Bruce Hood: Supersense

From the back of the book-

Do you cross your fingers, touch wood or avoid walking under ladders? If someone offered to replace your old teddy bear with an exact replica, would you accept?
Where do such feelings come from? It seems that human brains have to make sense of the world somehow, and that need to find an explanation can lead our minds beyond reason and into the supernatural. Education tells us such thinking is irrational, but at an intuitive level it can stubbornly persist in otherwise sensible adults. Barack Obama played basketball the morning of his victory in the Iowa primary-and on the morning of every following primary. This is not all bad-these beliefs can be a useful glue that binds us together as a society. And creative types rely upon the ability to see patterns in the world.

Combining brilliant insight with witty example, Bruce Hood weaves a page-turning account of our 'supersense', navigating a path through brain science, child development, popular culture, mental illness and the paranormal.
This is an outright fascinating read. Tracing links between biology, psychology and childhood development, the author presents an interesting argument as to how it can be perfectly reasonable to develop irrational beliefs.
As the subtitle, From Superstition to Religion-the Brain Science of Belief, suggests, this book runs the gamut of supernatural beliefs from the fringe to the institutionalized. All are examined with the same level of logic and though the writing veers into philosophy never does the text become inaccessible to the average reader
Whether you've an interest in why people persist in believing in aliens or ghosts or if you're just interested in the origins of lucky charms, this book may have the answers you seek.-Lynn

Out of the Deep I Cry - Julia Spencer-Fleming

The past ripples through time to the present, wherever one is. When Clare Fergusson, Episcopal priest of Millers Kill, melting snow trickling down the embrasure and puddling on the sill of the stained glass window, it's the first sign of impending trouble - the roof of St. Alban's can no longer be patched but must be comprehensively repaired - no mean feat when money's tight everywhere. Her pleas for funding are met by elderly Mrs Marshall, who offers to dissolve the Ketcham Family Trust, created by her mother in the fifties and used until now to fund a health clinic for the poor and uninsured.
As a contemporary mystery - the disappearance of clinic doctor Allan Rouse, perhaps at the hands of anti-vaccine campaigner Debba Clowe - is investigated by Millers Kill police chief Russ van Alstyne, details of a tragedy almost eighty years old begin to emerge; and threaded throughout is the ongoing, deepening attraction between Clare and the inconveniently married Russ, a connection that a brush with almost certain death forces them to acknowledge, and to finally name - love.
Spencer-Fleming packs so much into her novels - i intertwining plots, strong characters, forbidden romance and pitch-perfect dialogue. Deftly woven in are details about Prohibition and other historical accuracies, and she has a keen understanding of human psychology, particularly parental.
The heart of Out of the Deep I Cry, though, is epidemic illness and vaccination - fears about the use of the first antidiphtheria serum in 1924, the wildfire speed with which unchecked illness rampages, the devastating swathe it cuts, the inability of contemporary culture to appreciate this after decades safe from pandemic disease, and the fallacy of a thiomersal/autism connection. The writing is so incisive, clear and evocative that I feel strongly that Spencer-Fleming intended to convey a clear message, one I fully support.
In lesser hands this could have been strident, diminishing the power of the text as a whole. Here, however, it is an integral part of the plot, seamlessly integrated and beautifully conveyed. The passages where modern concerns about the alleged ills of vaccinations are contrasted with strikingly similar (and identically baseless) concerns from over eight decades ago, are subtle and well crafted.
The novel is chronologically layered, so that each time line unfolds with internal linearity but the present is interfolded with the seventies, the fifties and the twenties. This technique allows the precipitating events, some eighty-five years ago, to only slowly emerge, devastatingly exposed almost at the end.
The novel finishes, though, with its engine. The driving heart of the series is the relationship between Russ and Clare, both honourable people committed to the vows they took long before they met. An affair is an anathema to them both, but the measures they've taken thus far have done naught to dampen the mutual feelings of respect, attraction and intellectual pull they feel. I so look forward to seeing where Spencer-Fleming takes them next. - Alex

The Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series:
1. In the Bleak Midwinter
2. A Fountain Filled with Blood
3. Out of the Deep I Cry
4. To Darkness and to Death
5. All Mortal Flesh
6. I Shall Not Want

The Mammoth Book of Women’s Erotic Fantasies – Sonia Florens (Ed)

In 1973 Nancy Friday published a groundbreaking text, My Secret Garden, a collection of women’s sexual fantasies that revealed women could be as daring, surprising and explicit as men. Over the next two decades she followed this up with three more collections, two of women's fantasies and one of men's. In all four cases the fantasies were presented thematically, biographical data was provided (including age), there was often an attempt by the narrators to explain or analyse their fantasies, and sections were interspersed with Friday’s analysis of the fantasies and fantasists.
This noughties revisit to the ground explored by Nancy Friday’s groundbreaking books skips straight over the clinical, objective phsychological analysis and interpretation of the writing and goes straight to the good stuff. The women represented come from Canada, the US, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Germany and Puerto Rico, with no further biographical information given.
Rather than the somewhat brief and fragmented scenes narrated by Friday’s research participants, that sometimes included more than one scenario, or which described an outline of the fantasy rather than the scene itself, these women also seem less compelled to explain or justify their fantasies, and the scenarios are lovingly and completely described. In most cases each entry runs over eight pages, with one as few as six, and a few going for more than a dozen pages.
While themes including light sadomasochism, domination, lesbianism, power play, men with men, exhibitionism, and group sex are present, the more taboos elements present in Friday’s collections (including bestiality, rape, underage and incest fantasies) are absent from this more mainstream work. There is, however, likely to be something for most people, and I certainly found a few of the works particularly well written, well imagined and effective. – Alex

The Terminal Experiment - Robert J Sawyer

When biomedical engineering student Peter Hobson saw his first organ harvesting he was profoundly disquieted - the responses to pain that the staff dismissed as autonomic looked real to him. Peter decided to design an instrument that could unambiguously determine when a person was really dead, by detecting the last neurones firing. He was unprepared to discover what became known as the 'soul wave' - a distinct field of electrical activity that moved across the brain and exited the skull.
In the aftermath of the disclosure of his findings, Hobson decides to explore another aspect of the mind. With the aid of a computer scientist and friend, Hobson creates three AI versions of his brain, all complete copies in every detail except that one has all bodily feedback (like hunger, tiredness and miscellaneous aches) removed, and one has all fears of aging, disability and death pared away; the third creation is left intact as a control. Not long after they're booted up, people begin to die and Hobson realises with horror that it's one of the versions of himself.
One of the things that sets Sawyer's work apart from the mainstream of fiction generally is his ability to combine multiple, significant elements into his work. The Terminal Experiment is an SF mystery but it's also a cultural and philosophical exploration that examines marital relationships, jealousy and revenge, the nature of humour, and human psychology.
Sawyer has explored some of these themes in other works, but he always manages to achieve a fresh perspective and unique voice. This, combined with his strength in narrative structure, means that reading several of his novels is succession is as rewarding an experience as reading them separated over time. His plots are fresh and layered, his characters three dimensional and believable, and the pace is both brisk and considered.
There are a couple of slightly dated passages dealing with HIV/AIDS on one occasion and AV technology on another, but as the book was published in 1995 this is understandable, and otherwise The Terminal Experiment has well and truly stood the test of time. - Alex

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

‘Outlier’ is a statistical term that refers to data that falls outside the general standard deviation of a bell curve, the remarkably different from the norm. Subtitled The Story of Success, Outliers explores what underpins success - why do some people achieve so much more than most? We think we know, that it comes down to a combination of hard work, perserverence and intelligence, but are we right?
Gladwell takes a different individual or population success story in each chapter, from Bill Gates to Canada’s ice hockey teams, from the superiority of Asian students in maths to South Korea’s once-shocking crash record. He uses these cases to illustrate different aspects that contribute to success or, in the Korean example, failure. While hard work, perserverence and intelligence certainly play a part, Gladwell's central thesis is that luck and timing play a substantial but unacknowledged role.
His first chapter looks at an anomalous US population, the long-lived community of Roseto, where the usual killers like cancer and heart disease rarely occur despite no significant difference in diet or exercise between that and similar communities with more typical health and illness patterns. The key difference seems to be the sense of community and connectedness that Roseto brought from italy and has managed to keep.
In other chapters Gladwell looks at confluence of events and timing, the lasting effect of birth date of sporting success, the legacy of different agriculture techniques on the development of cultural norms, and how heirarchy and tact can have devastating outcomes if not modified for different environments.
Gladwell is able to draw together a seemingly disparate collection of research fields into a cohesive whole, which I find intimidating and inspiring.I have found his previous works accessable, illuminating and coherent, and Outliers is no exception. - Alex

Bonk – Mary Roach

Following explorations of death and scientific investigations into the afterlife, Roach turns her attention to sex, specifically the “curious coupling of sex and science” – what research has discovered, where researchers are heading, and an insight into the lives of sex researchers. Sparked by a random finding while procrastinating in a university library, Roach started thinking about the fact that sex (like other aspects of human physiology) has been investigated scientifically but “I’d just never given it much thought. I’d never thought about what it must be like, the hurdles and the hassles that the researchers face – raised eyebrows, suspicious wives, gossiping colleagues.”
This last is a persistent theme – getting approval to perform many of the experiments is difficult, with many researchers resorting to obfuscation, describing the work as non-specifically as possible. If the death researchers were seen as ghoulish, that’s nothing to the prurient voyeurism projected on to sex researchers.
I discovered a number of fascinating facts about sex practices around the world: particularly interesting – Roy Levin’s paper “Wet and Dry Sex,” comparing Western preferences for vaginal lubrication with the perception in parts of Haiti, Indonesia and Africa that extreme dryness indicates a disease-free state, resulting in women inserting “all manner of drying agents” – ouch!
Roach beautifully combines strongly grounded data and meticulous explorations of the literature with a highly readable style and embarrassingly amusing observations (often as footnotes) that lead me to splutter with laughter in public on several occasions. Her writing incorporates her reactions, as a layperson, to the research, the field, and the results of data, often reflecting the impressions of the reader.
After reading Bonk I’m no aware of research being done across the field – high tech and medical, from MRI imaging of what happens during ejaculation and orgasm, treatments for erectile dysfunction (and how Viagra reduced the condition’s social stigmatisation), surgical extension and reattachment of male genitalia, to the real functions and dimensions of the clitoris; lab work looking at what happens to lower-order mammals at the moment of male ejaculation; historical investigations into hysteria and the medical role of inducing female climax; biochemistry involving how hormones affect arousal in both primates and humans (the oral contraceptive pill mutes sex drive, but this is not a listed side-effect and most women aren’t told about it when it’s initially prescribed); and why lesbians have better sex than gay men and straight couples. - Alex

Anything Goes – David Stove

Science studies as a discipline, or field of inter-related disciplines, arose shortly after the Second World War. Not a hard science in itself, science studies explores cultural aspects of the hard sciences, and was designed to: impart an understanding of the sciences to arts students, and to encourage science students to think about the cultural aspects of their work.
The social science perspective is that, though scientists think of themselves as wholly driven by rationality, in reality what causes the majority of scientists to shift paradigms is more complex.
Philosopher David Stove, who died in 1994, counters the dominant discourse in science studies by examining the writings of the most influential academics in the field – Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos. In Anything Goes (subtitled Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism) he first disassembles their arguments and points out the way their positions are made credible – utilising tricks to neutralise the meaning of words (by, for example, enclosing them in quotations), and failing to use consistent and logical arguments (in the philosophical sense). Stove then goes back to the source of the discipline, identifies and discusses the underlying premise on which all work in the field is based (David Hume’s scepticism about inductive arguments, one of the cornerstones of science).
At least I think that’s what he does, but I may have it all completely inverted. Rarely have I felt as stupid as I did trying to work my way through Anything Goes – I think the last time was when I slogged my way through Mouse or Rat. In this case it was particularly disappointing because, as it deals with some of my favourite topics (social science, popular science, irrationalism and philosophy), I was looking forward to reading it.
The introduction, by Keith Windshuttle, was readable, accessible and interesting. In it he lays out the broad structure of Stove’s book, as well as providing the useful background of the origins of science studies. Though I did not agree with everything he wrote, I was interested. However, shortly after beginning the section by Stove I became mired in a dense morass of prose. Opening at random, I give you this example:

In fact, of course, as is obvious, nothing could be more trivial. That the premises of an argument entail the conclusion is not enough to make them a reason to believe it. And if the premises of the arguments are to succeed in being a reason to believe the conclusion, not every validator R of the argument from P to Q is available to every arguer as an additional premise. Such an R, to be available to an arguer as an additional premise must at least be such that it can be part of a reason to believe Q.

And that’s not even from a tricky bit.
I have a background in philosophy and a smattering of social science – I am well aware of the wankiness of parts of academia, and Stove illustrates aspects of this well (at least up to the point I stopped reading). However, he is clearly writing for an audience with a strong philosophical background, and an audience who are already well aware of the divide – there is little in the way of introduction or explanation, and he launches straight into the arguments section (which, for those of you unfamiliar with the structure of philosophical arguments, looks a lot like algebra).
I believe that there are faults on both sides – from what Stove (and Windshuttle) write, some of the science studies academics cited make ludicrous claims that deny science any objective truth, that deny any kind of progress, and argue as though the scientific paradigms that replace their predecessors are any better or more valid than those they replace.
On the other hand, scientists are mistaken if they believe that objective truth is the only basis for accepting or rejecting new theories – from Copernicus revolutionising astronomy, through Semmelweis’ theory that microbes not miasmas caused childbed fever, to the rejection of Marshall and Robin's idea that gastric ulcers are caused by bacteria not stress, every field of science has examples where valid theories were denied by the majority despite their truth. While some scientists may indeed be open to new theories that overthrow everything that comes before them, relinquishing a position occupied for ones’ entire academic life, the foundations of ones’ prestige, is not easily done.
It is also true that culture affects the direction science takes, the mindset of the scientists themselves, and the kind of information that can be released – very few of us are truly capable of being objective, and instead view the world through the filter of our preconceptions and beliefs, and this influences the theories, experiments and proofs produced. These cultural blinders are not recognised at the time, but in hindsight their influence is obvious – all the work ‘proving’ non-white races were inferior to white, or that women had less intellectual capacity than men, for example. It is presumptuous and delusional to believe that any of us today are more independent of these ideas and ideologies than our forebears, but that is what the objective concept of science incorporates unspoken.
And somehow I have strayed far from the book. In summary – interesting, valuable, biased, dense, unfinished. - Alex

Rule No. 1 – Rupert Morgan

In a universe only slightly different from our own, the United States of Atlantis is still reeling from the Day The World Changed, when a sleeper virus caused the Stock Exchange computers to endlessly loop once the Exchange’s value hit 15,000 points. Perhaps the terrorists hadn’t expected quite as much damage – the overheating supercomputers caught fire, the knocked out computer system caused the sprinkler system to fail, and the stock exchange itself caught fire, killing hundreds. A worldwide manhunt soon discovered that the terrorists were hiding in the Middle Eastern country of Kalashnistan, and the Atlantian government declared war. “The Atlantians won. So they’d be crazy to stop now.”
Erratian beekeeper Saman Massoudi has troubles of his own. All he wants is to reinvigorate the honey market, and his Al-Nur Bee and Comb company, by increasing awareness of the delicious honey made by Jana bees. His cousin Aziz lives in Atlantis, and has mailed him some of the genetically modified bees they have there, though Saman’s not too impressed, particularly when the parcel of bees results in him being a suspect during an attempted assassination attempt on The General of Errat. As Saman tries to extricate himself from a mess caused by the wilful stupidity of those in power, who hear only what they want to hear, in Atlantis the media are heightening fear and anxiety.
A blistering satire about the War on Terror, Morgan captures many elements of contemporary life well, from the shortsightedness of non-sustainable farming to the impact of global policies on individuals, and the sacrifice of logic in favour of conspiracy and paranoia.
There are too many plot strands to discuss in detail, so I’ll give one example to showcase Morgan’s characterisation and style: the Atlantian leader, President Hedges, is chilling in his assurance that his presidency is a sign from God that he’s made, and will make, the right choices – “Without God he might have been too weak to do what sometimes had to be done, because it took a lot of love to put a man to death…” Sure, some people think he wasn’t really elected president, but if God had wanted that other guy to win then he would have won. The fact that President Hedges is president is proof that that was God’s plan, and anyone who doesn’t understand that is a confused individual who haven’t let God into their hearts. And while, during the election, “his critics had said he’d been responsible for more executions that anyone else in the country, ever” Hedges now knows that this was because God was preparing him all along for this War.
Other sub-plots involve a staffer for the President’s team working on the top 50 threats to the United States of Atlantis, an on-going terror warning about bees, a torture expert who cannot rest until his guilty prisoners (and they’re all guilty) confess, an emasculated Prime Minister whose wife only recognises his potency when he’s commanding and invading, and the Spiegelflug family: Liberty Lodge switchboard operator Marg, disaster-prepared bookkeeper Ned Snr, teenage Hermione and disaffected son Ned Jnr, filled with knowledge that pretty much everything really sucks.
Interspersed with plot are transcripts from Atlantian news broadcasts, warning the public about threats that lie in wait for them at every turn. It’s frightening how believable these are, full of inaccuracy, double-speak, inconsistency, flawed premises, hyperbole and unquestioning assurance.
Rule No. 1 (from President Hedges' maxim that “people fear death”) is difficult to categorise. I wasn’t as engrossed as I was with Underground, but I can’t tell if that’s because I’ve hyped the latter in my memory, that it resonated more because it was Australian, due to my reading it first, or because it was a little less strident. In the absence of the influence of Underground, though, Rule No. 1 is strong, complex, powerful and important. It’s a shame that the people who would most benefit from reading it are the least likely to read it. Or perhaps, with the recent change in US government, that will no longer matter. - Alex

Fat Politics - J Eric Oliver

Subtitled The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic, Oliver methodically and convincingly argues that the biggest issue with obesity is the panic rather than any health problems directly associated with being fat. As he states int he introduction, this is not the book he intended to write - a political scientist doing post-doctoral work, Oliver decided to investigate political aspects of the obesity 'epidemic' and discovered very little research had been done. The deeper he dug the more convinced he became that the science underpinning predictions and projections about weight and illness was (often profoundly) flawed, and almost always conducted by investigators with undeclared interests - ties to pharmaceutical and weight-loss companies, health care providers who will get reimbursement if being fat is officially deemed an illness, and scaremongers eager to increase the federally funded pie available if this is seen as a crisis.
Oliver also examines the American Protestant loathing of obesity that he believes lies at the heart of some of the researchers' convictions - a topic more thoroughly covered in Marilyn Wann's Fat! So? where she relates stories of women whose physicians were so focused on weight they ignored real medical issues.
Like many other anti-diet/size-acceptance campaigners, Oliver argues that the real culprit is poor diet, incessant snacking, and too little exercise, and that health care prevention programs would be better aimed at improving nutrition and encouraging exercise as ends in themselves rather than as means to reduce weight. That this sensible advice, offered by many before him, receives so little prominence is in itself an argument that the hysteria over obesity is run by something other than genuine concern.
Whether or now weight is a personal issue for you, all of us in the Western world are affected by the money pumped into funding for anti-obesity drugs, weight-loss programs supported by federal money (in Australia gym membership and weight-loss programs may be eligible for health insurance co-payment, 30% of which comes from the Federal government), and an atmosphere that encourages vituperation and prejudice based on size. The funding comes from taxes we all pay, and if it would be better used diverted elsewhere, this affects the thin as much as the fat it's aimed at. - Alex

Shakespeare - Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson, best known for his travel writing, has turned his attention to the life and times of the world’s best known playwright and poet. This slender volume, appropriately reflecting the little actually known about Shakespeare, explores the world of Shakespearian scholarship and Elizabethan England as much as the life of its’ subject, imparting a flavour of mystery and detection that I don’t usually associate with English Literature (the subject).
Throughout the book Bryson convincingly counters the charges that support arguments Shakespeare did not author the many works attributed to him. For example:

Far from having ‘small Latin and less Greek’, as Ben Jonson so famously charged, Shakespeare had a great deal of Latin, for the life of a grammar school boy was spent almost entirely in reading, writing and reciting in Latin, often in the most mind-numbingly repetitious manner… Through such exercises Shakespeare would have learned every possible rhetorical device and ploy – metaphor and anaphora, epistrophe and hyperbole, synecdoche, epanalepsis and others equally arcane and taxing… a more thorough grounding in Latin rhetoric and literature than ‘most present-day holders of a university degree in classics’.

And now I know the very many forms of rhetoric of which I am woefully ignorant.
Bryson also explains where the allegations came from, and the extraordinary devotion of both accusers and defenders of Shakespeare – an entire seething community I was primarily unaware of and am now fascinated by. This, I think, is the true gift of Bryson – he invests the worlds he explores with interest and flavour in all his writing (and in person, having heard him speak in Melbourne and, being something of a Bryson fan girl, having read every one of his books) - from travels far-flung and domestic to the history of language and the history of the world. He so genuinely conveys his own absorption in it that the reader cannot help but be transported along with him, in a torrent of writing that is never dry and often wry, or laugh aloud funny.
Aspects of the book resonated unexpectedly with other aspects of my life – I read Shakespeare not long after attending a seminar of pandemic influenza, and found the discussion of plague and exotic illnesses (like ‘English sweat’, which came out of nowhere and was so severe many patients died the same day they manifested symptoms, then vanished in the 1550s) eerily relevant. But even without that element this is a great book, well worth reading if you have only the most cursory interest in the life and times of Shakespeare but have any interest whatsoever in literature, history, writing, conspiracies, detection, or people. - Alex

Happy Kitty Bunny Pony - Charles S Anerson Design Co, with text by Michael J Nelson

Essentially a collection of cutesy animal depictions, this "saccharine mouthful of super cute" (the subtitle) is witty and amusing thanks to ex-Mystery Theater 3000 host Nelson's text. Grouped thematically (happy kitties, bunnies, ponies, barnyard buddies [pigs and lambs feature prominently], chicks and ducklings, woodland creatures etc), the illustrations range from swap card pictures to (quite horrifying) wallpaper patterns.
And enlivening the collection are gems of commentary like (under a photo of cat looking up at a Christmas tree): "Buying a present for a cat is hard, because cats have only the dimmest awareness of their surroundings. Get them a bell or, if that's too extravagant, a small clump of earth. Because, it will hardly matter." On the facing page, illustrated by a posed, colourised kitten sitting between among superimposed flowering twigs: "Is this little fella aware of the incredible irony - a sweet little pussy wandering among pussy willows? No. Irony is beyond him. Again, dimmest awareness of their surroundings." Or, on a spread featuring Easter bunnies:

This familiar symbol originate in Germany where children would build a nest for the "Oschter Haws," in hopes he would lay a batch of colored eggs. That German children were so confused about biology does not speak well of the German education system. To all you German children out there, rabbits are mammals, which means they give birth to live young. No eggs involved. Perhaps you were confusing him with the Easter Duckbilled Platypus.

I read my (advertising/marketing exec) sister's copy while babysitting and that was enough for me, but every few pages I cracked up (generally on the inside but occasionally aloud). Without the illustrations I'm really not able to do Happy Kitty Bunny Pony justice, and there are many pages without commentary - rendering them less interesting for those of us lacking the appropriate aesthetic sense to appreciate the works for their own merits. If you have a slightly twisted sense of humour and/or an interest in pop culture, or in the work of the design team Pop Ink, this is the book for you.- Alex

Unspeak - Stephen Poole

British author and journalist Poole's thesis is that, "in the tradition of Orwell", the use of weasel words – words and phrases that appear to be neutral but are skewed to a particular ideology or do extra work that is obvious on the surface - is expanding at an exponential rate, shaping opinion and influencing perceptions of fact.
Although Orwell most notably coined the concept of double speak (holding two, contradictory concepts in mind simultaneously), Poole refers here to the general idea of making words perform extra duty.
Some of these are readily visible with the most cursory of examinations ('pro-life' opponents must clearly be anti-life, 'pro-choice' opponents similarly against life, 'Friends of the Earth' countered by earth's enemies), and the ideologies carried by the words are relatively unambiguous, while others require a little more thought. This is by no means a new proposition. In philosophy these terms are referred to as 'loaded' - they carry a load of implied ideology or a complicated, packed set of assumptions; and Australian writer Don Watson has written widely about the use of linguistic semantics to extricate politicians from unattractive scenarios. What sets Poole's work apart is the clarity of his writing and the broad scope that he addresses. Though set almost wholly in the politician realm, and unsurprisingly focused most heavily on the use of what he terms 'unspeak' by the Bush administration since September 11, the book begins by exploring imbedded terms in a variety of other settings, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The first chapter uses British ASBO legislation as an illustration and a springboard. Anti-social behaviour orders were introduced in 1998, and have essentially been used to criminalise behaviour that is not actually illegal. An ASBO recipient can be forbidden from performing certain behaviours for a period of two years, and jailed for up to five years if the order’s breached. While acknowledging that there may be some cases where an ASBO is appropriate, Poole gives several real examples, of which I will summarise four, where ASBOs were applied: an 87-year-old was ordered not to be sarcastic; two teenage brothers were banned from using the word ‘grass’; a young woman was forbidden to appear in her bedroom window wearing underwear; and another young woman, who had previously thrice attempted suicide by drowning, was forbidden to go “to any railway track, river, watercourse or canal in the whole of England and Wales. She was also forbidden to ‘loiter’ on bridges or go to a multi-storey car park on her own.”
The central problem, says Poole, is that the wording of the Act is so loosely worded, and the behaviours ASBOs can be used for so potentially far from actual criminal acts (being sarcastic? Lock me up now), that the range of an ASBO is unfeasibly wide. Whose sensibilities are we protecting? Whose freedoms do we infringe? Who decides what is and is not ‘anti-social’? After all, he points out, many things we now consider normal social functioning, like a Judeo-Christian framework, were once anti-social and heretical.
This is also an opening for Poole’s dissection of the political use of the term ‘community’, which Poole points out is used as though the group being so defined is a homogenous entity. This may be appropriate in some settings, like a community of football fans, homogenous in their team support, but can do extra duty when applied to a non-homogenous group, like gays or Muslims (or, indeed, Americans). We all, after all, belong to many communities, but “people who belong to ‘the gay community’ or ‘the Muslim community’ are allowed to belong to only one, which defines their whole identity.
This is a little like the word ‘tolerance’, which means ‘put up with’ rather than ‘accept’ – I might have to accept that there are people different than me living here but I don’t have to like it, and I don’t have to make them feel welcome, just refrain from actively doing anything to them.
Poole also explores shifting word use, like changing ‘refugee’ to ‘asylum seeker.’ In Australia there’s a notion of ‘queue jumping’, exemplified by the appalling Tampa/children overboard affair, where a government was re-elected on the back of xenophobic fear. Poole later talks about the notion of a ‘failed asylum seeker’ who, presumably, has not only been turned down by the Government but may have some moral failures and/or have contributed to their situation themselves.
Similarly, ‘global warming’ has been transitioned over the last decade (following, reports Poole, substantial campaigning from energy interest groups) to the more neutral and less alarmist ‘climate change’ – if the general population is less frightened they’re less likely to campaign strongly for improvements. This is akin to the switch from ‘creationism’ to ‘intelligent design’ – the underlying idea is identical (people came about as a deliberate plan by an omniscient being) but reframing it as a more neutral phrase (eliminating a Creator, not specifying who the intelligence belongs to, adding the more scientific, tech term ‘design’) make it sound more like a viable theory.
There’s also been a change in the way information is framed, so that when competing interests conflict with science (as in both global warming and creationism), demands are made that ‘both sides of the controversy’ be represented. Poole cites a response to a 2005 statement by George W Bush that “Both sides [of a debate, like evolution vs creationism] ought to be properly taught [to children]... to expose [them] to different schools of thought.” “But,” said US news anchor Ted Koppel, “not all schools of thought deserve the same level of attention.”
Poole uses statements from public figures to illustrate his underlying thesis, perhaps nowhere better than in his analysis of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Three weeks after the July 7 London tube and bus bombings, and one day after the events of July 21, Mr de Menedez, a Brazilian electrician was shot and killed by police because the jacket (unseasonably warm according to police, denim according to his cousin) could have been concealing a belt of explosives.
Poole doesn’t substantially address the many distressing issues leading up to this event, but concentrates instead on what was said afterward. He dissects the official police statement: “We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday, 21 July 2005. For someone to lose their life in such a circumstance is a tragedy and one the Metropolitan Police Service regrets.” As a result of this scrutiny, we see that ‘now satisfied’ does extra duty (we weren’t initially satisfied and, says Poole, that’s his fault); ‘lose his life’ removes agency from the police (they didn’t kill him, he “somehow mislaid his health with no outside help”), and ‘regret’ carries a neutrality and lukewarm distance incommensurate with the significance of what was a screw up. Then PM Blair went one step further, “referring to ‘the death that has happened,’ as though, perhaps, it had been the result of natural causes.”
Poole explores the aftermath of this widely criticised post-7/7 shoot-to-kill policy, and discusses the attempted re-framing of it as undeserved because, if de Menezes “had been a terrorist, police would have been criticised for not shooting him,” as though the criticism and not the killing were the real tragedy. And, with then-London mayor Ken Livingston’s statement that “this tragedy has added another victim to the toll of deaths for which the terrorists bear responsibility,” British authorities even re-framed the distal, if not proximal, culprits.
I am less than half way through my notes, and this review is already too lengthy. In summary: Poole also examines:
- how ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘cauldron’ metaphors remove the impetus to act that ‘genocide’ would impel (“What do you do with a cauldron? You certainly don’t jump in, since you would just be cooked along with its contents. You put the lid on it, perhaps, and hope it simmers down”);
- how terming relatively recent and/or deliberately fomented interethnic hatred (like that in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and the Middle East) as “ancient tribal hatreds” allows the rest of the world to throw up their hands in helplessness (he also comments on the interesting use of biblical language and metaphor that carry their own sub-texts);
- the medicalisation of was language, from (presumably metastatic) cancers that need irradicating to ‘surgical strikes’; and
- the implications of ‘collateral damage’ and the Vietnam War concept that “if it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s [Viet Cong];” and
- the shift from “acts of terrorism” to “terrorists”;
The War on Terror, unsurprisingly, is the key focus of Unspeak, culminating in a truly sickening chapter on how the US government illegally weaselled its way around the Geneva convention on torture and treatment of prisoners of war. The failures of torture are discussed, from Napoleon (who said it just yielded what false information the prisoner though would make his captors stop) to modern military experts, and this position is supported by the fact that there has not been any terrorist activity actually halted or reported as a result of torture (per an FBI report in 2003).
This is shortly followed by a discussion of the post-9/11 term ‘enemy combatant’. According to Judge Joyce H Green, among other hypotheticals, this could apply to an elderly Swiss resident who thinks she’s writing cheques to an Afghan children’s charity. If it’s really, unbeknownst to her, an al-Qaeda front then, though neither “an ‘enemy’ nor a ‘combatant’, [she] could nevertheless by deemed by fiat as an ‘enemy combatant’, and therefore a candidate for torture.”
There is a particularly powerful section evaluating a 2005 column by Christopher Hitchens about why the outrage over Guantanamo Bay was unwarranted; some of this has since been retracted by Hitchens, in an article that makes interesting reading on its own, and which has been heavily discussed on Poole’s website.
In the second edition postscript Poole recounts how the hanging suicides of three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, held indefinitely without charge and legally (according to the US government) able to be tortured, was framed by Rear Admiral Harry Harris (Joint Task Force Guanatanamo commander) as an assault: “I believe this was not an act of desperation, rather an act of asymmetric warfare against us.” That’s right – the prisoners weren’t despairing and traumatised, they hung themselves to somehow injure the military.
One wonders, reading some of Poole’s quotes (all of which are extensively supported) how often some of these people think before they open their mouths. While Poole is able to let some of them pass, indictments on themselves in themselves, on other occasions he’s moved to comment, with amusing if chilling sarcasm: when former President Bush noted that he “made some difficult decisions that made diplomacy hard in the Arab world,” adding ruefully that “One was, of course, attacking Iraq,” Poole notes “That must indeed have been disappointing.” - Alex

One Night at the Call Centre - Chetan Bhagat

For Shyam Mehra (Sam Marcy), team boss of the Western Appliances Strategic Group night shift, working at a call centre is a safe job to tide him over while he decides what he really wants to do with his life. Connections isn't one of those new-age, well-appointed call centres that treat its staff as valuable, and their boss, Subhash Bakshi, is a management-jargon-obsessed idiot. Plus everyone has to go by Anglicised names acceptable to American ears. But he's comfortable there and enjoys spending time with the colleagues who are now his friends - Esha Singh (Eliza Singer), Radhika Jha (Regina Jones), Varun 'Vroom' Malhotra (Victor Mell) and Military Uncle (the only older member of the team). Everyone has their problems - Esha wants to be a model but isn't tall enough; Radhika hates being subservient to her mother-in-law and suspects her marriage was a mistake; Vroom wants to be an instrument of change for India but needs his job to pay for his addiction to pizza; Military Uncle is estranged from his son, daughter-in-law and grandson; and Shyam is still in love with his ex-girlfriend and colleague Priyanka.
Priyanka's announcement that she's engaged to Ganesh Gupta, a Microsoft exec in the US (an arranged engagement brokered by their parents), triggers Shyam to reassess his life and initiates a cascade of changes that affects all the WASG team, and the rest of the call centre.
A synopsis doesn't really do justice to this unique and highly involving novel. Superficially a romance, and in adaptation for the soon-to-be-released Bollywood film Hello, One Night is also a call for action, a condemnation of the path Indian politicians have taken, a plea that the place of India be reevaluated, and an inspiration that its youth demand change. The author also attempts to have the reader evaluate her life, by requesting she answer three questions before beginning the novel, and asking her to reflect on these at the end.
This makes it sound as though One Night is sombre and heavy, but the text is readable, engaging and well paced. The characters are developed and unique, with very real problems that are resolved in a realistic, believable way - that is, as long as you are comfortable with the deus ex machina moments where God appears to inspire change. There are also some interesting insights sprikled through out the text - like the observation that "only women think there is a reason to thank people when someone listens to them."
A love of India, and a strong sense of the country, permeate the text, alongside an evaluation of America that I suspect would take most Americans by surprise - an evaluation I imagine is shared by Indian call centre workers who handle Australian enquiries. All in all a thought provoking, absorbing, welcome book that makes me interested in reading the other works of fledgling novelist Bhagat. - Alex

The 2005 Best American Science and Nature Writing - Jonathan Weiner (ed)

The difficulty in reviewing anthologies, particularly when they're as wide ranging as this series, is capturing the flavour of each contribution. This was complicated by my finishing this a couple of weeks ago, after reading it over the space of a couple of weeks, and would have been better jotting notes contemporaneously.
Noteworthy contributions include the ever-rewarding Malcolm Gladwell (who is represented twice) on the failures of psychological sacred cows, in this case a damaging preoccupation with post-traumatic stress (nicely complemented by Jerome Groopman's critique of "critical incident stress debriefing" in the grief industry) and the cult of the personality test (complemented by Frederick Crews, an author new to me, who is as disenchanted with his topic, the shaky scientific evidence for Rorschach blots and their regular revival as a valid predictor of mental status).
Indeed many of the contributions centre around complementary themes - Natalie Angier discusses the conflict between faith and science, and criticises the scarcity of American scientists who are prepared to publically denounce faith-based concepts like attacks on evolution; and sceptic John Horgan contrasts his own belief-free attitude with that of his religious friends.
For me William Speed Weed wins the prize for most valuable essay about the number of bogus pseudo-scientific claims made to the average American in the average day, with an emphasis on how subtly and insidiously they're present and blindly accepted in almost every aspect of every day life, but every essay is an interesting, enlightening and worthwhile enterprise. - Alex

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson

More autobiographical, and less funny (though still comedic in parts) than the rest of his (already autobiographical) work, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is an homage to 1950's America in general, and Des Moines in particular - Bryson's childhood. With his trademark humour and a very attractive, easy to read voice, Bryson seamlessly combines his own maturation with losses of innocence and technological advances of a nation. Interwoven with reminiscences of his upbringing, schooling and pastimes are snapshots, statistics, photos and details about the country as a whole.
Much of it is favourable, even admirable, and even accounting for a certain rosy view it sounds like a great time and place to grow up. As long, that is as you were white - there are some truly distressing accounts of horrific racism and racially-motivated murders.

The book does become darker as the era progresses, as the era did itself. There's a strong emphasis on the prevalence of Communist fears: "It was an especially wonderful time to be a noisy moron.... Although he had no qualifications (he had flunked out of Ozark Bible College - a rare distinction, one would suppose), Hargis founded several educational establishments, including the Christian Crusade Anti-Communist Youth University, (I would love to hear the school song.)" Some of the rampant, mindless anti-Communist measures echoed for me the current hysteria about terrorism, with politicians advocating for the suppression of human rights if doing so stemmed the threat of Communist encroachment. Bryson tells of Dr Ernest Chain, a Nobel prize winner for his work developing penicillin, being refused entry to the US because he had - at the behest of the World Health Organization - helped set up a penicillin plant in then-Communist Czechoslovakia, and famed chemist Linus Pauling (who would himself be awarded the Nobel prize, twice) was prohibited from leaving the country "on the grounds that he had once or twice publicly expressed a liberal thought."

Although I've enjoyed other of Bryson's works more, I left The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid more informed and with a better picture of the US than I expected. I heard Bryson speaks a couple of years ago, when he was in Australia promoting the release of the book, and he was as engaging in person as he is on paper. - Alex

Factoring Humanity - Robert J Sawyer

Psychology professor Heather Davis has been part of the team trying to decode the signal that's been coming in from Alpha Centauri, one encrypted message every thirty-one hours, since 2007. in the decade since the first message arrived Heather's life's changed a lot - her daughters grew up, her older daughter committed suicide, and the subsequent strain resulted in separation for Heather and husband Kyle, an AI expert also at the University of Toronto. Becky hasn't seen her parents for a while but tonight has asked to meet them at the family home, where she'll bring her boyfriend. Confident Becky and Zach will be announcing their engagement, Heather is shocked when she instead accuses Kyle of sexually abusing her as a child. Though Heather wants to believe Kyle, she has to be sure, and in utilising her nervous energy Heather has a breakthrough with the alien data, a breakthrough that not only changes the way people interact with one another but also allows her to know the truth about Kyle, Becky, and why Mary killed herself.
As always Sawyer elevates fantasy/science fiction beyond an involving yarn by incorporating greater issues and layers of meaning. In addition to the first contact plot, which is in itself tackled creatively, he has woven in:
- well developed and normal people, whose lives extend beyond the boundaries of the book
- the selective and fickle nature of memory
- an exploration of repressed memories and the criticisms of the repressed memory movement
- the dangers and benefits of therapy and licensing of therapists
- sexual misconduct in academia, the damage of false accusations to careers, and the need for protection
- the search for extraterrestrial life and imaginings of how this might differ from, and be similar to, us
- artificial intelligence, the quest for a designed intelligence that can pass the Turing test, and the nature of humanity
- the nature of consciousness
- loyalty conflicts between ones' spouse and ones' child, parent-child relationships in adulthood, and marital relations
- suicide and suicidality
- linguistics and Chomskian theories of language development
- the nature of reality and how we perceive it, and
- maths, physics and the fourth dimension.
It is an indication of how comprehensively intertwined these themes are that, as I read the book I didn't notice the panoply of levels and strands. Like some of the best writing around, it is only on reflection, when moving past the first layer of plot, that these are evident. Some of these themes are explored in other Sawyer novels, and there are certainly some strongly recurring concepts (most evident when glutting on his collected works, as I am at present), but each new approach at exploration brings a fresh perspective.
One of my favourite examples I use to illustrate the way our memories are faulty, though we believe them unimpeachable, and the complex history of sibling and family relationships, comes from Factoring Humanity - when going through long-lost photos Heather finds pictures of Mary's fifth birthday and is wounded anew by the memory of her sister blowing the party of for a business meeting, only to discover, when turning the album pages, that Doreen came after all, and what Heather had been resentfully remembering was her sister's initial inability to come, something she would never discuss with her sister because it was petty. I've used this example of how we remember things differently from one another for several years, without remembering (!) this was the source.
And for those who think linguistics is dull, ponder this - how do we all agree that "big red ball" is correct and "red big ball" isn't? Chomsky thinks grammatical rules like this are hardwired, and Sawyer comes up with a theory for how this could be so.
All in all, much to think about, and all of it carried along by a fast-paced and involving plot, with strong and fallible characters. Sawyer really ought to be far more widely known than he is. - Alex

Among the Barbarians - Paul Sheehan

Subtitled The Dividing of Australia, this treatise by journalist Sheehan was a controversial best-seller on its release a decade ago. Inspired by an article he wrote two years earlier ("The Multicultural Myth" in the Sydney Herald Sun), and by the vituperant response that article received, Sheehan aims to support two interwoven claims about modern day Australia - first that unrestricted multiculturalism is a force that will destroy Australia; and second that anyone (or at least anyone white) who questions any aspect of immigration, multiculturalism or social services for non-Australian born inhabitants, or who discusses any ethnic aspect of anything relating to crime, unemployment or other social unworthy act or behaviour, is denounced as a racist. According to Sheehan, in modern Australian culture the term 'racist' is synonymous with ignorant, uninformed and/or erroneous, and anything a racist person says may be dismissed on the face of it, without anyone evaluating the truth of the statement or claim.
Woven through the text are discussions about the nature of the Australian landscape, focusing in particular on eucalypts - both the way they're particularly well adapted to arid Aussie conditions (they became the dominant tree species by knocking out other species competing for their various niches) and (which I didn't previously know) that indigenous colonisation of Australia dramatically altered environmental conditions 60 - 80,000 years ago, primarily through the use of fire.
Along the way Sheehan discusses the evolution of (white) Australian culture and identity, including the well known cultural cringe. He links this, and leftist ideology, to what he says is the marginalising of white/Australian/Anglo-European culture in favour of rampant multiculturalism. It is this marginalising, and the almost (I believe he wouldn't concede the 'almost') mandatory colour blindness of governmental and media reports, that led to the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.
I was very conflicted reading Among the Barbarians - on one hand I do have a degree of white guilt and the leftward-leaning, pro-multiculturalism ideology typical of my age, race, class and level of education, and many of the statements and arguments Sheehan makes seem poorly and/or selectively supported - for a more educated criticism see Anne Henderson's review. On the other hand I believe he's justified in claiming that the word 'racist' is an epithet in modern Australian society, that branding something or someone instantly marginalises and disempowers it, and that Western multicultural countries are comfortable ignoring the blatant anti-white racism of other countries (most notably China).
Sheehan makes some very interesting points - I was particularly interested in the opening section about indigenous law vs white law, using the story of Warlpiri member Stephen Jungarrayi, and his analysis of some of the issues around negotiating between indigenous and white cultures (including whether banning alcohol in indigenous groups is paternalistic, even if decided by the tribes' elders) was realistic in its inability to find a simple solution to what is a Gordian knot of complexity.
However, though he oftentimes acknowledges the contributions to Australia that immigrants have made in the past, there is little reflection or acknowledgement that, at the time of those migrations, similar concerns were raised - foreign ideologies incompatible with (undefined) Australian values, disease, enclaves of unassimilated migrants speaking their own language and not contributing to our society. In my life time this has included Greek, Italian and Turkish migrants ('60s + '70s), Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and other Asian migrants ('80s + '90s), and Indonesian and Middle Eastern/Islamic migrants (the last decade, particularly post September 11. More troubling, Sheehan makes some broad claims without support - though he provides a bibliography, and on occasion statistics are referenced, this is often not the case. For example: "Are we importing criminals as some would have us believe? Yes. Check the prison statistics." That's the full response.
On other occasions statistics are presented misleadingly: "The truth is that all migrants undergo character checks before they get a visa. Fantasy. According to figures in the 1996 NSW Inmate Census, twenty eight percent of the non-Aboriginal prison population of New South Wales is foreign-born, not exactly a bargain for tax payers. Somehow the Department of Immigration also did not notice that career criminals were arriving among the refugee intake in large numbers."
Although precise figures for twelve years ago are time consuming to gather, in 1996 30.9% of Sydney's population was born overseas; as the majority of NSW's population lives in its capital city, if Sheehan's percentage is accurate (he does not explain why the indigenous inmates were excluded from the data), this reflects a roughly proportional percentage of overseas born inmates.
Granted, this is not an academic text, and perhaps it should not be criticised for these omissions. But if one writes about a controversial topic, presents oneself as a professional journalist, and writes with the intent of informing the general public, I think it behooves one to support one's position as robustly as possible.
Migration is the foundation of Australian society - Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse countries on the planet, and it cannot be coincidence that, despite our small population size, we are over represented in the international arenas of sport, entertainment and literature. I'm not saying there's a direct link to the composition of the population, but there's definitely a connection between that level of achievement and the national identity - a fundamental part of which includes respect for and appreciation of diversity.
Thanks to immigration the increase in aging across the population has slowed; a 1995 report showed that the cost of immigration is neutral (Williams, L., 1995, Understanding the economics of immigration, Canberra : Australian Govt. Pub. Service p. 25 - as cited here); and UK statistics from 2002 show that migrants contribute 10% to the GDP.
Many things have changed on the migration landscape in the last decade. Of course the most significant change since Sheehan's book was released is the aftermath of September 11 - globally there are tighter restrictions on travel in general, and particularly with immigration, which is often conflated with refugee intake. A month after the attacks the Howard government, in the throes of an election campaign, took advantage of public panic about terrorists hiding in refugee groups to demonise "asylum seekers" and, with mandatory detention of refugees/asylum seekers, introduce some of the most draconian legislation in the world.
The book is a somewhat light-weight, populist attempt to address real issues around multiculturalism and population size and composition in Australia. While some aspects are no long relevant, the topic is far from resolved. I agree with much of what Sheehan wrote. That Australia cannot sustain indefinite growth (through any combination of immigration and birth rate) is without question - though geographically immense, the soil quality and aridity of much of the continent precludes agriculture and large scale living, even without taking preservation of native flora, fauna and ecosystems in to account.
It's also true that policies that reduce migration, and even talk of them, are quickly branded racist - in no small part because it's rarely directed at Western white migration (from the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand, for example), but also in general. And there are enclaves of non-assimilating migrants, though their children usually assimilate significantly. And there are groups of criminals, both organised and otherwise, from non-Anglo backgrounds; some of these have, without question, taken advantage of immigration policies and/or the small range of names in some Asian countries in order to enter under another identity. I believe this is a strong basis on which to review immigration screening procedures, but not for changing policy, and I believe it is this that Sheehan had an eye to when he wrote Among the Barbarians. - Alex

On the Edge: My Story - Richard Hammond

In 2006 Top Gear co-star Richard Hammond was involved in a near-fatal accident while filming a segment of a jet-powered car for the famous BBC series. Although he avoided serious physical injury, in large part due to the meticulous protective measures taken by the production team and the car's owner, Hammond sustained significant brain injury. On the Edge tells the story of the lead up to, and the aftermath, of an accident that make headlines across the UK.
It's bizarre that I enjoy Top Gearwhen I don't drive, let alone have a car, and have little interest in things automotive. I only discovered the program last year, by accident, but since then have become so absorbed that (despite my budgeting) I've bought several DVDs of the series and already read a collection of columns by the show's star. I hadn't heard anything about the accident until a few weeks after I started watching, when I checked the program out on Wikipedia, and learned about the accident that way. The first show back after the accident aired on Australian TV early this year, and they showed footage of the lead up to the accident and the accident itself, which was spectacular.
The book is extremely well written - Hammond opens with an account of frustration several months after the accident, recounts a childhood filled with a love of all things enginey and wheeled, and his early life up to getting the position on Top Gear, then the preparation for the big drive. Occasionally foreshadowed by the events to come, this is witty, amusing and well articulated.
After the accident his wife, Mindy, tells her side of it, and their accounts switch chronologically, giving a detailed picture of the experience. I've had some experience with acquired brain injury, both professionally and in my private life, and have certainly read about it widely, including another by a brain injury survivor and his wife. Like My Year Off , On the Edge powerfully captures a lot of the frustration and worry involved. What I particularly liked about this account was the articulation of how a brain injured person can seem to be functioning normally, the effects of over-stimulation, the consequences of using humour and sarcasm on someone who's thinking concretely, and the sheer teeth grinding frustration of dealing with a person in PTA (post traumatic amnesia), who will keep repeating the same questions for hours without remembering that you. Only. Just. Answered. That.
Hammond does a masterful job of describing his fear and anxiety, and his wife's descriptions of her strength and anxiety, the bravery of her young daughters (particularly five year old Izzy), and the response of both everyone at Top Gear and the British public, brought tears to my eyes on several occasions.
This is a brilliant book for anyone interested in the topic of acquired brain injury, neurological recovery, hospitalisation, cars and other things with engines, autobiographies, or just a great and absorbing read. Top marks - Alex

The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

What shifts a trend from being on the fringes to mainstream? Why do equally virulent flu strains sometimes become epidemic? How can a community reverse a growing wave of crime by focusing on cosmetic details rather than traditional methods? What makes a restaurant or club The place to be this week but not next week? In The Tipping Point Gladwell manages to simplify a slew of complex, comprehensively researched concepts into a digestible and engrossing study of the tipping point – that moment where a concept, trend or behaviour spills past a threshold and spreads.
By using examples as diverse as children’s programming, an increase in footwear sales, changes in cigarette smoking patterns, and the New York subway system, Gladwell illustrates key concepts in a growth field – how, as the subtitle says, little things can make a big difference.
Gladwell opens with the example of Hush Puppies – a shoe that languished in sales for decades, and whose parent company was thinking of discontinuing. Sold only in small stores, and with sales around 30,000 pairs annually, in mid-1994 something happened – Hush Puppies became fashionable. They were used in photo shoots, and within a year sales increased to 430,000. How did this happen? The first kids to wear them did so precisely because they weren’t trendy; the look was seen by trend watchers, who adopted them; well-connected individuals, who develop and maintain lasting relationships with a multitude more people than average, spread the trend; and before Hush Puppies knew it they were mainstreamed.
I really can’t do justice to this extraordinary work here – the writing is eloquent but pared, and the ideas are magnificently described so that each concept builds so seamlessly upon the one before that you can come away thinking that it’s all self-evident, even if you’d never thought of any of it before. Suffice it to say that I’ve read The Tipping Point three times and my copy’s studded with flags: key ideas and sources I want to follow up when the mythical day arrives that I have spare time. And one of my favourite books, Westerfeld’s So Yesterday, is clearly informed by the concepts discussed by Gladwell. If you’re interested in sociology, popular culture, advertising or marketing, you must read this book. - Alex

Why We Buy - Paco Underhill

Subtitled "The Science of Shopping", this accessible and absorbing work, written by the field's founder, is a fascinating insight into what makes us chose to buy what we buy. Underhill, an environmental psychologist, started out working for local governments looking at ways of imrpoving parks and other outdoor public spaces. In Why We Buy he discusses how he came to pioneer the study of shopping habits and behaviours, as well as some interesting insights into not only the way we act but also how companies encourage us to spend. Those of us trying to cut down on unnecessary purchases can pick up some handy hints on how to prevent our resistance to impulse buying being undermined - for a start, don't pick up a basket!
Underhill has an engaging voice and clearly loves his subject; he is able to convey that in his writing with ease and grace. Themes seamlessly emerge and are integrated into the work as a whole, and my first impulse when I finished was to check if others of his work were available. If you have an interest in shopping psychology, retail marketing and advertising, or why you go out to get a litre of milk and come back with two trolley loads of shopping, this is the book for you. - Alex