Fred Pearce - The Last Generation, How Nature will take her revenge for Climate Change

There are a plethora of books coming out at the moment about Climate Change, a colleague of mine half jokingly described it as “the new religion”, and in part he was right - since the latest IPCC report, the existence of Climate Change cannot be denied and now, the rush to make money from the issue has begun.

But amongst all the “Rough Guides to Climate Change”, and the “No Nonsense” guides, there are some gems. Monbiot’s book “Heat” is a fantastic example, and Tim Flannery’s look at the impact on the world’s eco-systems is well worth a read too.

Journalist Fred Pearce (who writes for the New Scientist) has also produced a readable book and it doesn’t simply regurgitate other books. In other ways (though not necessarily ones that are politically or scientifically problematic) it is very annoying.

To explain what the book is about, I need to explain about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. These are regular reports (the most recent was in Feb 2007, the previous was in 2001) on Climate Change, and they are effectively a summary of scientific understanding on the subject. However, they are a consensus of scientific belief, ignoring the more extreme ideas, or those that are still hotly debated. Pearce’s book doesn’t ignore these ideas. In fact what he does is to concentrate on the aspects of climate science that the IPCC reports might skirt around.

In particular he looks at tipping points, or positive feedbacks. These are aspects of the climate/environment that can, in some models, lead to massive changes to the climate from small changes. For instance (and I pick a standard example) the melting tundra of the northern wastes of Siberia, will release methane gases that have been trapped under the icy soil. These gases will, once released, contribute to further climate change, but are frozen in disproportionate amounts. As the planet warms from historical emissions, more gases are released from the tundra, and the world heats exponentially.

There are many such examples, and Pearce documents them all. Some of these issues are the subject of intense scientific debate. If this was all that Peace did, it would be a boring (and depressing) book. What Peace also does is to look at historical climate change.

Climate Change has always been part of the world’s history, as he points out there have been only two prolonged periods of stability in the earth’s climate. But in documenting how the earth’s climate history has been punctuated by moments of rapid and extreme climate change, the author is showing just how dramatic an effect the consequences of human society are. Currently we are responsible for adding “4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year to the atmosphere”. This is a colossal amount, and it is enough to nudge to fragile climate systems in dangerous directions.

Ultimately, this book cannot help but be a manifesto for change, as most of the other books (good and bad) are. There is nothing special about Pearce’s calls for renewable energies or reduced car use. I was struck by his argument (which I haven’t seen before) that to buy some breathing(!) space, we should concentrate on removing gases like Methane from the atmosphere first. Methane molecules “measured over the first decade after their release… causes a hundred times more warming than a molecule of carbon dioxide”.

As an initial step, blocking emissions from land fills etc could have a major impact on short term global warming, buying the human race much needed time to reduce carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, the book’s clichés (“His name was Bond, Gerrad Bond”) are predictable and in places very annoying. Also annoying is the jacket quote from John Gummer MP, (who famously made his daughter eat beef during the BSE crisis) which is printed above the slogan “Read this book. Your children’s future depends on it”, with no trace of irony.

Finally, I think the title was chosen to sell books, rather than reflect the material within. Nature will not have "revenge", rather the environmental systems will react to environmental changes according to physical laws, unfortunately with appalling consequences for life on earth.

Nevertheless, the book serves a purpose – it highlights something often unmentioned by popular and political accounts of climate change, we don’t face a problem which is gradually going to get worse, we face a situation where existing climate problems will create greater problems that snowball out of our control. Unless of course we all act, collectively, to solve the problem now.

Related Reviews

Monbiot - Heat, How To Stop The Planet Burning
Flannery - The Weathermakers

Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith

Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith is at once an age old story of how a God falls in love with a mortal, it's also a story of how the God (really the elemental of Winter, the Wintersmith) doesn't get his own way (cough) because he falls for a mortal who is also a witch the 13 year old Tiffany Aching.

There's little add to this - the Discworld is faced by eternal winter, unless Tiffany can spurn the advances of the Wintersmith and a certain young boy can complete a dangerous task. We also meet some of the Discworld's best characters again, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, and are treated to the formers superb "Headology".

A couple of times, I wondered whether I'd read some of this before - the descent into hell, that forms part of the quest felt a little like Will and Lyre's trip into a similar place in the third volume of Phillip Pullman's wonderful "His Dark Materials" trilogy. And is it just a coincidence that Tiffany's true love, setting out on his world saving quest is called Roland?

Nevertheless this is a fun read for all Pratchett fans, though definitely not a good starting point for someone new to the series, and can I add how lovely it is to read a good novel in hardback, something that I rarely get a chance to do.

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Lizzie Collingham - Curry, a biography

Anti-capitalist protesters like to rage at the practices of Starbucks. The US coffee chain that seemingly pops up everywhere, drowning out independent shops and forcing it's wares onto a public who have no choice but to visit its venues.

Surprisingly, this isn't a new practice. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Indian Tea Association practically forced it's wares onto an Indian public unused to the drink. They used all the best capitalist practices, giving away free samples, chasing out those who would try to compete and above all, swamping an area with tea. A market needed to be created for a crop that could grow well in India. England had adopted Chinese tea and now was selling it to the Empire. Now, the Indian tea market is huge and millions around Britain believe that tea originated there.

I tell this particular story from this book on the history of Curry, because it illustrates an important fact about that food. Curry, is not a single dish. It's a food that has been adapted, changed and adopted. A food that has been changed sometimes so many times in other countries that it would be unrecognisable to an Indian. But it is also a food that means different things to different people in diverse parts of India.

The author shows how over the centuries, various invaders have come to India, bringing their own traditions and tastes. Not least the Portuguese, who brought chiles from South America, radically altering the taste of India's food. The English of course, most famously took curry back home, though the experiments with Indian food that involved curry powder and sultanas probably are best forgotten.

Curry is a food recognisable by name from America to Japan (where it is particularly popular as a fast easy to prepare food), but it's taste is radically different.

I'm not enough of a curry connoisseur to fully appreciate some of Collingham's finer points about spices and tastes (nor good enough to attempt her recipes). I most enjoyed the sections of social history that she brings into the tale - the Bengali sailors who took over East London Fish and Chip shops in the 1950s, leading to the curry houses that every Eastender considers there own for instance.

This is a book that is really about globalisation, but it also shows us how a global market economy, doesn't automatically lead to identical blandness everywhere, but how each community interacts with others, often (except in the case of Sultanas) making something new and better!

Esme Choonara - A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky

Few individuals can have had as full a life as Leon Trotsky. A radical from a young age, a Marxist organiser who was sent to prison in his 20s and exiled from his home in Russia, he never stop organising, writing, publishing or speaking in support of the cause of socialism.

Where this all he had achieved, he would certainly be an interesting historical character. But Trotsky returned to Russia for the 1905 revolution, swiftly rising to head the chief organisation of that revolution – the Petrograd Soviet. With the defeat of this revolution and the start of the First World War, Trotsky once again had to live in exile. Again, with the start of the February revolution of 1917, Trotsky once again returned to Russia and became centrally involved in the soviet Arguing that the revolution had to continue beyond the gains it had already made, Trotsky worked closely with Lenin in the run up to the October “workers” revolution.

This revolution, as Choonara explains, usured in one of the most “equal and democratic” societies, history has ever seen. In isolation though, the revolution was doomed. Both Lenin and Trotsky had always argued that socialism couldn’t be built in isolation, that the revolution needed to be international, and certainly that backward Russia wouldn’t survive for long. Indeed, in the years that followed the October uprising, Trotsky had to form, then lead a Red Army, to defeat the dozen or so invading armies that the Capitalist powers sent to destroy the revolution.

While defeating these invaders was one of Trotsky’s greatest triumphs, it left Russia isolated and exhausted - perfect breeding ground for the rise of Stalin’s bureaucracy. The author illustrates how Trotsky’s last great battle was to expose and organise against Stalin – but how the material conditions simply didn’t exist for Trotsky to win this battle. But Choonara points out how that pure fact that Trotsky did fight this fight, ultimately leading to his murder, has left a legacy of revolutionary socialism, which “could have been broken forever by the rise of Stalin”.

Choonara concludes this short little pamphlet by pointing out how today the world has many differences with Trotsky’s time, but also many similarities. The ideas of Trotsky, she argues – particularly his unwavering commitment to the central tenet of Marxism, that the world must be changed by the mass of ordinary men and women, have much to offer those struggling for change in the 21st Century.

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Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

Iron Sunrise starts with a remarkable act of terrorism - a sun is artificially made to go supernova and billions of people die. However the rest of the story is not just about identifying the culprits, it deals with a more interesting aspect of this act of terrorism - the consequences of the revenge enacted.

One of the planets destroyed in the explosion, New Moscow, had within the outer reaches of it's solar system a Weapon of Mass Destruction designed to prevent attack on it's owners because of the sheer awfulness of the response. Back in the 1960s, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) between the Cold War protagonists went something like this - the use of a nuclear weapon or weapons would inevitably provoke a nuclear response. The response, coupled with the original attack would cause such horrific destruction, that the original attack was rendered pointless. There could be no winners.

Charles Stross has updated this. The destruction of New Moscow unleashes Faster Than Light weapons bombs that cannot be detected, and will utterly destroy their target worlds. The catch is, that they will take three decades to reach their destination and no one knows what their destination is.

Stross has very cleverly used the great gulfs of interstellar space to his dramatic advantage here. Normally these distances are annoying for SF writers - space based action would take too long for exciting stories. Here it gives the characters in the novel plenty of time to speculate on the consequences of the attack and hunt down the people with the abort codes.

This is very much SF for the early 21st century. Email and blogging is updated, lack of bandwidth is an interstellar problem and there are dictatorial regimes around the galaxy, while an impotent United Nations looks on. Iron Sunrise was written in 2004, so a plot line that deals with an imperialistic knee-jerk response to a terrible terrorist attack has obvious real world parallels. It's too the author's great credit that this doesn't dominate the novel in a patronising way, while simultaneously making some great politic points.

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A. G. MacDonell - England, their England

I fear that this wonderful comic novel is on it's way to becoming a forgotten classic. I desperately hope it doesn't perhaps this review may go some way towards rescuing it for a new generation.

The central character, like the author is a Scotsman wounded out of the trenches of the first world war who sets himself the task of writing a book to explain Englishness. Over the course of a year he spends his time at country house parties, political rallies, in pubs with journalists and authors and (most hilariously) playing cricket.

Of course, there isn't a glimmer of truth in any of MacDonnell's exaggerated characteristics. What makes the book so funny, is that it's a comic vision of the sort of society that those who think they are English would like to live in. So all the old soldiers are buffoons, the sportsmen all play for the team and elections are all fought with genuine friendliness on both sides. Also there doesn't seem to be any poverty, discontent or racism.

Here we have the Tory Candidate that Donald, our hero ends up supporting at the election. Having just sat down from making a speech, questions from the floor are called for.

'Mr. Chairman, when the candidate says he is in favour of work for all, how does he propose to provide it?'

Donald groaned. The very first man had put his finger on one of the vital weaknesses. Sir Henry rose

'I am very glad indeed that the question has been asked,' he said 'and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the gentleman who asked it, and of congratulating him. Our policy roughly speaking is to see that jobs and adequately paid jobs are provided at once for everyone.' He sat down again amid applause.

Donald gasped. 'Good God! he though, 'they'll start throwing things'

The man who had asked the question rose again.

'Thank you very much' he said and sat down.

Beautifully observed satire, not least because it could, unfortunately be true.

John F. Hoffecker - A Prehistory of the North

John Hoffecker's book is an extrememly scholarly look at one of the oldest questions of archaeology - just how and when did humankind spread around the world. His particular concern here is how people came to live in the most inhospitable parts of the globe, when they did so, and how they succeded living in some of the coldest regions with the most primative of technologies.

Hoffecker starts way back. One of the skelton's he describes from Lake Turkana in Kenya dates from 1.53 million years ago. So far back it almost defies comprehension. The spread of humans from their place of origin in Africa, is not simply one of gradual exapansion. The book documents the waves of occupation that took place - climate changes often providing a trigger for human movements.

Human's have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to circumstances. And the circumstances sound unbelievable to us. Modern humans before 20,000 years ago, probably couldn't tolerate January mean temperatures of minus 30 Celcius, yet Hoffecker describes the changes to human anatomy that allowed some people to do just that.

This isn't an easy book to read - it's scholarly, but it's also academic and probably isn't aimed at the layperson, but it's worth reading if you have a bit of grounding in human evolution and climate change. At 140 pages it's probably one of the most succinct summaries of the issues.

Cormac McCarthy – The Road

There’s a point near the beginning of this novel where the father and son ‘heros’ find an old destroyed soft drinks machine in the rubble of a long looted supermarket. Scrabbling around in it, the father finds an unopened can of Coca-Cola. Giving it to his son to drink, the boy drinks the over sweet drink for the first time and offers some to his father. Initially his dad refuses it, then takes a small sip. Wondering why, the boy suddenly realises

“It’s because I wont ever get to drink another one, isn’t it?”

In these few words, the total collapse of human society are summed up. Coca Cola's global brand, that symbol of capitalism, the logo known from Alaska to Australia, Russia to South Africa, is forgotten and has become the stuff of dreams.

Cormac McCarthy has created a terrible world. Or at least he has understood how terrible the world could be. Wisely he avoids ruining the book by speculating on what caused the terrible collapse of society. Instead we consider the minutae of the lives of those struggling to survive on a planet where nothing grows, most food has long ago been looted, and in small pockets, slavery, cannibalism and murder are daily realities.

The titular road, is the journey that our father and son make, on an odyssey to the coast – we never learn the reason. We do however learn, that in such a society there are no morals. Good and bad aren’t necessarily what they were, they become what you do to survive. The gradual awaking of the son to this reality is heart-rending.

Ultimately, it’s a stark road they travel. The ending is painfully emotional, which is surprising given some of the places we visit during the journey. There are few novels that cover genuinely new ground, this is one of them.

Soumya Bhattacharya – You Must Like Cricket – Memoirs of an Indian Cricket Fan

Watching the Australian cricket team destroy the pathetic English equivalent over the last few months has been a joy for those of us who support “anyone but England”. But for those of us who love a good game of cricket, such capitulation in the face of superior skills is a shame because a more balanced match, might produce a more special game.

There are great differences between the experience of cricket supporters in England and India, but there are many similarities too.

Indian cricket is so much more popular. Clearly it is a sport followed by millions of ordinary Indians; contrary to the way that cricket historically has been the province of the middle and upper English classes. Bhattacharya detects however, how the cricket grounds are no longer just the realm of ordinary people though as corporate boxes increasingly dot the arenas. He also tells how Indian cricketers are often superstars, their faces selling soft drinks and health aids, something Flintoff et al. have only got involved in very recently.

For the cricket fan this book is a lovely work – any true fan of the sport (as opposed to a particular national team) will recognise the authors tales of following the game at work, or dreaming of the impossible in the middle of the night as a game is recounted over the radio from the other side of the world.

There is more though than amusing anecdote - the author describes being in the middle of a match that descended into rioting as rivalries between the Indian and Pakistan nations were played out on the field.

Sport of course, can’t be separated from the society within which it’s played. Simultaneously, it offers some escape from those societies too. But something else is true, there is a universal experience that all sports fans have. This wonderful little book shows the hope, despair, and passion at the heart of all sports fans, wherever they are in the world. Knowing this, reminds us that we are all, after all, human.

Kate Evans - Funny Weather - Everything you didn’t want to know about climate change but probably should find out

About three quarters of the way through this comic book introduction to the perils and issues around Climate Change, Kate Evans’ main character stamps his foot and laments “You know for a comic book this is not very cheerful”. Given that in the same panel, we’re told that Britain’s emissions of Carbon Dioxide have increased by 9% since 1990, you can perhaps understand the sentiment.

Kate Evans’ has created a brilliant introduction to the subject. By utilising the comic format, she will I hope, reach an audience that might be put off by other works on Climate Change, but the format in no way patronises the reader, nor dodges the science.

Kate takes us through some quite complex issues. She doesn’t just look at what causes the Greenhouse effect, she takes on those diminishing numbers of individuals who argue that the effect is not related to human activity, and she successfully skewers those politicians and corporate fat-cats who would put the future of the planet at risk, rather than address such thorny questions as reducing emissions.

By humanising these characters – corporate interests are represented by a cigar wielding, suit wearing business men – Kate prepares us to discuss and debate the issues with those around us. The “hero” of the book, a young man who debates and questions the corporate fat cat, concludes at the end, that his opponent is a “maniac”, whose policies will lead us “all to fry”.

Rather cleverly this brings in a factor that I think is missing from many articles on climate change. The issue is so great, the challenge so large, that once you hear the facts and figures, it can lead you to despondency. Kate’s comic book hero, falls into a fit of depression, only to rally and become a campaigner for change.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of Kate’s suggestions. Or perhaps it’s better to say that I would emphasise some things differently – I doubt that horses will become a major feature of urban transport this side of a total collapse of modern civilisation for instance. But these slight disagreements shouldn’t lead anyone to dismiss the book. I don’t believe that the environmental movement and the scientific community have yet found a perfect answer to how an environmentally friendly society would look – that’s something we can argue along the way. The great task at the moment is to clarify the issues for ordinary people, and offer some practical suggestions about how we can start campaigning and changing things now.

At the end of the comic, her characters (including a George Monbiot look-alike) join a demonstration, making the point that the major changes that are needed to save the planet will need to be fought for – and Kate Evans should be applauded for writing an extremely useful weapon in the battle to save the planet.

Larry Niven - Ringworld's Children

The final part of the Larry Niven’s Ringworld SF series is a brilliant return to form. Millions of readers like me thrilled at Niven’s original novel, depicting as it does a mysterious ring around a far sun, populated by billions of humanoids and advanced, strange technology. It was the ideal place to set a story of exploration.

The first volume was superb, rightly winning awards and public recognition. The second book Ringworld Engineers was very good. Personally I found the third unreadable - a confusing plot that missed out the exciting stuff about exploring the strange new world.

This final book ties up all the loose ends of the series - and from a few of Niven's other stories. It centres on the final “battle” for the Ringworld which is now a prize for all the galactic civilisations of Niven’s “Known Space”.

The Ringworld takes damage as those civilisations fight to get control, but there are other forces on the Ringworld who want to protect it. Their ingenious idea to save this unique structure is mind-boggling. But this after all is speculative fiction, and it is a fitting climax to one of SF’s great series.

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Charles Portis - True Grit

True Grit, is one of those films that everyone can quote at least one line from. I particularly remember John Wayne (that ardent anti-communist and white-supremacist) as Rooster Cogburn drawling "I never shot nobody I didn't have to". [wav file here]

It's a delight then, to find that Charles Portis' original novel has all the excitment of the film, as well as most of the memorable lines (if not the Hollywood ending).

The Wikipedia entry on the novel, has lots about the themes of "transition" and change. It is that, but it's also a fairly straight-forward tale of revenge. We meet Mattie Ross, an aged spinster who looks back on what must have been the most exciting moment of her frontier life - the time she road into the wilderness to avenge the killer of her father. Along the way, we meet a variety of characters, some good, some bad, but all of them flawed who give us a unique insight into some of the whys and wherefores of western life.

Particularly annoying and illuminating is Mattie's christianity, which gives her courage and helps her drive onward. Unfortunately it also gives her an incredibly blinkered view of the world, though her self-righteousness is wonderfully humourous at times. Also interesting at times is the insight into how the civilising force of commerce is seen as taming both the west and the wild men who live in it. Rooster Cogburn is seen in this context as the last of a breed - frontier men whose justice was as hard as the land around them, and whose morals needed to be modernised.

Donna Tart's new introduction to this reprint, rightly awards the accolade of "Cult Novel" to the book. If you liked the film, it's well worth a read, but even if you hate westerns you might get something out of it.

Jared Diamond - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

There are many places on earth, some of them tourist shrines, some of them deserted, covered by the sands of deserts or choked by the surrounding jungle, where mighty (or even, not so mighty) civilisations once stood. Jared Diamond’s book Collapse looks at why some of those civilisations failed and why some of them succeeded. In doing so, he hopes to draw some generalised conclusions about all societies, and perhaps make sure that our society (or at the least the readers of his book) learns some lessons in order to avoid becoming another buried society

As in his previous bestseller, Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond tells a fascinating story. His descriptions of the rise and collapse (often sudden) of various civilisations are at turns amazing and terrifying. In particular, I found his chapters on the rise of the Vikings and their spread across the seas and oceans, as far as the US mainland fantastic. By comparing and contrasting Viking settlements on the Eastern Seaboard, in Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys and elsewhere, he can tell a tale of how minor aspects of a civilisations setting (in particular, but not exclusively the physical environment) can have major consequences for a societies ultimate fate.

There is a danger when writing history of this type that you simply take the starting natural conditions (poor soil, excellent forests, good fishing) and extrapolate. Diamond avoids doing this, though he perhaps puts too much emphasis on these factors. Certainly the environment in terms of agricultural possibilities and climate changes did ultimately mean the doom of the Viking civilisation in Greenland.

But actions by societies themselves (whether they choose to cut down all the trees, grow unsuitable groups or introduction alien flora and fauna) often is a greater determining factor. Following on from these factors, whether a society adapts to changing circumstances or not is another major factors. The Vikings in Greenland didn’t try to adapt, instead attempting to continue the lives that they would have led in mainland Christian Europe meant that they were doomed. Diamond points out that the leaders of those societies, in blocking change and continuing in the old ways, merely ensured they were the last to starve.

Diamond’s later attempts to look at how these lessons can be applied to modern societies and nations are less convincing. At this point I must make it clear that I side with Diamond’s ambitions. Many of the factors that led to the collapse of Mayan, Viking, some Native American societies are visible around the world – and not just with the global warming that currently obsesses me and many like me. Deforestation, a factor in the failure of many historical civilisations, is a major issue for countries like China, today. Changes to water availability or the erosion of arable land are issues around the globe. But in a modern, globalised, technologically rich world, it’s not enough to point simply to these as the determining factors.

To be fair to Diamond, I’m being slightly crude here, he doesn’t really believe that modern civilisation will collapse overnight, but he is trying to show how in a globalised economy, there are a number of weak links in the economic and political chain that threaten the whole structure.

But the problems with Diamond’s thesis become clear, I think, when you look at some of his solutions. In particular when he looks at how some of the worst environmental criminals have tried to be part of the solution. In a couple of case studies, he shows how companies (such as a Chevron subsidiary) have cleaned up their act to make their oil drilling environmentally sound. Now one word that I didn’t spot in Diamond’s whole book (it’s certainly not in the index) is capitalism.

Capitalism is the latest stage (the highest even – to quote a 20th century writer) of class society. It is a system were productive capacity of human kind has far exceeded that of any previous society. Capitalism’s driving force – the quest for profits, goes to the heart of every aspect of society. Diamond himself points out, how this is not just an economic law, it’s a legal reality as well. In the US, it’s a legal responsibility of a company director to avoid making business decisions that reduce profitability. Under this sort of economic reality, it’s impossible to believe that every company will start to behave in a green way. Even though it is, as the author makes clear, in the interests of society as a whole, and sometimes of an individual company, to operate in a clean, environmentally conscious way, economic competition between companies mean that every advantage one company can get over another will be grabbed with both hands.

So, if a company can get an economic edge by cutting back its environmental policies, dumping waste instead of processing it, releasing more emissions instead of cleaning the gases or indeed cutting back on environmental inspections instead of hiring more inspectors, the directors will authorise it. The price of not seizing such economic advantages will be reduced competitiveness and ultimately bankruptcy.

Of course, as Jared Diamond makes clear there are other factors here. Government legislation, political and consumer pressure and campaigners can force better policies, but these will necessarily be undermined by the underlying economic realities. While we must support such initiatives, the ultimate challenge for us is not simply better legislation or greener company directors; it is changing the whole economic reality of our society.

The subtitle to Diamond’s book is “How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive”. Here again we face a difficulty. Granted some societies in the past did consciously decide to alter their behaviour to avoid collapse. But the economic and political structures of modern capitalism mean that making a decision in the interest of the whole of society is not easy, if it goes against the interests of those who wield the most economic power. The majority of people in the UK believe we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels to stop runaway climate change. But we have a government whose economic interests coincide with those of the oil companies. Those who take decisions about our agriculture, environmental policy or energy strategy are the same who took us to war in Iraq despite the opposition of the vast majority of the population.

Here we should return to the Vikings. To us, with hindsight we can say it was insane and irrational that they attempted to build a society in Greenland based on breeding cows, when the environment and climate was against them. It was further insane that they refused to reap the bounty of the oceans around them and catch fish to provide the protein that would have helped them through the cold winters. But that irrationality was the logical outcome of the position they found themselves in and their desire to continue to live in the way that they had done in their homelands.

Today, we live in a society that has irrationality built into its economic heart. It is economically sane to plunder the world’s resources even though it condemns millions to death.

The future salvation of human kind will require as Diamond makes clear, ordinary people to become aware of the lessons of history. However, it will not be enough for us to simply tinker with legislation and donate a few pounds to good causes. It will require the fundamental transformation of society - the creation of a society were the use of global resources and the production of material for human consumption is planned in the interests of people and planet, not the profits of the multinationals.

If that seems impossible, remember the people of Easter Island, the Mayan Kingdoms or Viking Greenland who must have argued that nothing can change. Jared Diamond’s work is a major tool to awaken us to the threat we face, but its conclusions are not the manifesto for change that we need.

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Paul Foot - The Vote

On 15th February 2003 up to two million people marched through the streets of London against the forthcoming war in Iraq. Around the globe millions more protested, demonstrated, expressing their disgust at the seemingly inevitable war. For those of us involved in the anti-war movements there was a strange contradiction; then as now it seemed almost impossible to find anyone who supported the invasion of Iraq. Certainly a majority of people in this country opposed the war yet the so called democracy we lived in, ignored this majority opinion and its parliamentary leaders blithely followed the US administration to war.

Paul Foot’s monumental history of the struggle for the vote (and the subsequent undermining of the votes’ power) tries to address how this contempt for democracy came about. As his starting point he looks at how during obscure debates of the English Revolution the English ruling classes expressed their fear that representative democracy would “threaten their property”. For almost 350 years various propertied minority ruling classes struggled against extending the vote to the unpropertied majority.

And yet when universal suffrage became law the rich didn’t lose their lands, wealth and property. In fact, as Foot points out the main beneficiary of universal suffrage, the British Labour Party has retreated totally from its ambition of reducing capitalism and governing for ordinary people.

But Foot points out that this was not inevitable. In three brilliant chapters, one on the Chartists, one on the Reform Acts and one on the Suffragettes, we see how the struggle for the vote was often part of far more radical demands, demands that would have fundamentally altered the balance of power in favour of the poor. Foot points out that many who entered parliament on the back of universal suffrage learnt to their dismay that simple democracy means nothing, if the power of the rich, the unelected bankers and financiers and the capitalists remains untouched.

Paul Foot was one of the greatest socialists that the British Left ever produced. Here, in his greatest book, we see how his passion for justice was a reflection of his absolute belief that society needs to be transformed by ordinary people.

The Vote: How it was won and How it was undermined has recently been republished by Bookmarks. You can buy it online from their website here.

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Iain M. Banks - Look To Windward

This Iain Banks novel is about war and the consequences of war. In Bank's universe where societies span thousands of solar systems, a war means hundreds of billions of people can be affected.

As in several of these novels, we see how the Culture intervenes subtley into the affairs of other civilisations. Though this time, they get it wrong and the Chelgrian civilisation collapses into civil war - 5 billion loose their lives, and the Culture suffers a sort of collective guilt.

The novel deals with the consequences. We can't comprehend the deaths of 5 billion - rather like the Holocaust is difficult to imagine. So Banks tells us the stories of a few individuals - one in particular who is coaxed into a mission of revenge, because he cannot escape the lose of his lover in the war. The story of attempted revenge, exile, war and religion feels a little thin on the ground - but Bank's wonderful writing makes up for this, and once again I was left breathtaken by the sheer scope of the novel.

As an aside I was surprised to see the novel dedicated to the Gulf War Veterans. Until I remembered a pervious Gulf War and the men who still fight for justice because of the chemicals they were exposed to over 10 years ago. Sometimes Science Fiction can be very close to the truth.

Stephen King – The Dark Tower – The Gunslinger

In the introduction to this, the revised and expanded version of the novel, Stephen King makes it clear that he thinks that the series of novels that starts with “The Gunslinger” is his most important and complex work. His Magnum Opus if you like.

Certainly it’s a very good novel, a blending of fantasy and SF, with influences from all sorts of imaginable genres - King makes clear his debt to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” for instance.

He also makes clear his debt to “The Lord of the Rings” and here I think is were it starts to unwind. King didn’t want to re-write the “LOTR”, thank God. Nor did he want to steal, borrow or copy the characters, locations and settings. Unlike just about every other fantasy author you can think of. King clearly set about trying to capture the scope and the imagination of Tolkien’s invented lands. But I think he tries to hard.

The tale is of a lone gunslinger (the last of his breed, as a film caption writer will no doubt have it one day) pursuing a mysterious black clad man across a desert. The story moves quickly from its classic western style opening to become more fantastical. With magical goings on and a confusing sense of time for the characters contributing to a tale that’s both readable and confusing. But at every stage you feel King’s setting up a wider mythical back-drop. Rather than the story arising naturally out of events it feels clunky, like things have been bolted on rather than fleshed out.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Stephen King’s a fantastic writer – the novel “IT” is one of the most enjoyable books I have had the pleasure to read and re-read over the years. I just think that in this early book, King spent too long trying to create an epic, rather than telling a story which would naturally pull in the epic around it, purely because of it’s scope.

The fan-sites imply it gets better with volume two. Lets hope so, otherwise it could be a long turgid trip to volume seven.

Terry Pratchett - Thud

Thud, Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel to hit paperback continues pretty much where the last few have left off. Once again, we are in the city of Ankh Morpork, and once again, the city is under threat. This time, the threat isn't some tear in the fabric of reality, war or dragons, it's the very nature of the city itself.

Over the span of 35 discworld novels, the city of Ankh Morpork has grown (as well as being fleshed out). It's become a multi-cultural society, with Dwarfs, Trolls, Vampires and every other creature imaginable living (or existing) side by side. We see industry developing, new forms of entertainment, and most of all we see issues arising from the arrival of new people to the city.

How Ankh Morpork has dealt with the growing "ethnic" nature of the town previously has been a theme that Pratchett has returned to time and again. He is, of course echoing some of the debates that have been common recently in Britain. And he does poke fun at some of those who hold the views of the tabloid press.

In truth though, I think Pratchett tries too hard. The story here of bubbling tensions below the surface of Ankh Morporkian society works quite well - it's entirely believable in a world were senior goernment ministers are happy to scapegoat one particular section of society. Whether this makes for good Discworld entertainment is a different question.

I'd like to see less of Ankh Morpork for a while, and more of what made the earlier books so original - but the opening chapter of his next novel, helpfully included in my edition, seems to be a return to the Lancre - the land of the witches. A break from the problems of the city watch will do us all good.

Related Reviews

Pratchett - Going Postal
Pratchett - Wintersmith

Michael Grant - Cities of Vesuvius - Pompeii & Herculaneum

When Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum stood little chance. Both were less than 10 miles from the volcano, and both were rapidly overcome by material from inside the earth. Thousands of people fled the volcanic mud and ash. Hundreds died and the archaeological record shows that many of them died because they returned for valuables, or tried to wait out the falling rocks in places of shelter.

Pompeii is one of the great tourist sites for those interested in history and though Michael Grant starts this wonderful book, with details of some of those who died in the eruption, the vast majority of the work is an illumination of the ancient town's streets, houses, shops, theatres and brothels. There's much of interest - and it's fun to compare and contrast our lives today, with those of the Roman's in AD 79. Surely if London was overcome by natural disaster many of use would die clutching our valued possessions. But we also find familar the love that the Roman's had for fine art, for good wine and for love and literature.

There is staggering evidence for how the Roman's lived. Having been to Pompeii, I've seen the cart tracks in the streets and stood in the fine rooms of the houses, you looked at the casts of those who died clutching their children to their breast. But I didn't know archaeologists had found the remains for bread in ancient ovens or tracked the artists responsible for different murals in Roman houses.

Grant's section on graffiti is amusing - not least because so much of it is reminisant of slogan's scrawled on walls today. "At least six inscriptions compare brunettes with blondes" he tells us and "a certain Septumius employes the same medium [graffiti] to launch obscene attacks on anyone who reads his scrawl." So much was written, that many walls had signs warning against the practice - to no avail. This certainly wasn't a practice limited to adults - the relative height of different graffiti show many children had a go, often as in the case of their adult scrawlers quoting famous works of literature.

Though first published in 1971, this appears to be the first paperback edition of this short book, dated 2001. I'd recommend anyone interested in ancient lives picks up a copy, particularly if you plan to visit the Naples region anytime soon.

Barbara W. Tuchman - The Guns of August

The outbreak of war in 1914 was greeted in many countries by rejoicing. Indeed, many of the most ardent and eloquent opponents of the expected conflict rolled over and supported their governments.

Barbara Tuchman's history of the first month the First World War is an excellent military history, dealing with a forgotten part of the conflict - the war of maneuver that all the European powers engaged in, before becoming bogged down in the trench warfare that we all think of when hearing about the conflict.

Up until the 1914, all wars had been on a relatively small scale, and very few (with the interesting exception of Lord Kitchener) believed that the coming war would be anything but a short war of conquest. Certainly no-one expected the slaughter that would take place.

The scale of the outbreak of hostilities however, shocked everyone. The first German attacks on the French forts on the second day of the conflict cost the lives of thousands of men. Tuchman describes how the “dead piled up in ridges a yard high” and points out the attitude of the German commanders in this battle “spending lives like bullets in the knowledge of plentiful reserves to make up the losses” set the scene for the later battles at the Somme and Verdun, were both sides wasted the lives of millions.

But not all of this history is as unsurprising as the horrific casualty figures. We learn that the British Army in France, who famously fought a brave battle at Mons in the first days of the war, under the cowardly leadership of Sir John French retreated in the face of the enemy, only returning to join the French in the battle to defend Paris. This is the second shock – how close the German’s came to capturing Paris, and ironically Tuchman points out that it’s precisely this failure on the part of the German military that sets the scene for the long, drawn out war of iteration.

As I finished the book, I was reminded of Rosa Luxembourg’s wonderful opening chapter of her anti-war pamphlet, written in 1915. She describes how the scenes of joyous crowds waving the armies off, had been replaced by a sullen acceptance of the horrific realities of war. In a memorable phrase, referring to those who were rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a long drawn out war – the capitalists who could make money from it, she wrote “and the profits, spring like weeds from the fields of the dead”. An eloquent description of a wasteful war which altered the face of the last century.

Tuchman’s book is an amazing historical introduction to the leaders who led their countries into this war, the politicians and generals prepared to sacrifice the lives of their soldiers and the horrific battles in which their armies lost their lives.

Francis Wheen - Marx's Das Kapital - A biography

Francis Wheen wrote one of the best books about the life of Karl Marx, an accessible, interesting and often funny look at the great man's life, ideas and activities. His latest book is much shorter, but nonetheless an interesting way of looking at what Wheen thinks is Marx's most important work.

Das Kapital was the culmination of Marx's life work. It's a sprawling, multi-volume look at the economics that underpin capitalist society, a prediction of what was to come and an examination of capitalism's impact on people's lives. Not simply in the realm of how the capitalists cut wages and keep and army of unemployed, but how the worker becomes alienated from his labour's product and thence from society. These complex ideas are brought to life by Wheen quoting Marx's florid and engaging prose - rescuing the real Marx from the dogmatic Stalinist language we might be more used to.

Wheen's enthusiasm for Marx (and Das Kapital) means that he feels the need to rescue the book from those Marxists (Lenin and Trotsky in particular) that Wheen thinks abused the tradition of Marxism, but these are the weakest sections of an otherwise interesting read.

Wheen concludes by pointing out how increasingly economists and commentators have found themselves drawn to some of the central points of Kapital - though unfortunately not it's revolutionary conclusions, and concludes that "Marx may only now be emerging in his true significance. He could yet become the most influential thinker of the twenty-first century". Let us hope so.