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Review: 42 – The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, Edited by Kevin Jon Davies

HARDBACK
978-1-80018-268-4
320 pages
303 × 216 mm
24 August 2023
£30 / $36.95 / C$54.99 /
€32.49

A full-colour compendium of hundreds of never-before-published artefacts
from Adams’ archive, including diary entries, notes and musings, letters,
photographs, scripts, poems and more.

– Authorised by the estate of Douglas Adams, it includes personal
memorabilia from his family.
– Features a foreword from Stephen Fry and letters written after Adams’
death from friends and fans: Neil Gaiman, Margo Buchanan, Dirk Maggs,
Robbie Stamp, Arvind David.

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.
Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing – it is a matter of legend that Douglas bought the very first Mac in the UK; musings on how the internet would disrupt the CD-Rom industry, among others.

42 also features archival material charting Douglas’s school days through
Cambridge, Footlights, collaborations with Graham Chapman, and early
scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently. Alongside details of his most celebrated works are projects that never came to fruition, including the pilot for radio programme They’ll Never Play That on the Radio and a space-inspired theme park ride.
Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination, and offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

Blog tour calendar: 42 – The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, Edited by Kevin Jon Davies

Blog tour calendar: Anthracite, by Matt Thomas

Review: Gender Euphoria, Edited by Laura Kate Dale

● This ground-breaking anthology brings together an eclectic cohort of trans, nonbinary, agender, gender-fluid and intersex contributors to share their experiences of “gender euphoria” – bringing stories of joy, belonging and positivity to the conversation around transition
● Moments of gender euphoria include an agender dominatrix being called
‘Daddy’, an Arab trans man getting his first tattoos, and a trans woman
embracing her inner fighter
● Gender Euphoria reached its funding target in less than a week, and has over 1,000 backers

So often, the stories shared by trans people about their transition centre on gender dysphoria:
a feeling of deep discomfort with their birth-assigned gender, and a powerful catalyst for coming out or transitioning. But for many non-cisgender people, it’s gender euphoria which pushes forward their transition: the joy the first time a parent calls them by their new chosen
name, the first time they have the confidence to cut their hair short, the first time they truly embrace themself.

Gender Euphoria seeks to show the world the sheer variety of ways that being non cisgender can be a beautiful, joyful experience. What each of the book’s essayists have in common are their feelings of elation, pride, confidence, freedom and ecstasy as a direct result of coming out as non-cisgender, and how coming to terms with their gender brought unimaginable joy into their lives.

Blog tour calendar: Gender Euphoria, Edited by Laura Kate Dale

Review: The Philosopher Queens, ed. by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting

Where are all the women philosophers?
• A beautifully illustrated introduction to twenty of the most important and underrepresented women philosophers, from 400BCE to the present day
• In 2015, women accounted for only 22% of philosophy professors at the top 20 US universities; in some fields of philosophy there has been almost no increase in the number of women since the 1970s
• Three of the most comprehensive histories of philosophy published in the last 20 years have made little or no mention of women

The history of philosophy has not done women justice: you’ve probably heard the names Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Locke – but what about Hypatia, Arendt, Oluwole and Young?

The Philosopher Queens is a long-awaited book about the lives and works of women in philosophy by women in philosophy. This collection brings to centre stage twenty prominent women whose ideas have had a profound – but for the most part uncredited – impact on the
world.

You’ll learn about Ban Zhao, the first woman historian in ancient Chinese history; Angela Davis, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the American Black Power Movement; Azizah Y. al- Hibri, known for examining the intersection of Islamic law and gender equality; and many more.

For anyone who has wondered where the women philosophers are, or anyone curious about the history of ideas – it’s time to meet the philosopher queens.

Blog tour calendar: The Philosopher Queens, ed. by Lisa Whiting and Rebecca Buxton

Review: Girl With A Gun, by Diana Nammi and Karen Attwood

Diana Nammi became a fighter with the Peshmerga when she was only seventeen.

Originally known as Galavezh, she grew up in the Kurdish region of Iran in the 1960s and 70s.

She became involved in politics as a teenager and, like many students, played a part in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

But the new Islamic regime tolerated no opposition, and after Kurdistan was brutally attacked, Galavezh found that she had no choice but to become a soldier in the famed military force.

She spent twelve years on the front line, and helped lead the struggle for women’s rights and equality for the Kurdish people, becoming one of the Iranian regime’s most wanted in the process.

As well as being the startling account of Galavezh’s time as a fighter, Girl with a Gun is also a narrative about family and resilience, with a powerful love story at its heart.