Review: Zero Days, by Ruth Ware
I love a good, fast-paced thriller and this book showed a lot of promise. In the opening few pages, the heroine — a woman known as “Jack” — returns home from a dangerous assignment (she…
Review: Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead? by Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Alain de Botton and Malcolm Gladwell
With those four men listed as the authors, how could this have been such an uninteresting book? It’s the transcript of a debate which took place in Toronto several years ago. Pinker and Ridley made…
Review: George Orwell and Russia, by Masha Karp
Growing up in the Soviet Union, Masha Karp read George Orwell’s novels, and in particular 1984 and Animal Farm and could not understand something. How could someone who never lived in her country, who did…
There is no left alternative to Biden
While Republican politicians are queuing up to take on Donald Trump for the party’s nomination next year, there’s hardly anything going on in the other camp. Unless he falls ill or changes his mind, Joe…
Review: Self-Discipline for Writers: Writing Is Hard, But You Too Can Write and Publish Books Regularly, by Martin Meadows
This is an example of a book with a very good title, but little else. The author appears to have done hardly any research, mostly tells you stuff any writer would know, and the good…
Review: Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex, by Christopher Turner
Don’t be put off by the silly title. “Orgasmatron” was an inside joke in Woody Allen’s 1973 film “Sleeper”. And no, Wilhelm Reich did not invent sex (as far as I know). But title aside,…
Review: Freud – A very short introduction, by Anthony Storr
This very short book is unfortunately not a very good book. If you want to know what Freud thought about things, probably the best place to start is Freud himself. Author Anthony Storr concedes that…
Workers’ rights violations at record high – and what to do about it
On the last day of June, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) released its annual “Global Rights Index”. It presented a bleak picture of a world where workers’ rights are routinely trampled upon. And according…
50 years later …
This week marks the 50th anniversary of my first visit to Israel. It was July 1973 and I was one of a group of six members of the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL) sent to…
Review: Damascus Station, by David McCloskey
Remember a time when the CIA was seen as either the bad guys or at best morally complicated? Back in the Seventies, post-Watergate, if the CIA put in an appearance in a book or film,…