Bloody Nasty People by Daniel Trilling
29 Oct 2012 12:44:59
In Bloody Nasty People (the pun is the Sun's), Daniel Trilling addresses these issues in a brisk but compelling narrative. The story goes like this. In 1967, a number of obscure far-right grouplets combined to form the National Front. Emboldened by Enoch Powell's 1968 "rivers of blood" speech (and the Heath government's admission of 27,000 Asians expelled from Uganda in 1972), the party was hijacked by neo-Nazi John Tyndall, who presided over an expansion of membership and votes, but no seats, i... Read Full Story
The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 by Anne Applebaum
29 Oct 2012 12:41:13
Today, no one under 23 was even alive while communist rule in eastern Europe still existed. No one under 30 or so has any meaningful memories of it. The internet has made complete censorship of the old kind unimaginable to younger people today. As the four decades of the cold war fade into history and mythology, it is important to go on reminding people of the nature of communism in eastern Europe, and why West Germans and other Europeans were not, in fact, desperate to exchange the austere rigo... Read Full Story
Building Stories by Chris Ware
24 Oct 2012 02:58:09
Chris Ware's new graphic novel comes in a cardboard box, like BS Johnson's The Unfortunates, or an old-fashioned board game. Inside, are 14 "distinctively discrete" books and pamphlets of varying sizes. Each one of these stands alone, and since – in theory – they may be read in any order, several members of a comic-loving family could happily read Building Stories over the course of the same afternoon. But they work together, too, combining to depict, in rich and multifaceted fashion, the mostly... Read Full Story
My Inventions and Other Writings by Nikola Tesla
24 Oct 2012 02:57:02
At the beginning of the 20th century, Tesla was for most Americans the embodiment of the inventor as genius. Born in Croatia in 1856, he emigrated to the United States in his 20s. His remarkable ability to visualise inventions soon made him famous. He pioneered alternating current power transmission and, as the novelist Samantha Hunt says in her wonderfully partisan and illuminating introduction, it was Tesla not Marconi who invented radio. What Hunt rightly describes as the "beautiful and stran... Read Full Story
England Lost World 1933-1936 by Dorothy Hartley
24 Oct 2012 02:50:10
Hartley was a travel writer, illustrator and cook best known today for her classic Food in England, which has remained in print since its publication in 1954. Much of the material first appeared in her weekly columns for the Daily Sketch from 1933 to 1936 and 65 of these, together with some of the author's evocative photos, have been collected in this book. Adrian Bailey's excellent introduction describes her as "a remarkable, unstoppable source of creative energy" and recalls how she once answe... Read Full Story
The John Lennon Letters, edited by Hunter Davies
22 Oct 2012 11:35:58
"Fifty Years of the Rolling Stones", "Fifty Years of 007", "Fifty Years of the Beatles" – as a 49 year-old I feel a little resentful of the latest round of anniversaries. They might as well write: "Hey, something really exciting and important happened here and you just (but only just) missed it. Ha, ha." If there is no future any more, then at least we can celebrate anniversaries. The fact that a particular number of years has passed since an event appears to confer on it a certain gravitas and ... Read Full Story
Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young
22 Oct 2012 11:32:27
Despite being surrounded from an early age by the usual trappings of advanced rock'n'roll hedonism, particularly after his album Harvest became the best seller of 1972, Neil Young has never been your average rock star, and this not your average rock star autobiography. There is a little bit of weed and cocaine – quite a lot, actually, but not flaunted, as it were, under the reader's nose – and some discussion of guitars and the occasional backstage tantrum, but rather more about his son Ben, who... Read Full Story
About book Cézanne: A Life by Alex Danchev
22 Oct 2012 11:30:51
Cézanne demands of us. Like no one else's, his paintings push and pull at our vision. His mountains seen through trees and his tabletops of apples upset our notions of "here" and of "there", of light, matter and distance: what constitutes a feeling and what an object get radically spun about. Cézanne's art is giddying and heady, a charge of magnetic energy sent through shapes and colours to regroup them in strange new harmonies: the world looks different as you walk away. Allen Ginsberg, quoted ... Read Full Story
Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre
20 Oct 2012 03:26:36
If you were shocked by the MPs expenses scandal, try this one: in America, a popular media doctor, Drew Pinsky, goes on air to praise the antidepressant Wellbutrin. What's so great about it? Whereas other antidepressants lower libido, this drug "may enhance" sexual arousal. What his loyal listeners don't know is that Pinsky has been paid $275,000 by GlaxoSmithKline "for services to Wellbutrin". They might never have found out if the US Justice department hadn't taken GSK to court for illegal mar... Read Full Story
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper
20 Oct 2012 03:23:41
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Patrick Leigh Fermor's legendary life is that it lasted as long as it did. He died in 2011 at the age of 96, having survived enough assaults on his existence to make Rasputin seem like a quitter. He was car-bombed by communists in Greece, knifed in Bulgaria, and pursued by thousands of Wehrmacht troops across Crete after kidnapping the commander of German forces on the island. Malaria, cancer and traffic accidents failed to claim him. He was the target of ... Read Full Story
Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy
20 Oct 2012 03:20:47
This is the eighth book in Kennedy's Albany cycle, featuring dynasties of crooks, jazz musicians, politicians and heroes. The latest instalment harks back to events in earlier volumes, giving the large array of characters a deepening sense of history. In 1957 Daniel Quinn, journalist, follows in his grandfather's footsteps to Havana and is dramatically caught up in the Cuban revolution. Falling in love with glamorous, gun-running Renata Otero, he is plunged into powerful santería magic, meets He... Read Full Story
Dada in Paris by Michel Sanouillet by Sharmila Ganguly
17 Oct 2012 01:49:41
First published in France in 1965, this seminal study of Dada has been revised and updated. It is the result of more than 15 years of research and interviews with the key players in a movement "whose writings were never more than signs". As Sanouillet says, his personal knowledge of them allows him to "give meaning to its apparent ideological vacuity". This rich historical account also includes some 250 documents and letters. Dada began in 1916, at Hugo Ball's Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich ("was th... Read Full Story
