‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.11, 13th April 2022:
‘A Short History of Progress’ (2004)
This is the last in a series of three ‘techno-critical’ reviews, examining the excuse that underpins the whole project of industrialisation: ‘Progress’ – examining Ronald Wright’s 2004 book that, 18 years later, still provides well-observed (if bleak) view of the future.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.12, 6th May 2022:
In this review of ‘Rules for Radicals’ I’m not going to list those ‘rules’. Nor the oft-neglected list of ‘means and ends’. That’s because, if you read the book, that’s not the point of these lists. Alinsky’s philosophy is broader than that.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.13, 24th May 2022:
An historically significant book, its hypothesis proven right, its message undimmed by the passing of six decades – and yet it is so seldom discussed today.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.14, 16th June 2022:
The 1970s surge in ecological awareness saw many books published on our relationship with the natural world. ‘Food for Free’, by Richard Mabey, was published fifty years ago in 1972.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.15, 15th July 2022:
‘Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism – The Unbridgeable Chasm’ (1995)
The problem with the label, ‘anarchist’, is that the moment it is defined, it contradicts the principles it claims to represent. It was this contradiction that Murray Bookchin sought to explore in his 1995 book, in the wake of the complex political transformation that occurred after the 1960s.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.16, 20th August 2022:
Beginning as a presentation in 1966, what Sahlins challenged was the historic prejudice which dismissed the rights and value of ‘undeveloped’ societies and their ‘state of nature’.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.17, 16th September 2022:
Published in 1970 by Swedish economist Steffan Linder, this book examines how society has become ‘time poor’, and therefore has become increasingly trapped in the complex ‘rationalisations’ of the modern economy.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.18, 4th October 2022:
From branding to political propaganda, Vance Packard’s book prefigured the use of psychological research and market segregation to more precisely sway public opinion for economic and political ends.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.19, 26th October 2022:
Though written 15 years ago, ‘The Shock Doctrine’ still has a lot to tell us about events today. It charts how a radical lobby created the neoliberal economic model which dominates the world; how that model was introduced from the 1970s; and how it was supercharged after the Millennium through natural and deliberately manufactured ‘disasters’.
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‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.20, 3rd November 2022:
Fifty years ago the editors of The Ecologist published a book that condensed their thinking on ecological problems, and the necessary solutions to them. Five decades on and the book’s prognosis has not only been borne out by experience, but many of the changes it proposed are supported by the latest academic research.
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