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Books I have recently (2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006, ) read
| 2011 (in reverse chronological order) | Back to top of page | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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But it's not entirely
honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs to be read in
conjunction with an antidote, such as See this
|
 This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote my own reports on
Macondo |
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| 2010 (in reverse chronological order) | Back to top of page | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II. After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. |
 “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies” This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is.
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A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. |
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| 2009 (in reverse chronological order) | Back to top of page | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment. It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird.
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 A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics. It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader.
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 This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation. The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book would provide a wonderful basis for a very human and exhilarating and movie. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan.
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This is superb first hand account of
the fighting withdrawal It is both exciting, moving and
atmospheric at the same time, and without meaning to, It is all the more impressive All in all a superb read.
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This is a delightful, exquisitely written historical novel published in 1959 and set in 1830s China. The Chinese Imperial dynasty is at its most flamboyant, cruel, wasteful and hubristic, as it simultaneously wants to enjoy the fruits of trade with the west while forbidding such trade and disdaining all barbarians. For their part, the barbarians of Britain, America and Portugal, based in the Portuguese colony of Macao, desperately want to make money through trading, with the sale of Indian opium to Chinese dealers being especially lucrative.
The climax is a thrilling account of a
sea-battle near Hong Kong in which just two British frigates annihilate,
solely through superior tactics, 29 Chinese men-o'-war. This
leads directly to China's secession of the barren, worthless island of Hong
Kong to Britain, |
A fascinating, meticulously researched study
into what tips some particular phenomena - such as an idea, a
procedure, a drug, a habit, a crimewave - from limited into widespread
adoption, or indeed abstinence, but not others.
Such “epidemics” of adoption depend not only on people who, variously,
but also on the inherent “contagion” and “stickiness” of the phenomenon itself, as well as on a nurturing external environment in which to spread. Countless convincing case studies and numbers are presented, but the volume sorely lacks charts to better illustrate the points being made. Moreover the book seems to be leading to a kind of “how to achieve a tipping point” climax, yet it leaves you frustrated because it never delivers one. More details here. |
 A fascinating book, entertainingly written, in which an economist delves into the world of global commerce by trying to trade his way around the world. Starting with £50,000, proceeds from the sale of his London home, he aims to double this sum in a year of travel. His endeavours - as many unsuccessful as not - include trades and exports of camels from Sudan, coffee from Zambia, chilli from South Africa, horses from Kyrgyzstan, jade across China, tea from Taiwan. In each case he attempts to sell his product to the next stop on his journey. He also wants to test his theory that you can sell ice to the proverbial Eskimos provided you add some special angle to your ice. Does he end up with his £100,000? You'll have to read the book! To my astonishment, I've just (16 April 2009) viewed an episode about the adventure on UK's Channel 4 TV
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![The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas [DVD] [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XCCCeW2cL._SL500_AA240_.jpg) A charmingly written, evocative story of a nine-year old German boy who makes friends with a Polish Jew of the same age who is confined within Auschwitz. For more than a year they meet clandestinely, sitting and chatting earnestly, on either side of the wire fence that encloses the prison and extermination camp The German boy does not understand that his friend is a prisoner denied all the privileges that he takes for granted. The book is written through the eyes of the boy and in the charming style of a nine-year-old.
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King Leopold's Ghost: The Plunder of the Congo
and the Twentieth Century's First Great International Human Rights Movement, Fascinating, wonderfully written, a page-turner, this book also includes a great account of Stanley's African adventures. Above all, it is an appalling exposé of King Leopold II of the Belgians in his quest to obtain and exploit the Congo. Out of a population of around twenty million he was responsible for the deaths of ten million, not to mention further millions mutilated through chopping off hands or feet or genitals (though most of those were already dead.) His use of the vicious chicotte (rawhide whip) averaged at one stage 12 strokes per Congolese worker. In percentage terms, Leopold's murder rate well exceeds those of fellow-monsters Mao (11%), Stalin (14%), Lenin (5%), Pol Pot (21%) or Hitler. Shamefully, however, his brutality was not unduly different from that perpetrated by the French and the Germans in Africa, by the British against Australian aborigines or by the Americans against the Red Indians. Leopold, personally, made over a billion dollars in today's money out of the Congo. |
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| 2008 (in reverse order) | Back to top of page | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 “The Complex : An insider exposes the covert world of the Church of Scientology”, by John Duignan I bought this book when I learnt that Scientology persuaded Amazon in both the UK and US to cease supplying it. It is however available (for now - Dec 2008) in Ireland. The exposé does not disappoint. Scientology is a multinational organisation which, notwithstanding its claims that we are all immortal reincarnates from outer space, is dedicated solely to extracting money from vulnerable people by selling books and courses, all supposedly of a self-improvement nature but with a significant dose of brainwashing thrown in, along with suppression of normal human desires and wants. The “Church” does nothing else, but applies ruthless discipline to its members including gulag-style punishments. Members are assigned naval style ranks and uniforms and work to earn promotion by bringing in ever more money. What happens to the money is not clear, but senior Scientology members enjoy a lavish lifestyle, whilst most ordinary members are paid a pittance, work 14-hour days, sleep in dormitories and are fed prison-style food. It claims to be a “Church” because this affords it charitable (ie tax-free) status and minimises outside scrutiny. The author was a member for 20 years, rising high in seniority before defecting. Based on what has happened to other betrayers, his life may well be in danger for having written this book. |
 Alexander: Invincible King of Macedonia Military historian Peter Tsouras writes a concise (107-page) , pithy account of the life and military adventures of Alexander the Great, considered by many as the greatest strategist, tactician, logistician, politician and diplomat of all time. In just twelve tumultuous years as king of Macedonia, he conquered Eastern Europe, Egypt, Central Asia and much of India, which was the entire extent of the then known world. He died of fever (perhaps typhus, or even poisoning) in 323 BC aged only 32. Though immensely capable and extraordinarily brave, he comes across as a vainglorious braggart, a homicidal thug and bully, intensely moody with a volatile temper. In short a rather unpleasant individual, notwithstanding his occasional magnanimity towards the vanquished provided they kow-tow to him sufficiently. So I for one didn't feel sorry for him for having died so young, and was glad it was of disease without the glory of battle wounds. Strangely, the author makes no allusion to Alexander's renowned homosexuality. Not a single male lover is identified as such, but his marriages to three women is dutifully recounted. |
 This is the definitive account of the most foul human being ever to have walked the earth. No other monster comes close - not Stalin, not Lenin, not Hitler, not Pol Pot, not Genghis Khan, not Ivan the Terrible. The book is meticulously researched, magnificently structured, beautifully written - and drips innocent Chinese blood from almost every one of its 971 riveting pages. Moa Tse Tung was obsessed with simply killing as many of his countrymen as he could by whatever means in order to maintain the remainder in such a permanent state of terror that the idea of turning on him would never even cross their wretched minds. He also starved peasants in their hundreds of millions in order to confiscate the food they grew to pay the Soviets for a gargantuan armaments infrastructure which thankfully he never achieved. Most terribly, Mao was absolutely right. He proved that terror is the most effective way of retaining power. Too many despots have tried to emulate him, but none with the same single-minded ferocity. Disgustingly, people name restaurants in his honour.
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 English historian Charles Foley's fascinating account of an honourable man who introduced the concept of Special Forces to the German military during World War 2. In that role, as Hitler's trusted operative, he recounts much derring-do, such as rescuing Mussolini from mountain top captivity, bluffing the then Hungarian strongman into surrendering, wreaking covert havoc on the Allied invasion of France. Particularly moving is his account, from the German viewpoint, of the invasion of the Soviet Union and the stoic, stolid, suicidal resistance of the Russians. This page-turner of a book concludes with a forecast of the role of Special Forces in future conflicts, which has turned out to be surprisingly prescient. It was written in 1954.
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| 2007 (in reverse order) | Back to top of page | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The purpose of this 500-page novel is to present in graphic detail the horrors of living, fighting and - above all - dying in (and under) the trenches during the First World War. It does so, both commendably and shockingly. You certainly cannot come away with other than feelings of deep admiration and sympathy for what those young men endured, not to mention the distraught families at home, in their tens of thousands, when the dreaded news of their sons' demise arrived. But the book is spoilt by the
introduction of a storyline which is sentimental and distracting. Much
of it is frankly boring. You might enjoy the sex which is detailed and
graphic, Also, the interminable, repetitive description, going on for over 40 pages, of being buried alive in a collapsed tunnel, just ends up being irritating. About 200 pages should have been edited out. |
This unapologetic old-style thriller pits a hardened Vietnam veteran A rattling yarn across three continents unfolds as the good guy tracks down the bad guy in his luxurious lair. Definitely a man's book. The story is accompanied by enlightened historical cameos describing aspects of the Vietnam and Yugoslav wars and by bios of major figures from those conflicts. Pretty much unputdownable, |
 “In Search of Iraq: From Baghdad to Babylon” by Richard Downes A particularly well-written and compelling account of the Iraq war, before during and after the 2003 invasion, as viewed by an Irish journalist. I expected the strong anti-war bias typical of most Irish journalism, but found instead great, factual reporting of what the author saw and heard on the ground in Iraq. The book also includes excellent
background briefing material,
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 “A Doctor's War” by Dr Aiden McCarthy The wartime memoir of an RAF volunteer doctor from Cork, who sees action in France, Dunkirk, Java and Japan. As a prisoner of war for 3½ years, he bravely and doggedly faces a Japanese diet of scorn, deprivation and brutality, whilst seeking opportunities to practice his profession for the benefit of his fellow-captives. He is torpedoed, his
ship sunk, is rescued by the Japanese, He ends up in Nagasaki where he survives the atomic bomb and lives to welcome and be rescued by the Americans in 1945. Along the road, he witnesses incredible acts of courage and patriotic self-sacrifice, as well as understandable savagery, on the part of his fellow prisoners. Yet his
reflections contain little of rancour for his Japanese captors who treated
A lasting impression is
the meticulous planning that went into post-invasion Japan |
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 A rollicking account of the inexactitudes of modern surgery, the struggle to keep up with the latest technology and techniques, the impossibility of getting trained and practiced except by trial and error on live patients, and the cock-ups that occasionally result. It also wanders into philosophical discourse on little understood conditions such as nausea, blushing and overeating. Yet you end up with a strange confidence in and admiration for the men and women who cut you up as they do their level best to improve your life. |
 The title tells you nothing about the book. It's a series of stories about various machines and edifices that have caught the author's humorous eye because they have some mystical quality he calls “soul”.
They include man-made things as varied as
Riva boats, the Hoover dam, US Nimitz aircraft carriers, the AK-47,
A book that is witty and fascinating |
 Alister McGrath, the principal author of “The Dawkins Delusion”, is an Oxford professor, with a biology background, and as such is of similar academic standing to atheist proselytizer Richard Dawkins. Here he vigorously
refutes
Actually it is thoroughly turgid and heavy going, which detracts from its argumentation. Professor McGrath |
 Richard Dawkins, who has made a career out of being an articulate atheist, sets out his case for declaring that God is no more than a human delusion. It is elegantly written and carefully argued, but overly reliant on strawmen, distortion, mockery and sarcasm to disparage religious belief. I have written a review, You can also
listen to David Quinn's forensic evisceration of |
 This is Steyn's brilliant latest tome which seems to have evolved out his seminal article “It's the Demography, Stupid”. It warns how Westerners, other than Americans, are dying out due to low birthrates (1.1 babies per woman), to be replaced by fast-breeding unintegrated Muslim immigrants and their babies, and their anti-West, anti-gay, anti-woman sharia ideology. For older people, his book is too late. But it is a must-read for young Westerners still of reproduction age |
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| 2006 (in reverse order) | Back to top of page | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| April/May 2006 | May 2006 | May 2006 | May 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 One of the finest books I've ever encountered. It reads like a series of quality lectures. You will never gain a better appreciation of the Cold War, with all its drama and nuances, than from this utterly compelling volume. No other document better explains the extraordinary roles of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II - and Mikhail Gorbachev - in ending the Cold War by destroying the Soviet Union - virtually without a shot being fired. |
However, it underestimates the huge volumes of oil that remain unexploited because no concerted effort has been conducted to chase the less profitable reserves. For comparable production levels, the United States has drilled 100 times more wells. If the Saudis do that,
In summary, See also my review |
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Whimsical tale about an English couple starting a new life on a farm in a remote mountain in Andalucia (a couple of hours north of Malaga) and getting themselves integrated with the natives. Nice easy-going read for holiday time; makes you a little wistful
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 The title says it all: Because Europeans are sleepwalking through the momentous events unfolding around them, Islam is gradually regaining - and extending - the European Caliphate it was ejected from centuries ago. The author's key paragraph ... “In the end, Europe's enemy is not Islam, or even radical Islam. Europe's enemy is itself - its self-destructive passivity, its softness toward tyranny, it's reflexive inclination to appease, and its uncomprehending distaste for America's pride, courage, and resolve in the face of a deadly foe. ” Scary. |
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 Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains what it's like to be a Muslim woman and how Islam needs its own Enlightenment. She also shows how the suppression of women not only removes 50% of Muslim populations as a potential source for growth and development, but grievously hobbles the development of menfolk as well. Ignorant mothers raise ignorant sons. This slim volume should be every right-thinking feminist's handbook. |
 Prior to his ascendancy as Iran's theocrat-in-chief in 1979, a loin-obsessed cleric sets out his bizarre rules for urinating, defecating, eating, women, sex by men (with wives, Jews, mistresses, other men, children, camels, whatever) and other key features of Islamic theocracy.
More Khomeinistic |
 A man with a passion for bad cricket goes with his pals on a world cricketing tour - which includes Antarctica |
Because he knows what an authoritarian regime is really like, he loves George W Bush. This is a very well constructed narrative, in remarkably readable, idiomatic English, especially considering it has been translated from Korean to French to English. Unputdownable. George W Bush read this book and immediately invited the author to the White House. |
Instapunditeer This is all very uplifting if you're a blogger. But then the book degenerates in the last quarter to lot of unreadable old waffle about spaceships and other rubbish. |
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This is a superb yet
shocking book, even though it is Borat should have been created as an Uzbek not a Kazhak. |
I'm late in reading it,
Readable and wise,
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Imperial Ambitions: Conversations with Noam Chomsky on the Post-9/11 World  Noam Chomsky undergoes 200 pages of tame interviewing, allowing him full scope for anti-American, anti-Democracy, anti-freedom, anti-Capitalism rants See my review |
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
Jihad
Religion
Iona Institute
Leisure
Blog Directory
My Columns in the
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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