Category: Books

Books, Health and Safety1 Comment

Eluded emotions

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In Sociopath,  confessions of a wife, mother and cat-choker having dark urges of stealing for thrills, joyrides, and gate-crashing at strangers’ funerals  – all a fascinating first-hand account of antisocial personality disorder. After the pencil attack she decided to steer clear of violence- not because she felt bad but because it attracted too much attention. She resolved  to finding ways of dealing with her anxiety that would allow her to fly beneath the radar. Named as the most anticipated book of 2024 by Vulture, LitHub, The Guardian, and Cosmopolitan. A fascinating and revelatory memoir revealing the author’s struggle to come to terms with … Continue reading Eluded emotions

Books1 Comment

Revival of old dreams: unfinished love story  with America

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Doris Kearns, one of America’s most beloved historians, a genuine public intellectual whose writings were inspected by fellow scholars but also weigh on public policy and popular culture. Her history of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, Team of Rivals, won academic prizes, and even influenced Barack Obama, who cited it after including a former primary opponent ( Hillary Clinton) and a member of the outgoing Republican administration (Robert Gates) in his national security team.  In an Unfinished Love Story, she artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history and takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband Richard (Dick) Goodwin … Continue reading Revival of old dreams: unfinished love story  with America

Books, Finance1 Comment

Growth & innovation allowed people to escape cycles of boom and bust

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Economic growth has freed billions from poverty in the past two decades and made our lives far healthier and longer, resulting in the unfettered pursuit of growth  defining economic life around the world. However, this prosperity has come at an enormous price: deepening inequalities, destabilizing technologies, environmental destruction and climate change. Daniel Susskind, economist, argues that too few people understand growth and many in our era of sluggish productivity, the worry is slowing growth – in the UK, Europe, China and elsewhere – and reversing this stagnation is the goal of every politician. Some eco-warriors think there’s too much of … Continue reading Growth & innovation allowed people to escape cycles of boom and bust

Books, technology1 Comment

Surveillance capitalism: How tech giants “capture” users

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Did you know in the complex world of modern capitalism, where technology giants reign supreme, from Google and Apple to Amazon and Tencent, these internet behemoths have reshaped the economic landscape, transforming capitalism as we know it.  Philipp Staab in Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism, takes us on a thought-provoking journey through the virtual realm, exploring how digital surveillance and evaluation practices have infiltrated every aspect of our lives. Big Tech companies operate a corporate monopoly with government blessing, a “privatised mercantilism” operating through “proprietary markets”.  Billions of users of digital technology greatly value often free services they get. … Continue reading Surveillance capitalism: How tech giants “capture” users

Books, Finance, Health and Safety1 Comment

AI says NO…

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“ A corporation, or a government department isn’t a conscious being,  but it is an artificial Intelligence, it has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it. And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad”. Big organisations often make terrible decisions, and how the world lost its mind, have you ever waited for a board to fight recently?  When to avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generates outcomes that everyone … Continue reading AI says NO…

Books, Health and Safety, technology1 Comment

Smartphones, gaming, Sleep deprivation and addiction rewiring childhood

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Social psychologist, professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Jonathan Haidt,  reveals why have rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide risen so sharply, more than doubling in many cases in recent years. Haidt’s International bestselling author of the Righteous Mind  (2012, looking at the role of emotion and reason in moral convictions) and The Coddling of the American Mind, (2018, co-written with Greg Lukianoff describing a culture of “Safetyism” in which helicopter parents and educators protect their young charges from potential har, including even thoughts), Haidt argues that the decline of free-play in childhood … Continue reading Smartphones, gaming, Sleep deprivation and addiction rewiring childhood

Books, Secret Places1 Comment

Every Pilgrimage is unique

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Travel writer Oliver Smith takes us to sacred travel made across time, from murmurs  of ritual journeys in the depth of Ice Age to new pilgrimages of the 21st century finding sanctity in remote peninsulas and holy islands. He embarks on an epic adventure across sacred British landscapes – climbing into remote sea caves, sleeping inside Neolithic tombs, scaling forgotten holy mountains and once marooning himself at sea, following holy roads to churches, cathedrals and standing stones, this evocative and enlightening travelogue explores places prehistoric, pagan and Christian, but also reveals how football stadiums and music festivals have become contemporary … Continue reading Every Pilgrimage is unique

Books, Films, Music1 Comment

Blues Brothers comic star Belushi self-destructed aged 33

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The story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. “They’re not going to catch us”, Dan Ackroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi, “We’re on a mission from God”. So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage, Ackroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honour the then-seemingly forgotten … Continue reading Blues Brothers comic star Belushi self-destructed aged 33

Books, Films1 Comment

Amid lechery and prejudice, Wong became Hollywood’s first Asian-American star

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Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Asian-American film star, was 19, when she caught the eye of then screen hero Douglas Fairbanks. He thought that she would be perfect for the role of a sultry Mongol slave in The Thief of Bagdad (1924), one of the extravagant films of the silent era.  Douglas had to show her how play a Hollywood-style oriental. “ This is the way we Americans walk” striding briskly  and confidently before  slowing down, as if in an opium-induced trance, “but this is the way the orientals walk.” It was not easy being an east Asian actress in … Continue reading Amid lechery and prejudice, Wong became Hollywood’s first Asian-American star

Books, Royal Family1 Comment

Culture of Cruelty, hopelessness and abandonment

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Charles Spencer’s  recount the trauma of being sent away from home at the age of eight to attend a boarding school, where a culture of cruelty prevailed in the antiquated boarding school system. He reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, exploring the long-standing impact of his experience.  Privately educated posh boys are blamed for the country’s current mess. The Labour Party … Continue reading Culture of Cruelty, hopelessness and abandonment