Format: 342 pages, Paperback Published: March 21, 2019 by Two Roads ISBN: 9781473661233 (ISBN10: 1473661234)
From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers – race and class have shaped Akala’s life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today.
Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Nativesspeaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain’s racialised empire.
Natives is the searing modern polemic and Sunday Times bestseller from the BAFTA and MOBO award-winning musician and political commentator, Akala.
Bedford Square Publishers 05 June 2025 £18.99 978-1-8350-1071-6 Hardback
The book Our names are a shadow we carry around with us. They are part of who we are. Our names are a marker of our self-identity and our sense of self. Our names have the power to shock. They have the power to heal, and they have the power to trigger conversations around race, class, social mobility and belonging. But what is a name? What do our names tell us about ourselves? And why do they matter?
Named is a fascinating exploration of names, global naming conventions and identity politics woven into a moving, personal narrative about the finding of family and self. At the intersection of memoir and social and cultural history it is a truly fascinating book about the seemingly ordinary and every day.
The author’s own narrative about her estrangement from her Nigerian father, the grapples with her Jamaican mother and her journey towards identity is woven through the chapters making it an engaging and intimate investigation of what makes us who we are.
Format: 320 pages, Hardcover Published: March 19, 2024 by Allen Lane ISBN: 9780241595824 (ISBN10: 0241595827)
Description
Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose influential work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology movements” dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization –and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so scary about gender?
In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and trans-exclusionary feminists. They illuminate the concrete ways that this phantasm displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of critical race theory and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.
An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us an essentially hopeful work that is both timely and timeless.
My Review
Interesting, definitely one to re-read and digest. I struggled with parts of the text – it was a bit dense.
The author challenges the phantasm of ‘gender ideology’, pushed by those with a stake in maintaining the cis-heteronormative, patriarchal status quo as part of religious and Right wing ideology. The author takes the reader through the various talking points, and explains how those opposed to equal rights for gender and sexual minorities elide between talking points without logical argument. They assume ‘allowing trans people to live their lives’ automatically means ‘anyone will identify as anything in order to attack children’. There’s no logical way to get from one to the other. This is a way to displace the fear of living in late-stage capitalism, with the attendant global warming and population displacement that comes with it. Instead of focusing our anger and fear on the causes of the world becoming unliveable, humans are distracted by false ghosts, phantasms, bundled under the word ‘gender’.
The book seems to be aimed at a non-academic audience, covering what should be fairly obvious arguments, if you’ve kept up with the whole anti-trans movement. However, it does become very academic and falls into philosophy-speak at times. I did enjoy reading this book, but sometimes, I wish they’d written it in plain English.
It’s late, I’ll write more when I’ve had a think about it.
By Julie Cook Imprint: Pen & Sword History Pages: 184 Illustrations: 32 black and white illustrations ISBN: 9781399003414 Published: 10th October 2022 £14.00
Description
A History of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts: Brownies, Rainbows and WAGGGS charts the evolution of the Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from its early days as a movement started before WW1 right through to the modern day. With real life interviews with Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from their 90s down to young children, this book looks at what being a Girl Guide has meant through the ages up to the present day. With dramatic and often emotional stories of what it was like to be an evacuated Brownie in the Second World War, a disabled Girl Guide and with tales of girls’ heroism throughout the two great wars both in the UK and the United States, this book extols the Guiding and Scouting movement as one that has evolved with women and girls’ rights and its hopes for the future.
My Review
Thanks to Rosie Crofts at Pen & Sword for sending me a copy of this book, way back in 2022. I was sent it in return for an honest review.
I wanted to review this book because I was in Brownies and Guides, and have some really good memories of being part of the Guiding movement. I got me through most of my teens and gave me something to do on a Wednesday evening for 7 years, and trips away. I still see my Brownie leader. I was also her Young Leader in a different Guide group when I was 17/18 after I left my original Guide group just before I turned 16. I managed a whole year out of Guides. When I went to university, I joined the Guides and Scouts association there, but didn’t do anything with them. There were so many people and they were not as welcoming as you would expect.
Reading this book brought back memories. I’d completely forgotten about the toadstool and mirror we used as a pool in Brownies to do our Promise. I can’t remember what Six I was in, but I think my sister made it to Seconder in her Six. I must have joined in 1990, or 1991, because I had the ‘new uniform’, a pair of trousers and a jumper, while my sister had the old brown dress and she joined a year before me. You had to wait until there was space before you could join. The leaders, Brownie Owl and Tawny Owl, were school teachers at my cousins’ primary school. We used to play games and make things. My best friend also went to that Brownies, but didn’t stay long because a lot of our games were floor based and she couldn’t take part, and I can’t remember her from then; we met in secondary school in 1994 and we’ve been friends ever since she talked at me until I finally responded. I did a few badges, mostly the walking and camping related ones. I think I tired to do some of the more domestic ones, but I wasn’t very good at the.
I went up to Guides in 1993 when I turned 10. My Guide leader was the vicar’s wife and a Marie Curie nurse. Our Guides, and the Brownies, were attached to the local C of E church. We did a lot of stuff in and around the church and the vicarage, because they had a huge garden, and knew a lot of people. We went camping, to adventure centres, did flower arranging, candle making and jam making, we went to The Body Shop for a special visit about make-up for beauty related stuff, followed by a trip to McDonalds, we went ice skating and to Cleethorpes swimming pool for a special treat. We went to Poacher 96, a big international camp help every four years at Lincolnshire Show Ground. We learnt about child safety and care. I got badges in walking, camping and other random stuff. We got new neckers around 1998, in Royal Stuart Tartan. Before that, I can’t remember what colour we had, or if we even had one.
There was one camp where I wanted to try climbing and abseiling, but I only just managed to climb the climbing wall and had to be helped down the internal stairs of the climbing tower, because I was too scared to abseil once I got to the top. I wet the sleeping bag every night of that camp. I was still bed wetting at that point. Luckily I was sleeping in my own tent, although I shared it with one other Guide who was as anxious as I was. I’d have preferred to have my own tent to myself. That was the camp where the leader went to buy ‘Seventeen’ magazine for a group of fifteen year old Guides (so I must have been 12 or 13) and was scandalised when she realised what was in Seventeen magazine. Some of those girls seemed impossibly more mature and sophisticated than me, even though they weren’t much older really.
At another camp, we stayed in dorms (I had adult nappies for this occasion) at an adventure centre and I fell in a river while canoeing. I don’t mind falling in rivers, that’s fun. We also went climbing on that trip too. I got sunburnt and hid under a rock after doing the easiest climb and abseil.
On one weekend trip to a local water sports centre, my sister and I had a dome tent and we played ‘how many guides can you get in a 2-person dome tent’.
The answer is 12. Twelve teenage Guides full of sugar, who’d just spent the day canoeing around an old clay pit.
I’m sure my experience in a Guide group in the 1990s in a small town in northern Lincolnshire will be different from a Guide in 1990s London or a coastal town in Cornwall.
This book isn’t a deep archival research based book, it outlines the story of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting in Britain and the US in 1910, and shares the stories of Guides, Scouts, and Brownies from the last 80 years. It was written during the pandemic lockdowns, so the interviews were performed over video calls. Some of the quotes come from previously published memoirs to illustrate the experiences of other Guides.
The book shows there’s a rich social history to be found in the stories of Guides and Girl Scouts, ready to be mined. There are bits and pieces of information in this book that every Guide and Girl Scout should know – like who founded them (Agnes Baden-Powell in the UK, Juliette Gordon-Low in the US) and when, the origins of the names and uniforms, that sort of thing. It also looks to the future and the current needs of girls. GirlGuiding UK regularly surveys members in about the things that are currently important to them and has found some disturbing things about the way girls feel about their bodies and abilities.
Guides and Girl Scouts did consider opening to boys when I was a member, just after Scouting UK and Boy Scouts of American opened up to girls, but they decided that girls need a place away from boys, to develop their identities away from the influence of social expectations of the way children and teenagers of different genders should interact. The GirlGuiding UK website makes it clear that men can volunteer to help units in some capacities, but it is a girls-only organisation and the leaders are all women, for instance, had my grandad still been alive while I was a Guide, he could have taught us knots for a badge and been a tester, but he couldn’t have been a leader, although he’d been a Scout Leader in South Shields while my Dad and Uncle were in the Cub Scouts.
This book was fascinating and reminded me of the fun and adventures I had in my Guiding days. A great addition to any Guide’s library.
PUBLICATION DATE: 18TH JULY 2024 HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £ 20.00 | OPEN BORDERS PRESS
Blurb
Ten years on from the annexation of Crimea, two years on from Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people continue to fight back. In the second volume of his war diaries, Andrey Kurkov gives a fresh perspective on a people for whom resistance and solidarity have become a matter of survival.
Our Daily War is a chronological record of the heterogeneous mix that comprises Ukrainian life and thought in the teeth of Russian aggression, from the constant stress of air raids, the deportation of citizens from the occupied regions and the whispers of governmental corruption to Christmas celebrations, crowdfunding and the recipe for a “trench candle”.
Kurkov’s human’s-eye view on the war in Ukraine is by turn bitingly satirical, tragic, humorous and heartfelt. It is also, in the manner of Pepys, an invaluable insight into the history, politics and culture of Ukraine.
Our Daily War is the ideal primer for anyone who would like to know what life is like in that country today.
Title and subtitle: Unashamed: Why do people pay for sex? Author: Elizabeth G. Publisher: Whitefox Formats: Hardback, paperback, ebook, audiobook Page count: 272 pages Recommended Retail Price (RRP) (£): Hardback – £19.99, Kindle – £7.99, Audiobook – £0.99 (with Audible membership) or £16 Genre(s): Memoir, Female empowerment, human sexuality, the sex industry, self-help. Publication status: Published on 28th March 2024 Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1915635799
Unashamed: Why do people pay for sex? BLURB
Elizabeth G. was twenty-two years old and travelling around Australia when she came across a job opportunity at an erotic massage parlour in Sydney. Fast forward eighteen years and she had built up a trusted list of regular clientele working as a high-end London escort and was frequenting some of the city’s most exclusive hotels.
This is an inspirational story of resilience and self-belief in the face of adversity. It gives a fascinating insight into what it’s like to work week in and week out as a sex worker and how it feels to hide who you are from your friends and family. It’s about understanding why a person would pay for sex in the first place. It’s about the positive effects of sex work. It’s about love, connection, nurture and healing. It’s about change. It’s about acceptance. It’s about hitting rock bottom and picking yourself back up, time and time again. It’s about growth, embracing the struggles and learning from your mistakes. And, above all, it’s about breaking through the barriers of shame, and staying true to yourself no matter what.
In shedding a spotlight on the sex industry, Elizabeth hopes to challenge the misconceptions and shame surrounding sex work, and to help provide better protection for those who are forced into the industry as a result. Unashamed is a no-holds-barred, taboo-busting account of the life of a sex worker, and what it’s like to build a highly successful career in a multimillion-pound industry that exists largely in the shadows. If you want to feel inspired and embrace yourself as a sex worker, or develop an understanding of the profession, or you simply want to eradicate shame in any aspect of your personal life, then look no further.
Publication date Thursday, May 23, 2024 Price £16.99 ISBN-13 9781800961982
Description A small number of people, motivated by an insatiable greed for power and wealth, and backed by a pinstripe army of enablers (and sometimes real armies too), have driven the world to the brink of destruction. They are the super-villains of corruption and war, some with a power greater than nation state and the capacity to derail the world order. Propping up their opulent lifestyles is a mess of crime, violence and deception on a monumental scale. But there is a fightback: small but fearless groups of brilliant undercover sleuths closing in on them, one step at a time.
In Terrible Humans, Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness and the author of Very Bad People, introduces us to some of the world’s worst warlords, grifters and kleptocrats who can be found everywhere from presidential palaces to the board rooms of some of the world’s best known companies. Pitted against them, the book also follows the people unravelling the deals, tracking the money and going undercover at great risk. From the oligarch charged with ordering the killing of an investigative journalist to the mercenary army seizing the natural resources of an entire African country, this is a whirlwind tour of the dark underbelly of the world’s super powerful and wickedly wealthy, and the daring investigators dragging them into the light.
Format: 208 pages, Paperback Published: March 20, 2023 by Pluto Press ISBN: 9780745345161 (ISBN10: 0745345166) Language: English
Description
An impassioned discussion about the alternative ways to form relationships and resist capitalism.
Capitalist ideology wants us to believe that there is an optimal way to live. ‘Making connections’ means networking for work. Our emotional needs are to be fulfilled by a single romantic partner, and self-care equates to taking personal responsibility for our suffering. We must be productive and heterosexual, we must have babies and buy a house. But the kicker is most people cannot and do not want to achieve all, or any of these life goals. Instead we are left feeling atomised, exhausted and disempowered.
Radical Intimacy shows that it doesn’t need to be this way. A punchy and impassioned account of inspiring ideas about alternative ways to live, Sophie K Rosa demands we use our radical imagination to discover a new form of intimacy and to transform our personal lives and in turn society as a whole.
Including critiques of the ‘wellness’ industry that ignores rising poverty rates, the mental health crisis and racist and misogynist state violence; transcending love and sex under capitalism to move towards feminist, decolonial and queer thinking; asking whether we should abolish the family; interrogating the framing of ageing and death and much more, Radical Intimacy is the compassionate antidote to a callous society.
My Review
I have the Left Book Club edition of this book; the standard cover is plain yellow with black writing. All of the Left Book Club contemporary library have the same cover. I have several of them, this might be the first one I’ve had time to read. I started reading it on Wednesday, and almost finished it, but I had to go to bed, so I finished it off yesterday afternoon.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It was a thoughtful introduction to some of the ideas presented, and well referenced. I generally agree with the direction of the argument, the capitalist, atomised society we live in, focused on the nuclear family, doesn’t support humans in a healthy way. I think read in conjunction with other books, such as Empire of Normality, by Robert Chapman, which I’ve reviewed in the past, and other books from Pluto Press (which I have, but haven’t had a chance to read yet), this book could be a good base from which to work. The writing style was engaging although slightly shallow at times, with arguments not developed as fully as perhaps some would like. Sex is barely mentioned, because intimacy and sex are not synonymous.
Format: 260 pages, Paperback Published: August 9, 2016 by Plume ISBN: 9780147517609 (ISBN10: 0147517605) Language: English
Description
From a former editor at the popular humour site Cracked.com and one of the writers of the bestselling You Might Be a Zombie and The De-Textbook, a rollicking look at vice throughout history, complete with instructions for re-creating debauchery at home.
Part history lesson, part how-to guide, A Brief History of Vice includes interviews with experts and original experimentation to bring readers a history of some of humanity’s most prominent vices, along with explanations for how each of them helped humans rise to the top of the food chain. Evans connects the dots between coffee and its Islamic origins, the drug ephedra and Mormons, music and Stonehenge, and much more. Chapters also include step-by-step guides for re-creating prehistoric debauchery in your modern life based on Evans’s first-hand fieldwork. Readers won’t just learn about the beer that destroyed South America’s first empire; they’ll learn how to make it.
My Review
I really enjoy Robert Evans’ podcast ‘Behind The Bastards’ and thought I’d give this book a read, just for amusement. Apparently he spent the money he was paid for this book on living in a ridiculously big house for a year and almost became homeless. Dafty.
Doing daft things for education and entertainment seems to be Evans’ motivation for a lot of things in life, although he is also a decent conflict zone reporter. This book was written while he was still at Cracked.com, and before he started his podcast. It is a mixture of science, history, anthropology and self-experimentation with a variety of historical intoxicants, from Sumerian early beer, hallucinogens from ancient Greece, nose pipes from Mesoamerica, and the ways tobacco has been used for healing, including as a purgative. I’m surprised only one person ended up in hospital.
The book was entertainingly written and honest about the effects of the various substances tried. I’m not sure the thesis, that ‘bad behaviour’ made civilisation, is substantiated, but it’s an interesting trip through the ancient world, from a very different perspective.
Publisher : Penguin Life (14 Mar. 2024) Language : English Paperback : 272 pages ISBN-10 : 0241588227 ISBN-13 : 978-0241588222
Are carbs the enemy? Am I getting enough protein? Should I worry about inflammation? Do calories count? And do any diets really work?
We are constantly bombarded with advice on how to live a ‘healthier’ life. From the benefits of intermittent fasting and the keto diet, to the growth of veganism and the dangers of inflammation, poor-quality, dubiously sourced information on how we can live and feel better is everywhere. But where should we turn for advice we can trust?
Dr Idrees Mughal (Dr Idz), an NHS doctor with a masters in nutritional research and a board certification in lifestyle medicine, has made it his mission to educate, inspire and empower the public when it comes to diet and lifestyle. His signature videos have attracted millions of followers online, and now he’s collected this wealth of information in his first book, Saturated Facts – your science-backed guide to living better.
Whether you’re looking to lose weight, sleep better, avoid disease or just have more energy as you go about your day, Saturated Facts is the comprehensive guide you need to make smarter decisions about your health.
My Review
This book arrived on publication day. I spent a couple of days reading and digesting it. There was a lot to think about. I’m interested in nutrition science, I’ve read a few other books on the subject, and I’ve even done a couple of level 2 nutrition courses. I like the science. The human body and how it processes food is fascinating and not generally as simple as people believe. It really is more complicated than individual nutrients and calories in-calories out.
I really liked the structure of this book, the references to specific studies and scientific consensus, and all the sources are listed at the back. There should always be sources! It made my brain happy to read this book. Dr Mughal makes the scientific papers legible to the non-specialist and lay reader (I did chemistry, biochemistry and geology, and I understand autism paper, everything else I need translating). I appreciate the effort. I also appreciate the author’s debunkings of myths.
A lot of the information wasn’t new to me, but the level of detail was, and I found that satisfying. The nutrition advice is sound, as far as I know and I generally eat quite well roughly following the advice, something I learnt years ago. I think this book would be really useful for people needing a clear explanation, backed up by named sources, before they engage in a change in diet.
I read a couple of statements in the book, also ostensibly supported by scientific sources, but which are actually a bit dodgy. In fact I found some of them rather upsetting and ignorant.
The first is a reference to Autistic people and faecal transplants, and how after a faecal transplant Autistic children showed ‘less autistic symptoms’. For a start that paper you referenced, Dr Idz, was from October 2005 and has already been debunked by better people than me. Common criticisms include: the children weren’t asked if it helped, their parents were asked for their subjective observations; the language used by the researchers was prejudicial and biased – comparing autistic children vs ‘healthy’ children; the researchers failed to consider the fact that autistic people often have gastric difficulties and limited diets due to sensory sensitivities so it’s hard for us to get balanced diets when we need our safe foods. If children are forced to eat food that upsets them either digestively or sensorily, they will have ‘more autistic symptoms’, because they’re in pain! Strangely enough, you’d probably be grumpy if you can’t eat something because it makes you want to vomit from the texture/taste/smell/sight (baked beans, mushy peas, avocado, I’m looking at you, or not actually because bleurgh) or because your belly hurts because you’re having a response to the food. Children don’t have the words, often, to specifically describe their pain or to work out the cause. This is especially true of those with other complex conditions or who struggle with verbal speech. Instead of giving us faecal transplants, try working out what’s causing the problems in the first place?
If you use a paper that’s so thoroughly wrong to make a point, why should I trust you’re other citations? I know about autism. I don’t know as much about nutrition, you could be bullshitting me and passing it off as scientific consensus. Also, the phrase ‘in mice’ is important in some of the cited papers about helping fat people be less fat.
On to the second one. Doctors and health care professionals generally engage in a lot of anti-fat bullying. I generally get nurses, for some reason, telling me I need to lose all the weight or I’ll get a horrible illness and die. Completely ignoring my genetics, my actual lifestyle, my medical conditions and neurotype. Doctors get funny when I need procedures that require anaesthetic (if you can mutilate healthy stomachs in the name of weight loss, you can do a fucking colposcopy under anaesthetic, stop being a dick about it). Doctor Mughal does in fact acknowledge the anti-fat biases of his colleagues but moves on extremely quickly and seems to push it off as a minor issue. On the subject of fatness he’s quite contradictory – it’s a disease that needs treatment, but also fat people are responsible for being fat, fat people are treated badly by doctors but doctors can’t help their biases.
And Dr Idz is no better than the rest of them on that count. He doesn’t question statements about fat people being more anxious (what do you think happens when people are bullied all their lives?) and doesn’t question the cause and effect of fatness and type-2 diabetes, even though genetics has been shown to be more of an influence than body size.
I’m fat so of course I must live on take aways and sit around all day. Who can afford to live on takeaways? Plus they upset my digestion. I probably have some sort of irritable bowel conditions (or as I call it ‘the anxiety shits’) and I have a hiatus hernia. Also, autistic food pickiness. I know what I can and can’t eat. But still, I like learning more about this stuff as a science-minded person. Don’t be too shocked, will you?
He also misunderstands the purpose of fat activism – it’s a movement for equality. Even if fat people lost that magical 10% of their starting weight, there would still be lots of fat people in the world, and we shouldn’t be excluded from participating in life, shouldn’t be denied healthcare and employment, and we shouldn’t be bullied because of ignorance and prejudices. That’s it. It’s not a difficult concept.
So, over all, watch it if you’re fat and kinda sensitive about stuff, because this book repeats a lot of the biased bollocks we already hear from HCPs, but when he sticks strictly to nutritional advice, Dr Idz really does a good job of explaining the science in an easily understandable way, with citations, mostly from the last decade, with a small number of exceptions (yes, I looked). I like citations, have I mentioned that.
I gave this book a 3/5 on GoodReads purely for the autism bollocks he repeated without question. I’d have got a 4 or 5 if he’d refrained from that and I hadn’t started questioning his sources.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 