (I wanted to say 'moreover', but, see you really don't need to) some of us are more persuaded when we puzzle things out ourselves rather than being dragged to a place of surrender and having to say, 'Rebecca, I give in, you were right all along. Now please stop saying "to be clear".' So, a humbler, gentler touch wouldn't have been out of place. 3. Her chapter on science was well-sourced and argued, but it had the feel of library research than personal knowledge -- but this is more my world and perhaps I would think that.
These are only little caveats and not meant to be mean. It's a thoughtful piece of apologetics from a super talent. The church is the richer for people like Dr McLaughlin....more
This is an excellent and fascinating book. Ted Collins combines academic research and probably too much time spent on YouTube, with many personal expeThis is an excellent and fascinating book. Ted Collins combines academic research and probably too much time spent on YouTube, with many personal experiences, to give us an up-to-date and tempered account of Sufism, especially as lived out within British Islam. Collins' perspective is as a Christian researcher but I can imagine Sufis themselves reading this book with interest and without offence. It also undermines and destablizes much of what those of us who are not Muslims think we might already know about Islam--or at least the Islam that makes its way into our news. Collins paints a picture of experiential, light-seeking, community-focused and welcoming groups, and suggests this is a popular strand of Islam within the UK. Ted Collins is to be congratulated for wandering around in this world and sharing with us what he found. Full disclosure: I'm a friend of Ted's, and I write a lot of book reviews, but I was genuinely and deeply impressed by this short book. It is written particularly for people with a Christian background, but would work for all with an interest in a rounded picture of Islam in the UK. This is one of the best popular-level books on Islam I've ever read. ...more
viewed in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2021 For fans of Frank Peretti, here's a gritty, dramatic novel with added angels and demons.
Some bits worked beviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2021 For fans of Frank Peretti, here's a gritty, dramatic novel with added angels and demons.
Some bits worked better for me than others. I loved the dilemmas some of the characters got themselves in. It's easy just to use the word 'hypocrite' when people trying to live Christian lives find distinctly non-Christian desires surfacing. Chamberlain's treatment shows us humans more as a morass of internal arguments than people who know what's wrong and coolly set to do it. Not so much hypocrites, then, as people caught in the intersection of a Venn diagram, or a storm, and tugged in many directions. These descriptions of human struggles with goodness are more insightful and thoughtful than any amount of non fiction scriptural musings and are alone worth the entrance money. Other stuff worked less well for me. For example, the (dramatic) problem with good angels, and not just in this book, is that one word from the Most High and they can fix anything, thus sucking the drama out of a novel. In fairness, Chamberlain mostly resists that temptation. But I still find most fictional angels a little dull. It's hard to see a God who can create in the material world, for example, stilton cheese and three-toed sloths and toddlers suddenly becoming so pedestrian when he turns his hand to the spiritual realm. This is a problem as old as Milton, who was famously much better at bad angels, but still not resolved. And finally, though Chamberlain's characters are well formed, arguably, one or two seemed unusually gifted at explaining things or moving the plot on at convenient moments.
Andy Chamberlain does have a gift of plonking you into a world that you find yourself thinking about even when you should be doing other things, and of asking big questions, and he writes like someone who has learnt his craft and style. I can see why other reviewers rave over it.
I received this book as a free copy and was very happy to supply an honest review. ...more
This is a brave, enjoyable, eye-opening and complex book. A lot of it seems to have been sparked by a single compliance officer who spilled the beans This is a brave, enjoyable, eye-opening and complex book. A lot of it seems to have been sparked by a single compliance officer who spilled the beans to Tom Burgis about the money washing he observed.
So much to think about from this book. The way illicit money comes to London (among other places) and finds no shortage of people ready to overlook its origins and help its owners spend it, account for it, wash it clean, and pass it on. How hard it is (even as a compliance officer) to oppose the money-sucking culture around you. The way thuggishness lies not far below the surface. The way greed taints everything. The way companies are looted by their owners, rather than the whole workforce benefiting equally, or profits being reinvested to make the company itself and its workers even more productive and happy.
I found odd echoes of this book with Trollope's 1875 'The Way We Live Now' and it is depressing to think that the City has been doing this stuff for 150 years and all of us in the UK have benefited from it and offered a place in the Establishment to anyone with the right amount of moolah, regardless of origin.
As I write this, the Central Asian company at the heart of this book is suing the UK's Serious Fraud Office, I think, mainly for the Serious Fraud Office uncovering serious fraud. (This is not, you can imagine the thinking, the kind of thing government agencies do back in Central Asia.) It is a shark-vs-minnow battle, with the SFO and its limited budget playing the minnow part. On both sides, happy British lawyers anticipate many hours of highly chargeable work, to be recycled into private education for the children and skiing holidays.
I found the detail in this book both (a) hard to grasp and (b) necessary; and I appreciated the way Tom Burgis gaves us little pen-portraits of the main actors. A fine, brave, important and necessary book. Hard to write I imagine; harder still to figure out how to right the wrongs it describes....more
This is an inspiring book. Traditional news outlets have been damaged by the internet, conspiracies fester on social networks, and unpopular truths geThis is an inspiring book. Traditional news outlets have been damaged by the internet, conspiracies fester on social networks, and unpopular truths get branded as 'fake news'.
'We are Bellingcat' is an internet-driven pushback to all this, describing a group of people collaborating to scrape public-domain information and put it together into credible, verified reporting. This is a world of geeky, sun-deprived, slightly obsessive laptop warriors piecing together clues from Islamic State videos, pictures on social networks, Google Earth and many other sources to sniff out the internet trails left by state security forces and other dodgy actors. Their reports have made news and embarrassed governments.
As newsrooms around the world are being dismantled, this shows that verified, objective, careful reporting can still flourish in the earth, even in the hands of amateurs. This detailed story of the rise and early successes of Bellingcat is a really worthwhile read. ...more
The strength of this excellent book is that Bill Gates lays out a clear framework for the need to get to net zero emissions, describing all the main cThe strength of this excellent book is that Bill Gates lays out a clear framework for the need to get to net zero emissions, describing all the main causes, the progress already in reducing them, the challenges still to be faced. He gives ways to assess likely costs and likely significance of any reported advance. Digesting it, you have a context to fit everything you subsequently read about the subject.
It's geeky. But then, so are a lot of us. It is also susceptible to being disrupted by technologies yet to be deployed widely; I was surprised that there was little on tapping geothermal energy with horizontal drilling techniques derived from fracking. In some places on the internet, people are getting excited about that.
Also a little distressing to see other eco-warriors dismissing Gates because, for example, he's got more house or farmland than he needs and he likes cheeseburgers. Or because he's richer or more successful than they are. Climate change activism is a religion, and it's not tolerant of other sects. This is a good book. My audio version was gamely read by Will Wheaton (ex of Star Trek?), who gallantly tried to make Bill Gates' sentences more exciting than they actually are, but it was a decent listen....more
This book is the distillation of years of thoughtful teaching (at Regent College in Vancouver) and it shows. Whereas many books of Christian teaching This book is the distillation of years of thoughtful teaching (at Regent College in Vancouver) and it shows. Whereas many books of Christian teaching are worked-up sermons, this feels more like a boiled-down course and would be enormous fun to work through in a group setting over a term or so. The diagnosis (my analogy, not his) is that the Church is like a cruise liner with the tide having gone out. Crew and passengers are busy trying to keep everything going. But really, rather than hoping for the tide to come back in, we need to engage with the new reality.
I am reluctant to summarize a b0ok that is so measured and thoughful, but it seems that the beaching of the Church is mostly an opportunity and call to re-think our view of the world, realize that Christians are already distributed widely through it, and for us all to learn how to follow Christ in whatever places we've landed. We should be ambassadors, he argues, and not the sort of ambassadors who are just dishing out a few passports; the kind who are engaging with the culture's stories and helping compose new ones. The apostle Paul talked about the church as 'pillar and foundation' of the truth, and so it became in the Roman Empire, supplanting the previous cultural settlement.
In terms of a book trying to engage seriously with the teaching of the Bible and contemporary church and its mission, rich with further avenues to explore, this is about the best thing I have read in years. ...more
Suzanne Heywood's chapter titles mirror her husband Jeremy's (whose story this is) favourite songs. She resists any temptation to call one of the BrexSuzanne Heywood's chapter titles mirror her husband Jeremy's (whose story this is) favourite songs. She resists any temptation to call one of the Brexit chapters 'Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right' or even to include this lyric from the same song: 'I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs.'
This book is a political memoir of Jeremy Heywood's long stint serving four prime ministers as a senior civil servant, and a personal memoir of he and his wife's joint struggle with the cancer that finally ended his life. As political biographies go, Suzanne Heyward's is free of the score-settling and peacockery that often perhaps blights the genre. Its 500-plus pages, dense with the relived policy debates of two decades, might be a shade too wonkish for some, but I enjoyed it.
The more personal parts show in an unintended and unfussy way that Jeremy Heywood was blessed with a wife as gifted and loyal as himself. She keeps herself in the background in this book, but it does lead you to wonder just how many people successfully combine, as she did, being a senior partner at McKinsey with cooking tea and sorting out the children while waiting for a spouse to return home late because he was rescuing the country from a ditch. It's moving, then, to watch her shove aside heaven and earth to prolong her husband's life, even while he resented all treatments as reminders of his sickness and interruptions in his schedule. The result is a book that celebrates life and talent and duty, made my eyes sting a few times, and is quite a lot of fun as well.
Jeremy Hayward's illness happened in parallel with the metastizing populism that overtook and sickened our body politic. Let us hope we can all find a way back to the intellectual brilliance, the compromise, the patience and the moderation that is the best of our country and that he did so much to uphold.
One piece of fluff on the carpet: I read this as an ebook borrowed from the library. It's rather astonishing that the publishers couldn't be bothered to do a proper index. Since there is already an index for the paper copy, this would be about one afternoon's work for an intern. Are the publishers (a) complacent, (b) lazy or (c) inept? Perhaps there is an option (d) somewhere. I wasn't impressed though, in this small way letting down a scrupulous author and (perhaps the publishers remember these) loyal and gentle readers. ...more
That difficult second book about the Silk Roads... Peter Frankopan brings his historian's skills, wide reading, and interest-filled prose to a descripThat difficult second book about the Silk Roads... Peter Frankopan brings his historian's skills, wide reading, and interest-filled prose to a description of the present state of the Silk Roads. My audio edition was excellently narrated too. This book is good and full of interest and eye-opening; it just pales in comparison with the first one. His first book succeeded as bringing about almost a Copernican revolution in viewing world history. This second only gives you the sort of stuff you could garner from clipping stuff froma bunch of worthy periodicals and broadsheets.
It also suffers from being written in the era of Trump, which is like trying to write something in your best handwriting during an earthquake, and it further suffers, more seriously in my view, for being a little too credulous about China's Belt and Road initiative--for all his cautious hedging Peter Frankopan does rather step into the common pitfall of believing that plans and announcements almost amount to reality.
And Frankopan is definitely too credulous about Russian technology. So the Russians are developing an autonomous, battlefield nurse ...that sounds like a major advance only if you want to finish off the long-suffering Red Army for good. Imagine lying wounded, desperate for rescue, and then hearing the marrow-chilling rattle of an approaching mechanical nurse. 'Vanya, I am programmed to insert a catheter!'
More importantly, Frankopan appears not to mention the way China's working age population has already peaked, the way its population will soon start to fall, its rising dependency ratio, the poverty of its education system outside the great cities, and the way it is in all those ways under-prepared to leave the so-called middle income trap. Eighty percent of China's workers are unskilled according to a recent Economist article: what are they going to do when assembling things from parts moves somewhere cheaper? These are big questions: maybe Xi's China will be up to them, maybe it won't, certainly if you're writing about 'the future' of the Silk Road, as his optimistic publishers claim he was, you should be mentioning them.
Still though--entertaining, erudite, eye-opening. Just not brilliant....more
Think: SF written by a millenial; a quest; and a plot with shades of Firefly and perhaps a zillion other novels (crew of talented misfits in spaceshipThink: SF written by a millenial; a quest; and a plot with shades of Firefly and perhaps a zillion other novels (crew of talented misfits in spaceship).
I'd better add quickly though (because the author is properly good with a sword, and hawks, and I don't want to be disembowelled all that much or fed to raptors) that it's an enjoyable read. Her tech and aliens are dazzling and I love the way everyone has issues and some swap gender. I was raised on the SF of the 1950s and 1960s where everyone's white, hetero, male and kinda leftover from the military. This is fresh and mind-stretching, a rollercoaster read; first of a series, but that doesn't spoil anything. ...more
David Bodanis is a good storyteller and this is an entertaining and fascinating set of stories, all reinforcing the idea that good people (don't) finiDavid Bodanis is a good storyteller and this is an entertaining and fascinating set of stories, all reinforcing the idea that good people (don't) finish last. How did Danny Boyle keep the London Olympics' opening ceremony secret, despite its cast of thousands, its embedded tabloid journalists, and his decision not to use non-disclosure agreements? How do you compare the lives and choices of Goebels and FDR, contemporaries and adversaries? This is all excellent stuff.
Less convincing is his attempt to distill general principles from these stories. But there's plenty here to justify the entrance money. Super, even inspiring, book for a cynical age. ...more
This is a joint biography of an informal network of inventors, thinkers, tinkerers, builders and industrialists from the English Midlands in the eightThis is a joint biography of an informal network of inventors, thinkers, tinkerers, builders and industrialists from the English Midlands in the eighteenth century. It's not that much of a stretch to call their output the 'Midlands Enlightenment.' As Jenny Uglow puts it: 'this small group of friends really was at the leading edge of its time in science, in industry, and in the arts, even in agriculture.'
It is fascinating. Here's Erasmus Darwin, the doctor, travelling 10,000 miles a year in a carriage, and Joseph Priestly, born near me, gassing mice, and Josiah Wedgewood, who started with £10 and built an empire. (Darwin's son and Wedgewood's daughter produced a certain Charles Darwin and he married another Wedgewood granddaughter, Emma.) Best of all, it drops you into the eighteenth century and teems with its detail, and you can sniff the revolution, the wars with the French, the upheaval, the urbanisation, the clank of James Watt's and Matthew Boulton's steam engines. John Wesley doesn't ride past on a horse, but he could've, and Boswell and Johnson aren't so far away. Meanwhile, everything is being invented.
Jenny Uglow's book is a heroic compendium. Just possibly a bit too much eighteenth century in its own length and fascinations. I think I preferred the pace and excitement of Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (which describes an overlapping but later era) and which outdoes this volume in verve, scope and wonder. But that's a high bar. This was a lovely, fascinating, enjoyable read....more
This is an autobiographical accound of a physician discovering more and more about the damage that childhood trauma brings, as she develops, more and This is an autobiographical accound of a physician discovering more and more about the damage that childhood trauma brings, as she develops, more and more, a clinic to investigate it and to work towards a cure.
It is magnificent, or perhaps Dr Harris is. It dropped a body of thought into my head that forever changes how I look at people.
I have worked a little with young people caught up in crime, and among people with long-term disabilities. It is astonishing how often childhood trauma forms part of these people's lives. To see this book read widely and applied widely would, IMHO, do a world of good. ...more
Look. Outside it was dark, a virus was colonizing people's bodies, making trillions of copies of itself, ejecting itself as spume and being carried arLook. Outside it was dark, a virus was colonizing people's bodies, making trillions of copies of itself, ejecting itself as spume and being carried around the world on snot-smears. Virus-ravaged human bodies were blocking up hospital corridors while dementia-wracked or learning disabled people were dying in solitary sorrow and not knowing why. They were hiring refrigerated vans in New York to hold the dead while the President was returning from golf trips and urging people to drink bleach. Governments were spending money like drunken sailors. It's 2020. Why not reach for a book you've known of for twenty years and find it to be a sane, simple, sunny book about life in Andalucia. No it's not a massively challenging read. It's a happy read. Next question....more
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