Authors Christmas Recommendations 2021 - Part II
Welcome to part II of a special series of posts in the run up to the holiday season! I asked some of the lovely authors that have previously appeared on the site about their Christmas book recommendations for this year. They graciously replied with some fantastic book picks! (Read Part I here)
Hopefully these book recommendations might help you with your own Christmas shopping gift ideas too! :-)
Q. Is there a smart thinking book that you are looking forward to reading this Christmas, or one you would like to give or receive as a gift?
Emily Kenway
Radical Help by Hilary Cottam.
Radical Help should be at the top of people's reading lists who are interested in building a better future for ourselves and the next generations. Cottam is a highly respected and award winning social designer - in Radical Help, she lays out a bold but entirely doable vision for a new version of our welfare state which can meet the challenges of today. She tells the stories of projects she's piloted, drawing engaging pen portraits of the people she's met and supported, and supplementing that with hard data that proves the efficacy and feasibility of what she's suggesting. It is the kind of fearless commonsense we desperately need from our political leadership and a real insight into what a better way forward could look like. I've read it twice!
Radical Help: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare State
Review from Book Depository:
How should we live: how should we care for one another; grow our capabilities to work, to learn, to love and fully realise our potential? This exciting and ambitious book shows how we can re-design the welfare state for this century.
The welfare state was revolutionary: it lifted thousands out of poverty, provided decent homes, good education and security. But it is out of kilter now: an elaborate and expensive system of managing needs and risks. Today we face new challenges. Our resources have changed.
Hilary Cottam takes us through five 'Experiments' to show us a new design. We start on a Swindon housing estate where families who have spent years revolving within our current welfare systems are supported to design their own way out. We spend time with young people who are helped to make new connections - with radical results. We turn to the question of good health care and then to the world of work and see what happens when people are given different tools to make change. Then we see those over sixty design a new and affordable system of support.
At the heart of this way of working is human connection. Upending the current crisis of managing scarcity, we see instead that our capacities for the relationships that can make the changes are abundant.
We must work with individuals, families and communities to grow the core capabilities we all need to flourish. Radical Help describes the principles behind the approach, the design process that makes the work possible and the challenges of transition. It is bold - and above all, practical. It is not a book of dreams. It is about concrete new ways of organising that already have been developing across Britain. Radical Help creates a new vision and a radically different approach that can take care of us once more, from cradle to grave.
Buy On:
Easons €13.99 Book Depository €9.76 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $11.05(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Truth About Modern Slavery
Review from Waterstones:
In 2019, over 10,000 possible victims of slavery were found in the UK. From men working in Sports Direct warehouses for barely any pay, to teenaged Vietnamese girls trafficked into small town nail bars, we're told that modern slavery is all around us, operating in plain sight.
But is this really slavery, and is it even a new phenomenon? Why has the British Conservative Party called it 'one of the great human rights issues of our time', when they usually ignore the exploitation of those at the bottom of the economic pile? The Truth About Modern Slavery reveals how modern slavery has been created as a political tool by those in power. It shows how anti-slavery action acts as a moral cloak, hiding the harms of the 'hostile environment' towards migrants, legitimising big brands' exploitation of the poorest workers and oppressing sex workers.
Blaming the media's complicity, rich philanthropists' opportunism and our collective failure to realise the lies we're being told, The Truth About Modern Slavery provides a vital challenge to conventional narratives on modern slavery.
Buy On:
Easons €20.99 Book Depository €16.73 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $16.91(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Tristan Gooley
I’m looking forward to reading A Revolution of Feeling by Rachel Hewitt. It’s a period that I find endlessly fascinating. My work relies on scientific principles, but the interconnections I find in nature’s signs point towards an extraordinary world better reflected in Romanticism. I’m hoping this book will inspire on both fronts.
A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade That Forged the Modern Mind
Review From Book Depository:
In the 1790s, Britain underwent what the politician Edmund Burke called 'the most important of all revolutions...a revolution in sentiments'. Inspired by the French Revolution, British radicals concocted new political worlds to enshrine healthier, more productive, human emotions and relationships. The Enlightenment's wildest hopes crested in the utopian projects of such optimists - including the young poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the physician Thomas Beddoes and the first photographer Thomas Wedgwood - who sought to reform sex, education, commerce, politics and medicine by freeing desire from repressive constraints.
But by the middle of the decade, the wind had changed. The French Revolution descended into bloody Terror and the British government quashed radical political activities. In the space of one decade, feverish optimism gave way to bleak disappointment, and changed the way we think about human need and longing.
A Revolution of Feeling is a vivid and absorbing account of the dramatic end of the Enlightenment, the beginning of an emotional landscape preoccupied by guilt, sin, failure, resignation and repression, and the origins of our contemporary approach to feeling and desire. Above all, it is the story of the human cost of political change, of men and women consigned to the 'wrong side of history'. But although their revolutionary proposals collapsed, that failure resulted in its own cultural revolution - a revolution of feeling - the aftershocks of which are felt to the present day.
Buy On:
Book Depository €27.65 Waterstones £25.00 Wordery $27.15(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Secret World of Weather : How to Read Signs in Every Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop
Review from Waterstones:
The weather changes as we walk around a tree or turn down a street. There is a secret world of weather - one that we all live in, but very few see.
Each day we pass dozens of small weather signs that reveal what the weather is doing all around us - and what is about to happen. The clues are easy to spot when you know how, but remain invisible to most people.
In The Secret World of Weather you'll discover the simple rules that explain the weather signs. And you'll learn rare skills that enhance every minute you spend outdoors, whether you are in a town, on a beach or in a wilder spot.
As the author of the international bestsellers THE WALKER'S GUIDE and HOW TO READ WATER, Tristan Gooley knows how to de-code the phenomena and signs to look for. As he says, 'I want you to get to know these signs as I have, as characters. By studying their habits and behaviours, the signs come to life and the meaning reveals itself. From this flows an ability to read what is happening and what is about to happen'.
This is the ultimate guide to exploring an undiscovered world, one that hides in front of our eyes.
Buy On:
Book Depository €10.74 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $23.00(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Tim Harford
Ananyo Bhattacharya's The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann - a stupendous biography.
The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
Review From Book Depository:
The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Self-replicating moon bases and nuclear weapons. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable man: John von Neumann.
Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. His colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet - bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory. He created the first ever programmable digital computer. He prophesied the potential of nanotechnology and, from his deathbed, expounded on the limits of brains and computers - and how they might be overcome.
Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through so many different fields of science, sparking revolutions wherever he went.
Insightful and illuminating, The Man from the Future is a thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.
Buy On:
Book Depository €19.16 Waterstones £20.00 Wordery $20.23(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Next Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy
Review from Book Depository:
In Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, the revolutionary, acclaimed book, radio series and podcast, bestselling economist Tim Harford introduced us to a selection of fifty radical inventions that changed the world.
Now, in this new book, Harford once again brings us an array of remarkable, memorable, curious and often unexpected 'things' - inventions that teach us lessons by turns intimate and sweeping about the complex world economy we live in today.
From the brick, blockchain and the bicycle to fire, the factory and fundraising, and from solar PV and the pencil to the postage stamp, this brilliant and enlightening collection resonates, fascinates and stimulates. It is a wonderful blend of insight and inspiration from one of Britain's finest non-fiction storytellers.
Buy On:
Book Depository €9.52 Waterstones £8.49 Wordery $13.49(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Tom Bergin
A book I will be buying as a gift this Christmas is Putin's People by Catherine Belton. It's a rollercoaster of a read and an important record of the transformation of Russia under Vladimir Putin. The book has ruffled feathers in the Kremlin and prompted a rash of litigation from parties with links to the Russian government. The aggressive response threatens investigative reporting in the West, so buying the book represents a small stand for press freedom.
Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
Review From Book Depository:
A chilling and revelatory expose of the KGB's renaissance, Putin's rise to power, and how Russian black cash is subverting the world.
In Putin's People, former Moscow correspondent and investigative journalist Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and his entourage of KGB men seized power in Russia and built a new league of oligarchs.
Through exclusive interviews with key inside players, Belton tells how Putin's people conducted their relentless seizure of private companies, took over the economy, siphoned billions, blurred the lines between organised crime and political powers, shut down opponents, and then used their riches and power to extend influence in the West.
In a story that ranges from Moscow to London, Switzerland and Trump's America, Putin's People is a gripping and terrifying account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.
Buy On:
Easons €14.00 Book Depository €11.20 Waterstones £8.49 Wordery $12.67(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Free Lunch Thinking: How Economics Ruins the Economy
Review from Book Depository:
Economic theories and models shape our everyday lives. They are relied on by politicians when tax rises or cuts are being considered. They inform debates about everything from bonuses for CEOs to minimum wage rates to the level of job protection enshrined in law. They determine what levels of tobacco or petrol duty are charged, and influence government approaches to issues as diverse as obesity and climate change.
The question is: are policy makers right to be so slavishly reliant on them? Tom Bergin is sceptical, and in Free Lunch Thinking he subjects eight of the most prevalent economic mantras to close scrutiny, assessing how they play out in practice. Again and again, he shows how individuals, companies and markets fail to respond to policy changes as theory predicts. He exposes the missed opportunities and wasted resources that result. And by tracing the development of key economic tenets, he demonstrates how their champions' tendency to believe in phenomena for which they have little hard evidence leaves accepted economic wisdom frequently being more about faith than facts.
His book both exposes and challenges lazy thinking. It also sets out a path for more considered future.
Buy On:
Book Depository €27.29 Waterstones £17.99 Wordery $19.91(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Angela Saini
I'm looking forward to reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. One of my regrets is that I never met Graeber before he passed away. He was a remarkable, radical thinker.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Review From Book Depository:
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.
Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume.
The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action.
Buy On:
Book Depository €140.14 Waterstones £26.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Superior: The Return of Race Science
Review from Book Depository:
Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean? In an age of identity politics, DNA ancestry testing and the rise of the far-right, a belief in biological differences between populations is experiencing a resurgence. The truth is: race is a social construct. Our problem is we find this hard to believe.
In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini investigates the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of the belief that race is real, and that some groups of people are superior to others.
Buy On:
Easons €14.00 Book Depository €9.72 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $12.13(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Niamh Fitzpatrick
The book I think would be a beautiful book for Christmas as a present for someone else or for yourself, is The Gift, by Dr Edith Eger.
Compact, easy to read, with key points highlighted at the end of each chapter, this thought provoking book is packed with meaningful nuggets of wisdom which will inspire, encourage and comfort.
The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life
Review From Book Depository:
This practical and inspirational guide to healing from the bestselling author of The Choice shows us how to release your self-limiting beliefs and embrace your potential.
The prison is in your mind. The key is in your pocket.
In the end, it's not what happens to us that matters most - it's what we choose to do with it. We all face suffering - sadness, loss, despair, fear, anxiety, failure. But we also have a choice; to give in and give up in the face of trauma or difficulties, or to live every moment as a gift.
Celebrated therapist and Holocaust survivor, Dr Edith Eger, provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the imprisoning thoughts and destructive behaviours that may be holding us back. Accompanied by stories from Eger's own life and the lives of her patients her empowering lessons help you to see your darkest moments as your greatest teachers and find freedom through the strength that lies within.
Buy On:
Book Depository €8.85 Waterstones £8.99 Wordery $11.50(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Tell Me The Truth About Loss: A Psychologist’s Personal Story of Loss, Grief and Finding Hope
Review from Book Depository:
A beautiful and hopeful book for when life isn't what you expect it to be.
In March 2017, Niamh Fitzpatrick's life fell apart overnight. Her beloved sister Dara was killed in a helicopter crash. Soon afterwards, Niamh's marriage disintegrated, and she feared she would lose her house, beside her remaining family. Life as she knew it had ended and the cumulative loss, in terms of impact, was staggering.
A psychologist for many years, Niamh guides clients on their journey to overcome the worst of times in their lives. She had to draw on this skillset herself, first to survive and then, in time, begin to thrive after such significant loss. Tell Me the Truth About Loss documents a psychologist's journey through loss, grief and the hardest of times, finding hope along the way.
Buy On:
Easons €13.99 Book Depository €15.57 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $17.63(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Huge thanks & míle buíochas to Emily, Tristan, Tim, Tom, Angela, & Niamh for their great Christmas book picks!
Watch out next week for Part III of the series with more author recommendations :-)
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Brown Book Group (Radical Help, The Next Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy), Pluto Press (The Truth About Modern Slavery), Granta Books (A Revolution of Feeling), Hodder & Stoughton (The Secret World of Weather), Penguin Books Ltd (The Man From The Future), Little, HarperCollins Publishers (Putin's People, Superior), Cornerstone (Free Lunch Thinking), The Dawn of Everything), Ebury Publishing (The Gift), Gill (Tell Me The Truth About Loss).
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