Review: American Fairy Tales, by Dato Turashvili
As far as I can tell, there are only three books by Georgian author Dato Turashvili available in English — and this is the third. It’s a short book, a collection of vignettes some of…
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Review: The Journey of Humanity, by Oded Galor
What got my attention and led me to read this book was a citation that seemed to show that Oded Galor had discovered the writings of the forgotten German Communist Karl August Wittfogel. It turns…
In Georgia, workers challenge a Russian oligarch
Mikhail Fridman is one of the wealthiest men in Russia and a close associate of Vladimir Putin. He was included in the earliest lists of individuals sanctioned by the West for his complicity in the…
Review: Georgia – The Home of Wine, by Dato Turashvili
Dato Turashvili is one of Georgia’s best known writers, but unfortunately only a couple of his books are available in English translation. This new book is in both Georgian and English and is a lavishly…
Review: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
This is the third novel by Emily St. John Mandel that I’ve read this month. I’m binge-reading her books in no particular order, starting with the most recent, but that’s also pretty much her style….
Review: The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel
Having read (and loved) Sea of Tranquility I was surprised to discover the same characters in this earlier book by Emily St. John Mandel. I may be reading the books in the wrong order, but…
Review: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
I love a good time travel story – and I loved this one so much that I finished it in two days. (To be fair, it’s a short book.). The author works with two well-worn…
From Foxley to Facebook: Thinking the unthinkable about dictators
A few weeks ago Russia indicated that it might designate Facebook as an extremist organisation. To block such a thing occurring, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, clarified its position. It had recently changed its rules to…
Review: A World Without Email, by Cal Newport
If only! Productivity expert Cal Newport makes a compelling argument against the way we use email now, and anyone who struggles with overflowing inboxes will learn from what he writes. But he doesn’t have much…
To understand Putin, read Karl Marx
Seventy years ago at the height of the Cold War a book was published in the US entitled The Russian Menace to Europe. It made the case that “the major objective of Russian foreign policy…