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I've read less non-fiction recently, but here's what I have this year: Jan Morris - Heaven's Command (book 1 of Pax Britannica trilogy) is an amazing overview of early Victorian empire, with each chapter focusing on some particular theme, incident or character from the time. The follow-up reading I've done shows that her research is considered somewhat dated now, and sometimes she focused on colourful stuff more than was necessary or advisable, but still I highly recommend the series as well written, even poetic overview of an era. Margaret Atwood - In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination was pretty good collection of essays and reviews, with the main point being that SF is inherent to the human imagination, and that every utopia by definition has an opposite dystopia and vice versa. Ben Goldacre - Bad Science. I'm translating the book at the moment, but I can't say I was too impressed with it. The author seems way too eager to go on frothing rants about some particular people and 'destroy' them so thoroughly it seems quite pointless, especially for readers outside the UK. Leonard Mlodinow - The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is more of a historical overview of research in risk and game theory by a mathematician, but it's very good if you adjust your expectations accordingly. Phil Rees - Dining with Terrorists tells about the author's experiences with different terrorist organisations. It's quite fragmented as each chapter tells of a different country/group, but the interconnected groups can be several chapters apart. Also, he's obsessed with showing why there can't be any one definition of 'terrorism'.
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Apr 5, 2014 13:49
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rasser posted:Yeah, I guess you're right. Ben is a friend of my center chief in Oxford and I've heard him live on a Evidence Live! conference. He's one of the young stars in the evidence-based medicine milieu in England, and being an EBM disciple I really, really want to like his books. I'm giving Bad Pharma a chance soon, and can recommend his TED talk as well as his weekly column in the Guardian. His twitter account is just manic rants. I'm translating him to Latvian. EBM is important, and the book touches some very important subjects that I think aren't being discussed nearly enough in Latvia, which is why I'm a bit pissed about him fighting drawn-out battles with people who don't really deserve that much attention. It is all connected with his wider points, but sometimes Ben just seems to get lost in dismantling some guy's position stone by stone. Oh well, I suggested the translation myself anyway, and it will be a much needed change from all the self-help and 'quantum healing' bullshit that's flooding the market. I'm interested in hearing about Bad Pharma, too!
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Apr 7, 2014 22:42
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