Authors Christmas Recommendations 2021 - Part IV
Welcome to part IV (& final) 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 & Part II here & Part III 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?
Amit Katwala
I haven't read a lot this year as I've been writing another book, but I would recommend The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – it's from the early twentieth century, and explores the labour conditions in the factories and abattoirs of Chicago's infamous stockyards. It's fictional, but based on real reporting by the author – and there are echoes of some of the current questionable working practices that have arisen since the advent of the gig economy.
The Jungle
Review from Book Depository:
The Jungle by the American journalist and novelist (1878-1968) Upton Sinclair is a 1906 novel. The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Sinclair's primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States. However, most readers were more concerned with several passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat packing industry during the early 20th century, which greatly contributed to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.
Sinclair said of the public reaction, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."The book depicts working-class poverty, lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."Sinclair was considered a muckraker, a journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the newspaper, and it was published as a book by Doubleday in 1906.
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Easons €15.39 Book Depository €19.99 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $18.35(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Quantum Computing (WIRED GUIDES): How It Works and How It Could Change the World
An interesting read that frames the possibilities & opportunities that quantum computing may unleash, within the real constraints & current progress of development in the field. This book is a useful stepping stone for anyone who wants to learn more about quantum computing, past the simplification of a three state qubit, and into an introduction to implementation methods & initial applications.
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Book Depository €9.41 Waterstones £8.99 Wordery $11.06(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Debby Irving
My holiday recommendation is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Don’t be fooled by the title! I am science-challenged and I loved, loved, loved this book. It’s a beautiful combination of personal story, Indigenous culture, dominant white culture, and how all three interact.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Review From Book Depository:
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two ways of knowledge together.
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings - asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass - offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
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Easons €13.99 Book Depository €12.43 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $11.97(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race
Review from Book Depository:
For twenty-five years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts to reach out to students and families of color left her wondering what she was missing.
Then, in 2009, one "aha!" moment launched an adventure of discovery and insight that drastically shifted her worldview and upended her life plan. In Waking Up White, Irving tells her often cringe-worthy story with such openness that readers will turn every page rooting for her-and ultimately for all of us.
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Book Depository €14.96 Waterstones £15.50 Wordery $16.91(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Michael Spitzer
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
This book blew my mind. An intellectual feast which will turn your view of world history upside down.
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.
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Book Depository €29.45 Waterstones £26.99 Wordery $28.83(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth
Review from Book Depository:
165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm.
66 million years ago came the first melody.
40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument.
Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story.
The Musical Human takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages - from Bach to BTS and back - to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, looking at music in our everyday lives; music in world history; and music in evolution, from insects to apes, humans to AI.
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Book Depository €29.83 Waterstones £30.00 Wordery $29.09(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Anne Karpf
The Dark Interval, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Letters for the Grieving Heart', is a short disquisition on death and attitudes to it that promises to offer treasures on every page. Like this on page 1: "We must learn to die."
What I particularly resist in so many self-improving books is the promise (or should that be threat?) of perfectibility: how to overcome all your flaws and doubts and travel to the uplands of positive thinking. I like the very (different) title of Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance, which proposes Buddhist practice as a way of modifying fear and shame: instead of focusing on the new improved you, she advocates acceptance of this old, imperfect one.
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Review From Book Depository:
From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy's quest for wealth and love
His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world's pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation--and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man's journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over "rising Asia." It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.
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Book Depository €10.14 Waterstones £8.99 Wordery $10.13(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Dark Interval: Letters for the Grieving Heart
Review From Book Depository:
Throughout his life, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke addressed letters to individuals who were close to him, who had contacted him after reading his works, or who he had met briefly - anyone with whom he felt an inner connection. Within his vast correspondence, there are about two dozen letters of condolence. In these direct, personal and practical letters, Rilke writes about loss and mortality, assuming the role of a sensitive, serious and uplifting guide through life's difficulties. He consoles a friend on the loss of her nephew, which she experienced like the loss of her own child; a mentor on the death of her dog; and an acquaintance struggling to cope with the end of a friendship. The result is a profound vision of mourning and a meditation on the role of pain in our lives, as well as a soothing guide for how to get through it.
Where things become truly difficult and unbearable, we find ourselves in a place already very close to its transformation...
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Easons €18.20 Book Depository €10.82 Waterstones £12.99 Wordery $14.13(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
Review From Book Depository: For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn't take much--just hearing of someone else's accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully.
Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she leads us to trust our innate goodness, showing how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion that is the essence of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships. When we stop being at war with ourselves, we are free to live fully every precious moment of our lives.
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Easons €15.39 Book Depository €13.29 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $15.52(All links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
How Women Can Save The Planet
Review from Book Depository:
Here's a perverse truth: from New Orleans to Bangladesh, women--especially poor women of colour--are suffering most from a crisis they have done nothing to cause. Yet where, in environmental policy, are the voices of elderly European women dying in heatwaves? Of African girls dropping out of school due to drought? Our highest-profile climate activists are women and girls; but, at the top table, it's men deciding the earth's future.
We're not all in it together--but we could be. Instead of expecting individual women to save the planet, what we need are visionary, global climate policies that are gender-inclusive and promote gender equality.
Anne Karpf shines a light on the radical ideas, compelling research and tireless campaigns, led by and for women around the world, that have inspired her to hope. Her conversations with female activists show how we can fight back, with strength in diversity. And, faced with the most urgent catastrophe of our times, she offers a powerful vision: a Green New Deal for Women.
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Easons €20.99 Book Depository €18.29 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $20.87(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Rae Nudson
I can't wait to read Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League by Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo. Women have always been present in history, even when they weren't welcome, and Hail Mary will shed light on the women who played football and broke barriers in sports.
Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League
Review From Book Depository:
The groundbreaking story of the National Women's Football League, and the players whose spirit, rivalries, and tenacity changed the legacy of women's sports forever
In 1967, a Cleveland promoter recruited a group of women to compete as a traveling football troupe. It was conceived as a gimmick--in the vein of the Harlem Globetrotters--but the women who signed up really wanted to play. And they were determined to win.
Hail Mary chronicles the highs and lows of the National Women's Football League, which took root in nineteen cities across the US over the course of two decades. Drawing on new interviews with former players from the Detroit Demons, the Toledo Troopers, the LA Dandelions, and more, Hail Mary brings us into the stadiums where they broke records, the small-town lesbian bars where they were recruited, and the backrooms where the league was formed, championed, and eventually shuttered. In an era of vibrant second wave feminism and Title IX activism, the athletes of the National Women's Football League were boisterous pioneers on and off the field: you'll be rooting for them from start to finish.
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Book Depository €24.44(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
All Made Up: The Power and Pitfalls of Beauty Culture, from Cleopatra to Kim Kardashian
Review from Book Depository:
A fascinating journey through history and culture, examining how makeup affects self-empowerment, how people have used it to define (and defy) their roles in society, and why we all need to care
There is a history and a cultural significance that comes with wearing cat-eye-inspired liner or a bold red lip, one that many women feel to this day, even if we don't realize exactly why. Increasingly, people of all genders are wrestling with what it means to be a woman living in a patriarchy, and part of that is how looking like a woman--whatever that means--affects people's real lives.
Through the stories of famous women like Cleopatra, Empress Wu, Madam C. J. Walker, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marsha P. Johnson, Rae Nudson unpacks makeup's cultural impact--including how it can be used to shape a personal or cultural narrative, how often beauty standards align with whiteness, how and when it can be used for safety, and its function in the workplace, to name a few examples.
Every woman has had to make a very personal choice about her relationship with makeup, and consciously or unconsciously, every woman knows that the choice is never entirely hers to make. This book also holds space for complicating factors, especially the ways that beauty standards differ across race, class, and culture. Engaging and informative, All Made Up will expand the discussion around what it means to participate in creating your own self-image.
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Book Depository €18.27 Waterstones £20.00(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Alice Bell
A pair of books I recently gave a family of three kids under ten are Alom Shaha's science activities for kids, Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder and it's recent follow up on engineering, Mr Shaha's Marvellous Machines. I've read a lot of kids science activity books over the years, and these are some of the most delightful, finding fresh joy in some classic activities and games and lovely illustrations from Emily Robertson. Alom's science lessons are always a lot more than just science, or just for those kids who already love science, and with Marvellous Machines in particular he's keen readers don't just play around with engineering ideas, but learn to make toys for themselves and their siblings and friends too. A perfect Christmas gift.
Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder: adventures in science round the kitchen table
Review from Book Depository:
Why does the ...? What is ...? How does ...?
Don't worry if you don't know the answers, you soon will!
Every child can be a scientist with the help of Mr Shaha and his recipes for wonder!
Turn a rainy day at home or a walk in the park into a chance to experiment. All you need are a few simple items from your kitchen cupboards - and the power of curiosity!
Learn about sound by making wine glasses sing, investigate chemical reactions with vitamin-powered rockets, and explore Newton's Third Law by making balloon-driven cars.
Written by a science teacher and dad, Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder gives clear, step-by-step instructions for over 15 experiments. Whether you're a science star or just starting out, it will help you inspire young people to learn.
Get the whole family joining in around the table, as you transform your kitchen into a laboratory!
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Easons €12.59 Book Depository €9.10 Waterstones £8.99 Wordery $9.58(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Mr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines: adventures in making round the kitchen table
Review from Book Depository:
Transform and recycle household objects into your very own home-made toys and machines!
Learn about the centre of gravity by making a balancing bird, create a toroidal vortex with a smoke-ring machine, and turn a spoon into an electromagnet. Chances are you won't need to buy the materials required for these machines because they're all in your house right now. Every child can be an engineer with the help of Mr Shaha and his marvellous machines.
Written by a science teacher and dad, Mr Shaha's Marvellous Machines is the highly anticipated sequel to Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder. This book gives clear, step-by-step instructions for over 15 projects. Whether you're a master engineer or a total beginner, it will spark inspiration for fun activities to engage young people in the marvels of machinery.
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Easons €18.20 Book Depository €15.27 Waterstones £12.99 Wordery $12.28(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis
Review from Book Depository:
It was Eunice Newton Foote, an American scientist and women's rights campaigner living in Seneca Falls, New York, who first warned the world that an atmosphere heavy with carbon dioxide could send temperatures here on Earth soaring. This was back in 1856. At the time, no one paid much attention.
Our Biggest Experiment tells Foote's story, along with stories of the many other scientists who helped to build our modern understanding of climate change. It also chronicles our energy system, from whale oil to kerosene and beyond -- the first steamships, wind turbines, electric cars, oil tankers and fridges. Alice Bell takes us back to climate change science's earliest steps in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the advancing realisation that global warming was a significant problem in the 1950s and right up to today, where we have seen the growth of the environmental movement, climate scepticism and political responses like the UN climate talks.
As citizens of the twenty-first century, it can feel like history has dealt us a rather bad hand in the climate crisis. In many ways, this is true. Our ancestors have left us an almighty mess. But they left us tools for survival too, and Our Biggest Experiment tells both sides of the story. The message of the book is ultimately hopeful; harnessing the ingenuity and intelligence that has long driven the history of climate change research can mean a more sustainable and bearable future for humanity.
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Easons €28.00 Book Depository €21.46 Waterstones £20.00 Wordery $22.34(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Seb Falk
I would warmly recommend Dennis Duncan’s Index, A History of The – this is one of those books that makes you look anew at the world. Anyone who has read a non-fiction book has encountered an index, but few people consider that they have their own fascinating history. Duncan is such a sensitive guide, taking us from the minutiae of manuscripts and book publishing to the biggest questions of what knowledge means. I found something to marvel at and ponder on every page, and frequently laughed out loud.
Index, A History of the
Review from Book Depository:
Perfect for book lovers, a delightful history of the wonders to be found in the humble book index
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book - it's just where you go to look things up. But here, hiding in plain sight, is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. Here we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. This is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Here, for the first time, its story is told.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and - of course - indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart, and we have been for eight hundred years.
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Book Depository €20.54 Waterstones £20.00 Wordery $19.31(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery
Review from Book Depository:
The Middle Ages were a time of wonder. They gave us the first universities, the first eyeglasses and the first mechanical clocks as medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky.
In this book, we walk the path of medieval science with a real-life guide, a fourteenth-century monk named John of Westwyk - inventor, astrologer, crusader - who was educated in England's grandest monastery and exiled to a clifftop priory. Following the traces of his life, we learn to see the natural world through Brother John's eyes: navigating by the stars, multiplying Roman numerals, curing disease and telling the time with an astrolabe.
We travel the length and breadth of England, from Saint Albans to Tynemouth, and venture far beyond the shores of Britain. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy and the Persian polymath who founded the world's most advanced observatory.
An enthralling story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man and an extraordinary time, The Light Ages conjures up a vivid picture of the medieval world as we have never seen it before.
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Book Depository €16.34 Waterstones £17.99 Wordery $19.42(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Huge thanks & míle buíochas to Amit, Debby, Michael, Anne, Rae, Alice & Seb for their great Christmas book picks!
Merry Christmas everyone, and happy reading! :-)
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Ishi Press (The Jungle), Cornerstone (Quantum Computing WIRED GUIDES), Penguin Books Ltd (Braiding Sweetgrass, The Dawn of Everything, How To Get Crazy Rich In Rising Asia, The Light Ages, Index, A History of the), Elephant Room Press (Waking Up White), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (The Musical Human, The Dark Interval, Our Biggest Experiment), Random House USA Inc (Radical Acceptance), C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd (Women Can Save The Planet), Bold Type Books (Hail Mary), Beacon Press (All Made Up), Scribe Publications (Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder & Marvellous Machines).
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