This was fun! I think it is my first book review of someone I actually know – having met Leigh Phillips randomly on a Eurostar to Brussels one terribly early morning a few years ago. Leigh’s book is a no-holds barred assault on de-growth, small is beautiful, return to the land ideologies. It is a … Continue reading
Category Archives: Non fiction
Book review: Population wars
I very much enjoy reading (and listening) to anything written by Greg Graffin, so I guess I’m the perfect audience for his most recent book, Population Wars: a new perspective on competition and coexistence. It’s a tour through biology, zoology and anthropology to argue the points of environmental stewardship, that population wars rarely read to … Continue reading
Book review: A Great Game
About halfway through this book, I looked at the author’s inset and realised that it was written by Canada’s current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Oops. It apparently took 8 years to write, with lots of other people helping with the research. I don’t doubt that he wrote a lot of it, because the language feels … Continue reading
Book review: Thinking, fast and slow
I imagine if you’ve been to the airport or any bookstore that has best seller lists, you’ve come across Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, fast and slow. You might think it’s one of those easy pop-psych books that you can read in the plane, but it’s rather more tough than that. It makes you think and then … Continue reading
Book review: The power of knowledge
This is not a book for the faint of heart. My version is a giant hardcover that runs at 412 pages but feels more like 800. It is big. It is long. However, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t interesting. Or at least, large parts of it. The central thesis is that the accumulation of … Continue reading
Book review: A slip of the keyboard
I remember I bought this book when out adventuring in the Lake District. It is the kind of book you buy on holiday. I have read so much Terry Pratchett. I think I’m only one short of reading all of the Discworld. If there was a literary character that I could somehow make real it … Continue reading
Book review: Do it Like a Woman
Like all good books, Caroline Criado-Perez’s book left me both utterly aghast at injustice but equally uplifted by those brave women who look at injustice in the face and tell it to go fuck itself. In equal measure, I was either frowning and perplexed at the incredibly awful things that have happened to women (or … Continue reading
