Book Reviews – The Tall Skinny Latte Philosopher

War for the Playstation generation?

Martin Roberts — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:06:08 +0000

It may seem a little churlish to want to assess Ernst Jünger’s classic First World War memoires ‘Storm of Steel’ nearly a hundred years after the fact but, as this is a book for all time, then it surely deserves continuous review, not least because, as I read it I began to wonder if it …

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Auschwitz. The Nazis & ‘The Final Solution’ by Laurence Rees.

Martin Roberts — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 15:35:54 +0000

Godwin’s Law states that ‘As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches’. True enough and epithet that neatly encapsulates our endless fascination with the man, Auschwitz, the Final Solution and the Holocaust. Rightly so, each generation needs a book like this for, whilst human nature remains unchanged, keeping the …

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East West Street by Philippe Sands

Martin Roberts — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 17:24:27 +0000

I’m going to go against the crowd here. Frankly I’m baffled by the critical success of East West Street. To borrow from one of Woody Allen’s greatest sketches; ‘This a good book, but not a great one’ and, although this is clearly a heresy, there are some passages, sometimes extending into chapters, that are just, …

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Darkening the Enlightenment. Pankaj Mishra’s ‘The Age of Anger’

Martin Roberts — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 13:49:39 +0000

Pankaj Mishra’s excellent ‘state of the nations’ work actually contains nothing particularly new and is so much the better for it. The book publishers’ thirst for tasty new nuggets, hand-wringing confessions or outlandish new theories has the effect of distorting intellectual study as it is bent against the black hole of publisher’s profits. Freed from …

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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Martin Roberts — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 15:14:05 +0000

30 Jan. 2017 As Donald Trump’s presidency rolls on there will be much vitriol, much emotion and much jumping to ill-informed conclusions. JD Vance is in no way an apologist for Trump – far from it – but reading this book will help you understand where the Trump came from and you’d have to be …

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Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the Corporate Dream

Martin Roberts — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 15:16:05 +0000

4 Dec. 2011 Barbara Ehrenreich’s dark and unquestionably depressing book exposes us to a world in which the human soul is repressed to a level that the great twentieth century monocrats could only have dreamed of. The irony is that she (and the book) suffer from the very fealty to a lief lord that the …

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