Books and Me

by Tom Wainwright (2017) This is proving tricky to review!  I loved the writing style and the presentation of the numerous arguments, and indeed I was completely convinced, in the end, that specific forms of legalisation of drugs would be the best way to go, but I kept being struck by a terrible ennui.  The thing is, I just am not terribly interested in either illicit drugs or economics. This is wrong of me. I should be more concerned, not least as what we do with drugs in this country has implications for people all over the world. If you do happen to be interested in these subjects, and want a very slick exposition as to why the war of drugs is bound to fail, and what we should do instead, this is very much the book for you. Rating 8/10

by Yanis Varoufakis (2017) I see from the reviews on Amazon that I am very much in the minority in finding this book a bit of a chore.  Perhaps I'm not sufficiently interested in economics, but I also think it might have had something to do with thinking that if this were my father talking to me like this at the dinner table, however delicious the food, I would have run upstairs, slammed the door shut as loudly as I could, and stayed there until he'd learned to quit mansplaining.  There were a few ideas that were neat enough, but broadly it was such a partial view of the state of affairs that the book can never be said to have been entirely honest.  We all know capitalism is far from perfect so it would seem fair that Yanis should spend most of the book detailing the history of the emergence of its faults, but he does this all the while apparently hinting at some vastly better, if never described, system which is presumably, given a few deferential reference...

By Tim Harford (2011) This is a superb examination of the problem solving nature of experimentation, failure and learning. It is an argument in favor of the approach that works -  local knowledge, autonomy, an initial safe space coupled with an iterative, experimental process and an ability to respond appropriately to failure. It is also a powerful argument against centralisation, standardisation and a supposedly rational, top-down method that is impervious to critique. The author illustrates his argument with the most lucidly described examples from a range of fields such as military history, oil rig disasters and economics and in the process, he manages to shed light on the driest of subjects.  This is a double win: not only do you have a firm grasp on how evolution works in every field of experience, but you might also end up finally having a handle on  the significance of sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps. A desert island book on a big subject. ...

by Owen Jones (2014) In this book , Owen Jones sets out to expose the way in which the wealthy and the powerful protect their interests at the expense of the rest of us and to this end, he produces a wealth of pretty convincing evidence.  Admittedly he sometimes puts slightly more contentious assertions into the mouths of his interviewees, and leaves these assertions hanging without any serious discussion, but all in all the welter of first hand testimony and argument leave one in little doubt that he has a pretty strong case. Of course, events have rather taken over since 2014, but Jones in describing the immediate history, goes a long way to explain the current confusions of, for example, Brexit and the rise of populist politics, elucidating as he does the ambivalent nature of the Establishment's relationship to Europe and shining a light on quite why so much of the electorate are so utterly fed up with the previously indistinguishable political parties. I'd say his ...