Paul Theroux - Riding the Iron Rooster, By Train Through China

I've reviewed several other of Paul Theroux's travel writings elsewhere and one of the things that has struck me time and again, is that he tends to have a somewhat condescending attitude to the people he meets. I remarked on this in my review of his book about his travels through America "The Old Patagonian Express" and re-reading that review after finishing his book about travelling through China, I was struck by the similarities.

This book documents Paul Theroux's second visit to China. This is China in a period of immense change, with millions of people attempting to come to terms with the recent past and the future. He travels from London, by train of course, with a collection of odd-balls and people who seem to be deliberately chosen to annoy him. As an aside, I have to admit to a slight unease with the way that Theroux hides who and what he is. Perhaps he feels that if people know that he is writing about his travel experiences then they won't behave naturally - though you could also argue it's unfair to air people's dirty laundry in public without their consent.

Passing through Eastern Europe just as Chernobyl explodes the travelogue almost becomes a metaphor for the failure of the Stalinist version of socialism. But he avoids this because he has a better understanding of ordinary people and a realisation that the country he comes from has limited moral standing (Reagen had just bombed Tripoli as he sets off).

But the bulk of the book is Theroux cris-crossing China. He avoids the tourist sites in the main, having seen them before, trying to concentrate on the little known destinations accessible by train. Along the way he meets dozens of people, with very similar stories.

China at the time was recovering from the decade long social experiment that was Mao's "Cultural Revolution". This period of social and economic upheaval was an attempt by the ruling class of China to reassert ideological and political power, by sweeping away what were deemed "liberal bourgeois" who were trying to bring back capitalism. In practice this meant the persecution of anyone who displayed any interest or favour for any cultural ideals that didn't fit into the strictest (and most totalitarian) definition of socialist ideas. English teachers were hounded for teaching Shakespeare, professors were forced to work in the fields, religious buildings were razed to the ground and the monks forced to work for the revolution.

Such activities, urged on by political cadres galvanised many thousands into frenzied work, but a decade later the period was whispered about and referred to obliquely. Theroux tries to get to the bottom of what happened and how ordinary people feel about it. He meets a few who stand by what was done, perhaps believing there was only the odd excess. The majority seem to think that the whole affair was a giant mistake.

Perversely, the reaction to the Cultural Revolution amongst people seems to have had the opposite effect to what Mao would have wanted. Everywhere he goes, Theroux encounters people desperate to make a fortune. The opening up of the economy to the free market is everywhere and despite official statements to the contrary it's clear that there is a rising capitalist class who are doing very well for themselves, alongside an ever impovrished class of workers and peasents.

Paul Theroux isn't a socialist, so he can't explain what happened in China - that this wasn't a genuine working class led revolution and Mao didn't rule in the interests of ordinary people. But despite his condascending tone, his simple descriptive style and his lack of presumption about people and places makes this another fascinating read.

Related Reviews

Theroux - Dark Star Safari
Theroux - The Old Patagonian Express

Tim Flannery - The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples

The relationship between humans, the societies that they create and the natural world around them is something that fascinates me. Of particular interest is the way that the most modern human society, capitalism, is inherently anti-nature.

All societies have a history. Capitalism is merely the latest stage of human history. However there is also a non-human history too – this is the history of the world that we live in, its flora and fauna, its geology and geography.

What Tim Flannery has done in The Eternal Frontier is to take one great continent – and look at the history of the place as a whole. In many ways this is unique. 65 million years ago, what became North America was pretty much ripped apart as a giant object impacted in what is now the Gulf of Mexico. The nuclear winter caused by the dust and smoke created wiped out something like 80% of all species, including of course the giant reptiles that had dominated until then. This opened the way for the rise of the mammals.

Flannery documents brilliantly the evolution of plant and animal life post impact. He describes the few living fossils that remain, left over from before. But mostly he concentrates on the evolution of the new. The book comes into its own when Flannery describes the arrival of humans. The relative isolation of the American continent didn’t stop plants and animals going back and forth, though that was rare and limited.

But it was only recently that humans arrived there. They arrived in a land dominated by giant creatures that had not learnt to fear the hunting ability of humans.

Flannery describes the role that these hunters played in the extinction of the mega-fauna – the mammoths in particular. He very much sides with the “black hole” theory of extinction – dozens of species were wiped out to fill the hole in the face of the hunters. This contrasts with those who argue that only climate change was responsible for the decimation of the animal populations.
To back up this argument, Flannery points out that not all previous changes in climate caused such specific extinctions, and he presents us with the evidence of mass culls and hunts by ancient peoples.

We then follow the rise of agriculture and the city states that often developed around this new practice of creating food. Flannery shows how in the American context, these were often short lived, but nevertheless, by the time of the arrival of the first Europeans the population of the American continent was something like 30 million people.

With this new immigration, everything changed. The mad rush to exploit the wealth of this new continent had a devastating effect on the native population. But the exploitation of the natural resources was just as devastating. The obvious example of this is the buffalo which went from a population of between 30 and 60 million to a few hundred in a couple of decades.

Flannery doesn’t pretend that there was some sort of wonderful Utopia before the arrival of Europeans. The native Indians are often portrayed as living in balance with the natural world. Flannery argues that this is rarely the case, though clearly the Indian societies had a far better understanding of how to husband animals than those who took their place.

But the ability of capitalism to find ways of exploiting the natural world for profit and to create the infrastructure to maximise this exploitation is far greater than any previous human society.

The Clovis Hunters might have forced the mammoths into extinction, but they couldn’t fundamentally alter whole eco-systems. In the few centuries since Europeans arrived in the “New World”, Flannery argues that the American continent has been re-shaped and changed beyond recognition.

The last chapter of this book then is an appeal for a more sustainable way of living that both preserves the natural world but also understands how to exploit nature without permanently destroying. It’s a noble hope, though whether capitalism can do this is very much open to question.

Related Reviews

Flannery - The Weather Makers

Terry Pratchett - Making Money

Rarely do I come away from reading a Terry Pratchett novel feeling disappointed. Sadly, this most recent Discworld story left me with the sense that the author was writting almost to a template. This is a shame, because the previous book that features the central character, Moist Von Lipwig was really rather good, full of excellent observations and amusing moments.

Of course, Pratchett at his worst is still an entertaining read and I am certainly not trying to put anyone off, but as I have argued before, I feel that Pratchett has got to the stage of the Discworld series were he is reduced to asking "What aspect of modern human society haven't I parodied yet?" and then inserting it into a book. So the previous Von Lipwig tale was the story of how the outmoded and haunted Ankh-Morpak Postal Service got a makeover, while our hero saved the city from some demonic dangers. This time the story is how the outmoded Mint gets a makeover, while Von Lipwig saves the city. In the process he invents paper money and demolishes the gold standard (though I have to say that I thought the alternate Golem Standard was a fabulous rummination on the Labour Theory of Value).

Sadly I fear that the next in the Von Lipwig tales, in which our hero takes over the Tax service for the city, will bring more of the same.

Still, it is an entertaining read, just not up in the stratospheric heights of some of the other Discworld novels. The truth is that if you liked the previous ones, you'll read this. If you've never read Pratchett, don't start here, and if you hate him, you'll never read it anyway!

Related Reviews

Pratchett - The Colour of Magic
Pratchett - Thud
Pratchett - Going Postal
Pratchett - Wintersmith

Robert Heinlein - Starship Troopers

Robert Heinlein was never afraid of using his novels as a political vehicle. Often however they had other things going for them. Whatever the politics that informed Stranger in a Strange Land for instance, it is a very good commentary on organised religion, amongst other ideas.

Starship Troopers doesn't have this. Its one dimensional characters use the backdrop of a interstellar war against a ruthless insectoid race who are difficult to distinguish (read Russian/Chinese communists) to expouse their own ill thought out ideas.

Human society we are told, until the near future would be fatally flawed. We've grown soft by refusing to deal with inherent problems in society, failing to punish people adequeatly and bringing things near to collapse. Luckily there is a solution, and luckily for the reader its a military one. Only those prepared to commit themselves to the military can have a say in how society is run, because only they have proved themselves worthy.

Unfortunately, Heinlein doesn't have the wit to weave these dubious morals into the story line, hiding the more obvious right-wing libertarian propaganda behind a clever plot. Instead we get lectures from the characters - whether they are our hero's teachers, or the letters they write to him as he waits in gigantic battleships ready to fight the alien hordes. Our hero has run away to join the military, escaping his rich, over-protective father who would rather he took on the family business and has endured the trials of combat school.

While training to be the ultimate killing machine, war breaks out. Though rather unbelievably our hero tells us that the cadets weren't really aware of the war starting. This seems unlikely given the highly militarised society and environment they are in. The evil insects destroy Buenos Aires and our hero's mother. So the scene is set for the coming conflict, which seems to involve pitching large numbers of troops into stupidly dangerous situations were they are easy prey for the bugs.

Later on, when Heinlein has realised he can no longer give us his cod philosophy through the medium of flashbacks to our hero's school days, our square-jawed character bumps into Dad on a troop transport. Guess what! Dad has realised his son was right all along and joined up to fight the alien peril. He's even managed to wrangle a position on his son's own spaceship.

Hero son goes away to officer school and becomes an officer, despite being bad at mathematics. The point about mathematics becomes something of a stick that Heinlein uses to beat us with as it gets mentioned over and over again. Despite his ineptitude at sums, our hero can still be a superb officer. Do you get the point Dear Reader? Schooling doesn't help us in the fight to make our society better, and it certainly doesn't help us kill communists. I mean Bugs.

At officer school, various senior officers lecture him in their version of Heinlein's worldview and then more fighting happens with Dad and Son, side-by-side, fighting for the soft civilians back home, who don't know what war is really like. Even though millions have died. Civilians are, you see, not too bright.

Starship Troopers isn't a manifesto. It's a sort of anti-manifesto. A list of things that Heinlein doesn't like - communal societies, juvenile delinquents, Buenos Aires perhaps - it does list some of the things he does like, war, guns and the military in the main.

Oddly enough for a Heinlein novel, the hero doesn't appear to want to try and sleep with his mother. Though he does get closer to his father as the story progresses. Sadly, Heinlein doesn't explore this relationship any further and the novel sort of peters out, which is a bonus really, because it could have been hundreds more pages long and life really is too short.

Related Reviews

Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Ronald L. Meek (ed) - Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb

I've written elsewhere about the Reverend Malthus' views on population. His basic theory - that population will always, inevitably outstrip available food supplies has become a mantra for anyone who wants to argue that there are too many people on the planet. In the context of the problem of climate change, this has become an argument that the world doesn't have enough resources to support the population, and if we are to save the planet - the number of humans will have to decrease.

Some of Malthus' earliest and most ferocious critics were Marx and Engels. This book collects together most of their writings on Malthus and related issues with a couple of useful framing essays.

The basic premise of the editor, and indeed the basic argument of Marxists against Malthus and his followers is that "without destroying capitalism, neither a Green Revolution nor population control will put food into the mouths of those who cannot afford it".

In response to the question "why are people hungry?" Marx and Engels preferred to ask "Why is not enough produced?" The answer they argued is to do with the priorities of production under capitalism - production of food or any other commodity is for profit, not for need. If people couldn't afford food, then they wouldn't eat. In Engels' words "the pressure of population is not upon the means of subsistence but upon the means of employment."

This is why you have starvation in the midst of plenty. Both Marx and Engels took great pains to argue the problems with Malthusian theory. Their starting point though, was utter contempt and hatred for the man. Both repeated argued that he was a plagiarist, but their real anger was because he was a "shameless sycophant of the ruling classes".

Malthus wrote his first editions of his work on population in the aftermath of the Great French Revolution. This seismic event had raised in the heads of millions of people, the idea of a more equal, just and free society. Everywhere the ruling classes trembled. Malthus wrote his argument as an explicit attack on those who believed that such a free society was possible. It is a polemic that argues that humans, particularly the "lower orders" are too stupid, to inclined to have more and more children, to lazy to allow a better society to live. But he also believed class division was inevitable and that without it, society would collapse.

Marx and Engels understood this well. They also believed that despite his plagiarism, Malthus had some useful insights into the way the world of economics worked. But for them this was Malthus justifying his position, as, they argued, a supporter of the old landed aristocracy against the new industrial bourgeois. Malthus' work had immediate consequences - the first of these was the hated workhouse system, a system that offered relief only in the must grudging way. As Marx put it;

"in the workhouses charity is ingeniously combined with the revenge of the bourgeoisie upon the poor who appeal to its charity."

For people like Malthus the poor exist because of the inherent laziness of a layer of the lower orders. For Marx and Engels, the poor existed because capitalism found it both useful to have a reserve army of labour ready for economic boom times and because the capitalists profits meant driving down wages and laying workers off. The state had a duty to protect the poor, but Malthusians argued that by doing this you were simply increasing the problem. Overpopulation was inevitable so why bother helping those who couldn't survive anyway?

Throughout their attacks on Malthus and his followers Marx and Engels return to the point that without the revolutionary transformation of society; without the creation of a new world were production is planned in the interest of need, not profit there would continue to be people who starve in the midst of plenty. There would also be those, like Malthus, who try to find pseudo-scientific arguments for why this is inevitable, presumably to make the bitter pill of their own culpability easier to swallow.

Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb, edited by Ronald L. Meek with a foreword by Steve Weissman, is long out of print. Selections from it can be found online here. The introduction is useful, though any author who uncritically quotes Stalin on production should be read critically themselves. The collection contains a variety of works from Marx and Engels, including some of their letters, Engels' Condition of the Working Class and Anti-During, Marx's Theories of Surplus Value and Capital.

Iain Fenlon - Piazza San Marco

The heart of Venice, the Piazza San Marco is properly considered one of the most beautiful centres of a city anywhere. Its history is inseparable from the history of Venice - it is here that city leaders met, invading armies occupied, rebellions focused and visitors - pilgrims at first and tourists in more recent times - have gathered in their millions.

For the author though, there is a dangerous tendency to see the Piazza simply as a lovely square surrounded by individual buildings - the Doges' Palace, the Basilica of San Marco and the Campanile tower for instance. Rather, he argues, we should see them as a collective whole that has evolved over time, to encapsulate Venice as a place with a history.

This history is surprisingly complex, though mostly it centers on Venice's unique geographical position that allowed its merchants to become fat on the wealth generated from being a maritime power near the juncture of the West and the East. Its Churches brought in wealth by becoming the focus for pilgrimages to see the extensive collection of relics. Today less than 60,000 people live in the city. The millions of tourists are served by a visiting population, unable to afford to live in the city, but their dollars or Euros are no less sucked up by the city.



In some ways, Venice is remarkably artificial. No more so than in the constant worry that it will sink beneath the lagoon if left to nature. But its history is also unnatural. To justify their wealth and power, the city's rulers had to invent a host of traditions and myths to explain the city. Many of these lasted centuries, even now receiving an echo in tourist guides.

Fenlon shows how the city's decline in the Napoleonic era led to its re-discovery by modern artists and writers, for whom Venice came to symbolise some mythical romantic ideal. The city being "raised from the spoils of the teeming Orient" wrote Disraeli. But for others the city symbolised decadence and decay, perhaps most artfully visualised in Visconti's film of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

Today Venice is the ultimate tourist trap. Its history seems oddly remote and immaterial, a backdrop to a ornate decorations and art collections. Iain Fenlon has done a service to bring it to life for the casual reader and for those who would like to visit the city and have some idea of whence it came.

Related Reviews in the Wonders of the World series

Tillotson – Taj Mahal
Goldhill - The Temple of Jerusalem
Gere - The Tomb of Agamemnon
Ray - The Rosetta Stone
Hopkins & Beard - The Colosseum

Thomas Malthus - An Essay on the Principle of Population

The work of the Reverend Thomas Malthus can easily be said to have had a major influence on subsequent thought. Indeed, it must rank up there with works like the Communist Manifesto as books that have shaped the thoughts of entire generations. This is a shame for several reasons. Firstly, Malthus is unashamedly a partisan of the establishment. Secondly, a through reading of the various editions of his most famous work “An Essay On the Principle of Population” will demonstrate that his arguments are flawed and don't argue what is commonly believed.

For those who use Malthus' name as shorthand for a particular argument – that the world has only enough resources for a set number of people, will find themselves baffled by the content of the Essay. At the core of his work is the idea that human populations will always outstrip the available food supply. But his work isn't really about that problem. It is a series of polemics against a much more dangerous idea to the rich and privileged members of Malthus' class.

Malthus is taking up arms again those dangerous radicals who, inspired by the French Revolution of a few years previously, believed that it would be possible for humans to live in a just and equal society. While understanding that the lot of the poor and lower classes wasn't pleasant, his belief was that the lower orders were inherently greedy. Increasing the amount of money for the poor wouldn't improve their lives, it would simply make them lazy

“The receipt of five shillings a day, instead of 18 pence, would make every man fancy himself comparatively rich and able to indulge himself in many hours or days of leisure..... in a short time, not only the nation would be poorer, but the lower classes themselves would be much more distressed than when they received only 18 pence a day.”

This cynical attitude to the “lower orders” filters through into his views on population growth. If a utopian society was to exist, it would soon collapse, “from the inevitable laws of our nature.... into a class of proprietors and a class of labourers”. But such a society couldn't exist anyway, because if the abundance available in such a society were to come true, then human nature would rapidly destroy it. With no worries on childcare women would simply have more and more children for instance, rapidly driving society beyond its means of sufficiency.

Malthus' views of people are perhaps summed up by his view of the life of a “savage”, who would;

“slumber for ever under his tree unless he were roused from his torpor by the cravings of hunger or the pinching of cold... the exertions that he makes to avoid these evils are the exercises which form and keep in motion his faculties, which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity”.

And those who would create a society with more free time for the hardest working run into a further problem according to Malthus,

"Leisure is, without doubt, highly valuable to man, but taking man as he is, the probability seems to be that in the greater number of instances it will produce evil rather than good."

Of course there is reason to all this.

“The principle, according to which population increases, prevents the vices of mankind, or the accidents of nature, the partial evils arising from general laws, from obstructing the high purpose of creation.”

In other words, the check on the growth of human population exists to ensure that the amount of vice created by man is kept to a minimum.

Malthus believed in three checks on population growth. The first Moral Restraint, was obviously a good thing for the Reverend (how he wails about those who marry early and thus must have more children). The second was Vice. Malthus believed, like many of his time, that increased sexual behaviour reduced birth rates - but obviously, increased sex, drinking and other leisure pursuits of the lower orders was not a good thing. Finally, Misery was the largest check – famine, war, plague and so on.

Despite the impact of his work, Malthus had many critics. Not least because of the lack of evidence for many of his most central observations – that human population growths geometrically while food production only increases arithmetically for instance. Some of his most consistent critics were radicals like Marx and Engels who understood that Malthus' work was an assault on the very idea that you could improve the lot of the poor. I will deal with their criticisms elsewhere, but I would direct readers who want a brief introduction to the Marxist arguments against Malthus to the essay written on the 200th anniversary of its first publication in John Bellamy Fosters book “Ecology Against Capitalism”. [My review of that book here.]

Malthus lived in changing times. Much of the beliefs he held true would be swept away as the industrial revolution continued to transform society. The United Kingdom can easily support a population in excess of 56 million, even though he believed it impossible. There are other checks on population growth – contraception and abortion were words that the morally restrained author couldn't even consider. But the truth is, that the more educated and richer a society the lower birthrates are likely to be.

Today, Malthus is claimed by those who argue that environmental crisis can only be solved by a reduced population. But we must argue that the problem is not the number of individuals, but a social and economic system that delivers not in the interests of those people, but for the needs of big business. The biggest polluting nations per capita, are not necessarily the most highly populated. But even if they were, the danger with these neo-Malthusian arguments is that we blame the poorest in society for the situation the world is in, rather than challenging an inherently irrational system.

Peter Linebaugh - The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for all

Peter Linebaugh's sweeping history of Magna Carta, one of the founding documents of law couldn't come at a better time. This ancient text, with its limits on tyranny, its prohibition of torture, its securing of the right to trial by jury and of course, habeas corpus, has never been needed so much. Under the guise of the war on terror, many governments have sought to undermine these ancient rights and in the first instance Linebaugh's book is a rallying cry to defend them. It is with a only a limited irony that the author can quote a legal expert recently saying "If anyone had told me 20 years ago that fighting for the rights in Magna Carta or the rule of law would be seen as revolutionary behaviour, I would have laughed."

However, Linebaugh's history shows us something else. Magna Carta has always been a battleground - it evolved out of the struggle between the Barons and King John, and its interpretation has been used by everyone from those who would fight for liberty and freedom, to those who would establish the free market in the New World and justify slavery.

Through the book we read of rebellion and counter-rebellion. From peasant revolts to lawyers seeking to prove the slave trade illegal, it takes many forms. But often what marks the rebellion is Magna Carta. Sometimes it's quoted legally, sometimes it's inscribed on banners or referred to in rhetoric. It's always part, however, of a collective consciousness.

Sometimes the book is hard going. Linebaugh's florid style can be hard to follow and sometimes I felt there was a certain expectation on the reader having some legal knowledge. Nonetheless, there is much here for a casual reader. Linebaugh is on of the best contemporary historians in the "history from below" school, and deserves a read.

Peter Linebaugh's explicit reason for writing this history is to put the idea of "the commons back on the agenda of the political constitution". In other words, the concept of collective rights, of equal access to resources and land, of social organisation and living must be part of our future, just as it is part of our past.

Related Review

Linebaugh - The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century

Leon Trotsky - An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe

This short book in the Penguin "Great Ideas" series, is actually a collection of essays and speeches spanning the period immediately before the Russian Revolutionary year of 1917 until Leon Trotsky's death - the last essay is his testament as he lies on his sick-bed, injured in an attack by Stalin's agents.

The essay opens with the Zimmerwald Manifesto against World War 1, written by Trotsky after the 1915 anti-war conference of socialists. It's much more grand sounding than the conference actually was, at this stage in the war, the genuine socialist movement was fragmented and small, the majority of socialists in Europe having swung into line behind their own governments and supported the slaughter. In his elegant and simple style Trotsky urges a new revolutionary movement of internationalism against the conflict.

"Workingmen and working women! Mothers and fathers! Widows and Orphans! Wounded and Crippled! We call to all of you who are suffering from the war and because of the war: beyond all borders, beyond the reeking battlefields, beyond the devastated cities and villages - Proletarians of all countries, unite!"

However most of the essays are of interest not because of their polemic, though most of them are this, but because of the insight you get into the actual workings and experience of the Russian Revolution. Particularly of interest are several speeches Trotsky gives to the Petrograd Soviet (the working class organ of elected delegates from across the city), immediately after the insurrection, and one just before May Day 1918 (there is no more precise date) as the Red Army is about to be formed to defend the Revolution from the belligerent capitalist nations who have sent armies to destroy workers power.

One if the speeches lists the questions that Trotsky answers from the floor, the accountability and debate that was taking place is clear and is a fascinating look at the living, breathing revolutionary moment.

If there is one criticism of this short work, it is the complete lack of context - the essays and speeches are reproduced with almost no clarifying information. Few dates are given, and given that Trotsky was speaking to the supreme body, it should be mandatory to explain to the casual reader what the Soviets were during the revolution. Nonetheless, if you do have a passing knowledge of the revolution and an interest in how the Bolsheviks organised and Leon Trotsky's life, then this is a brilliant and cheap addition to your bookshelf.

Dan Gardner - Risk, The Science and Politics of Fear

This is a sober and thoughtful examination of something that is altogether the opposite of those sentiments - fear. We are taken through a list of the most modern of paranoia's. Everything from concerns over cancer, terrorism to the threat of an asteroid impact wiping out life on Earth.

Along the way, the author doesn't simply explain how these things shouldn't terrify us as much as they do, but rather he tries to understand why we perceive some of these things as more dangerous than they actually are and asks, why we react to danger in the way we do.

Dan Gardner claims that it is "fear that defines us". Now I'm not sure how true that actually is, but certainly he is reflecting the way, in the modern world, political and social discourse is governed by threats to our way of life. As I read this, Swine Flu was dominating the headlines of every newspaper and TV news report, in a way that the ongoing deaths from preventable disease, war or hunger never does. Gardner points out that there actually has "never been a better time to be alive" - even in some of the poorest developing nations, people are healthier, living longer and suffering less from disease than at any other time in history. Yet we continue to believe that we are worse off, or in more danger than in the past.

Some of the most interesting chapters are those that unravel the myths behind the giant headlines. The discussion on Terrorism, focuses on precisely how unlikely anyone is to die of cancer, yet millions of US citizens continue to think they are personally under immediate threat of death from terrorism. Gardner uses some statistics that are almost comical if they weren't so sad - even if a 9/11 type attack had happened every month for a year, with the same death toll, the chances of a US citizen being killed would have been "roughly one in 7,750" yet the likelihood of dying in a car crash annually is "one in 6498".

Of course the threat of death by terrorism serves a purpose - it helps generate support for a political course of action by a government, it can help get through changes to the law that undermine civil liberties etc etc, but Gardner is most concerned here with why it is we are most likely to believe in the scary story, over the rational analysis. Only part of this, he argues, is because the media lie, or promote the unusual, exciting stories over the more sober ones.

For Gardner, our fear is down to the basic hard-wired instincts our ancestors developed millions of years ago as hunters, living by our wits, in the Savannas of Africa. We are governed by our "Gut" instincts - the instincts that helped our ancestors recognise the immediate threat of a man-eating lion, over the slower, more rational "Head" which calculated the risk.

There must of course be some truth in this, though it came across as a simplistic explanation to this reader - we have after all developed beyond our natural evolution in a way that allows us to think and work above our basic natural instincts. It's also true, that we rarely get to make judgements based on the complete picture of information - that's not how modern politicians, media outlets or headline writers work - so we aren't able to over come our instinctive fear of mugging, because we're constantly warned of the threat.

All in all though, this is a fascinating book, full of information on our modern lives that deserves to be made clearer to the public. Its a damning critique of how information is used in our society and can only help fuel a wider discussion of the issues.

Cecil Woodham-Smith - The Great Hunger, Ireland 1845-9

The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-9 probably resulted in 1.5 million deaths. A further million people fled the country looking for food and work. It's legacy, for millions of people in the Irish diaspora was a hatred of the British ruling class.

The potato blight that destroyed repeated crops was a purely natural phenomena. The starvation that followed however was entirely man made, and a direct result of racist, colonial attitudes of government in London. In addition, ministers were more interested in the profits of food merchants than the relief of the poor.

Cecil Woodham-Smith's social history of the period and of Ireland before and after the famine is a detailed extensive history of this sad period. She points fingers clearly, particularly at those ministers who would do nothing to provide assistance, seeing the Irish as a source of trouble, rather than people to help. "Would to God the Government would send us food instead of soldiers" lamented a starving citizen in County Mayo as soldiers arrived in the region.

Sir Charles Trevelyan, who oversaw relief efforts (such as they were) during the famine, had little but contempt for the Irish... "The Great evil with which we have to contend, is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people." For Trevelyan, the greatest problem was that famine relief might upset the profits of merchants and undermine free trade.

Particularly during 1847, Ireland continued to export grain, which that year was a bumper harvest. The population had no money and no employment, and the grain crop was exported to pay rent. Speculators and landlords amassed huge profits - indeed Trevelyan saw opportunity for profit in the famine, rather than horror. At one point he ended relief completely as economic downturn arrived, saying that he would "leave the rest to God."

The author documents the few attempts at resistance - but the population was too exhausted and hungry to mount any serious attempts at rebellion or insurrection, and she shows how "the Irish people starved and died in one world, the landowning classes inhabited another."

First published in 1962 this book is a valuable read for anyone who thinks that there is something natural about natural disaster. It is a grim reminder that the rich and powerful care little for the poorest of the poor.

Related Reviews

Davis - Late Victorian Holocausts
Kee - The Most Distressful Country

Iain M. Banks - Against A Dark Background

Iain M. Banks' Against A Dark Background is perhaps his most militaristic novel. It's heroine Lady Sharrow begins the novel living in exile. The Huhsz, a merciless religous cult, believe that the coming of the messiah cannot take place until her bloodline is ended, and Sharrow begins a long, complex and winding quest to find the last "Lazy Gun", the only prize that will buy her enough credit with the corrupt Huhsz to escape her inevitable murder by them.

Sharrow assembles a gang of friends and former comrades, who used to steal antiques and relics with her, and they begin to follow a series of increasingly bizarre clues to the location of the Lazy Gun. Several of the clues are genetic - in one case, contact with Sharrow's blood leads a local aristocrat to dance in a seemingly random way, until his heart stops. Later mapping of his dance route, reveals the next stage of the quest.

Against A Dark Background is also very concerned with technical and scientific aspects of Sharrow's career and planetary life. Detailed descriptions occur of her weapons. Here's Sharrow buying a replacement gun, a heavy duty weapon known as a HandCannon, from a shopkeeper who makes the mistake of trying to sell her a more ladylike weapon;

"And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three six-five AP/wire-flechettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is compatible?"

Being a Banks' novel though, the book isn't short on interesting social commentary and details of everyday life. Nor is it afraid of pointing out the differences in life for the adventurous Sharrow and the ordinary people of the planet who have, it seems suffered through a series of violent civil wars and religous crusades.

In the end though, the novel boils down to an exciting chase and battle. On the one side Sharrow is the last of her small band, with a loyal android for assistance. On the other, the evil and tyrannical figure who would destroy the planets way of life for good. In someways there are many cliches, but Banks does it with such stlye that he can be forgiven for this. Standing alone from the Culture novels, this is certainly not just a read for hardcore Banks' fans, but it's one that will entertain all lovers of Science Fiction.

Related Reviews

Iain M. Banks - Matter

Francis Pryor - Britain in the Middle Ages, An Archaeological History

Francis Pryor makes it clear in his introduction that this isn't intended to be either a definitive academic history, nor a social history of life in the British Isles 1000 years ago. Rather its a narrative history, which tries to bring out the general trends of the period following the departure of the Roman legions and the approximate end of the Middle Ages with the dissolution of the monastries.

Pryor's emphasis on archaeology (and indeed his breathtaking openness towards public and amateur involvement) leads him to view the period of history, very differently to those who perceive this era of time as the Dark Ages.

The most fascinating parts of the book are when Pryor looks at the buildings and other artifacts of the time. We discover a world that is constantly developing, growing and occasionally moving backwards. Foreign invaders - the Vikings and the Normans for instance bring their own changes and traditions, though, in the case of the Vikings, they are far from the destructive warriors, clad in horned helmets so beloved of Hollywood.

Pryor says that this isn't a social history. Though neither is this a history of kings and other great men. In that sense, it is also a history of change and social transformation - well worth reading if you are bored of Kings and Queens.

Related Reviews

Francis Pryor - Britain BC

Nicholas Monsarrat - The Cruel Sea

Everyone should have at least one favourite novel that they return to year after year. One of mine is Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea.

The novel deals with the terrors and horrors of the Atlantic conflict in World War II - specifically, the experiences of a group of tremendously inexperienced men sailing an escort ship in protection of the convoys bringing supplies to the UK from Canada and the US. In this sense, the novel is like many others that came out of the Second World War - written by men who had served in the armed services, had seen action and perhaps used the process of putting the stories down on paper, as a method of dealing with their memories.

What makes The Cruel Sea more than just a war novel, is the intensely detailed portraits of the men and women involved. You know these people intimately. You follow them as they stay up for hours on end, because the gales are so strong they can't sleep. You stand next to them on the bridge as they scan the horizon for U-boats. You're with them most painfully, as they rescue wounded sailors and desperately try to comfort dying men.

But, and this is what makes the novel truely brilliant, you are most with them when they die. No one can comprehend war who hasn't seen it. The suffering of the victims of conflict is usually reduced to numbers - 3 dead in Iraq, 2 wounded in Afghanistan. Monsarrat creates these fully rounded characters - hurt by cheating wives, worried about the coming baby, scared of the sexually transmitted disease they've contracted - and their sudden and painful death brings the reality of conflict to the reader like a slap in the face.

This isn't an anti-war novel like Johnnny Got His Gun. But it's a novel that is about the reality of war and as such, it should be read by everyone, particularly those who think war is a game, or those who can play so easily with other men's lives.

Related Reviews

Monsarrat - Three Corvettes

Brian Clegg – Infinity, the Quest to Think the Unthinkable.

The concept of infinity is one of those slightly misunderstood scientific ideas. Everyone thinks they know what it means, but Brian Clegg's book is about showing that the concept itself has had a complex history. For children, “infinity is the biggest number there is”, I remember being very young and announcing to bemused parents that I was going to “count to infinity”.

Clegg's examination into how infinity has become a much more formal (I was going to say concrete, but it is anything but) mathematical construct is a fairly easy and enjoyable read. His introduction to set theory is one of the most straight forward I've ever read, and his little pencil portraits of everyone from Aristotle to Einstein help enliven the subject.

By the end of the book, you get to examining such strange constructs as Gabriel's Horn, a simple shape with a finite volume, but infinite surface area. You could fill it with paint, but it couldn't contain enough material to coat the inside of the horn itself! I particularly enjoyed his explanation of Cantor's proof that there are an infinite numbers between 0 and 1... leading to the idea that there are different “levels” of infinity.

This isn't a book for mathematicians, though I am sure they'll enjoy it, particularly if its been 15 years since they last looked at a Venn diagram, it's a great introduction to a fascinating subject for the layman. Worth a read, if you've ever gazed at the universe and wondered at what it contains.

"My Bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite."

Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, II. ii 133

Andrew Kaufman - All My Friends Are Superheroes

Despite the strange world that Andrew Kaufman's book is set in – one populated by a limited, but significant number of superheros (Toronto, Canada has 249 Superheroes we learn, “None of whom have secret identities.”) - the story is actually about that most important of ideas. The human condition.

In this case, Tom our hero, isn't of the super variety. He is an ordinary guy, whose friends and friends of friends all have particular special abilities. His girlfriend, The Perfectionist, can put things in order with the power of her mind. Unfortunately, on her wedding day, her jealous ex-boyfriend “Hypno” uses his own superpower to hypnotise The Perfectionist into not seeing Tom.

For reasons too complex to go into here, Tom has the length of a short flight to Vancouver to get The Perfectionist to see him, otherwise their love will be destroyed and his heart broken.

Now anyone who has suffered from unrequited love, will know Tom's predicament. To be invisible to the one you most desire is an unpleasant experience, but to be in that situation, while knowing that the other loves you intensely and can't understand your absence is pure torture.

The beauty of Andrew Kaufman's work though isn't this bizarre concoction of a world. It's the little aspects of the lives of those living in it that illuminate our own, non-super, ordinary lives. There is a beautiful moment in the book, described by Tom as he reflects on his love affair with The Perfectionist, and in particular their first night together.

The Perfectionist takes him to a hitherto unseen room in her house. Inside there are only two boxes. One labeled “Lover” one labeled “Friend”. She makes him choose which one to get in. Tom picks up the one marked “Friend” and puts it into the other.

“Then he turned around, picked up the Perfectionist, and lifted her inside the boxes. He climbed in with her. In the morning, there wasn't much left of either box.”

What starts off as a seemingly clunky metaphor, becomes a beautifully surreal examination of the complexities of relationships.

Many reviews of the book concentrate on the small little vignettes of other superheros. The Projectionist, The Battery, The Sloth, The Wild Mood Swinger. The details don't matter, but the names hint at their flaws and thus become more of a metaphor for us mere mortals than any description of human life can do.

Tom's desperate struggle to get his lover to see him is really about how we all struggle with the odds stacked against us. His solution to the problem, is of course, a triumph of logic, rather than some fantastical unknown super power that some may expect. That in itself hints at the solution to all of our problems.

Thomas M. Disch - The Word of God

Organised religion certainly needs the fun poked at it, and Thomas Disch certainly does that here. Now any book that contains the line "Jesus loved creme brulee" would be a sure fire hit with this avowed atheist, but Disch's book is so much more than that. It pokes fun at the concept of religion and God, by being the word of God himself. In this case, the God (there are many) is the author himself. Self declared as such, Disch argues his particular world view, proves his point with a few minor miracles, and tells the improbable story of his origin.

Along the way, we meet a few famous characters in history, many of whom are tangled up in a complex plot of Satan's to destroy Thomas Disch's parents liason, and thus prevent God occuring. One of the side effects of this, is that Germany and Japan will win World War II. The chief instrument of Satan's scheme is the resurrected Phillip K. Dick. For the purpose of this novel (and perhaps in reality) Phillip K. Dick holds an almightly grudge against Disch, carried with him down into the bowels of hell after his death.

It's all quite fun - very little of it means anything particularly deep, though we have the occasional nugget of philosophical thought, ruminations of opera and art, and snippets of favourite books and poems (some of which are even real I trust) but mostly this should be read for the cynical humour and barbed jokes.

It is a clever book, worth reading, if only to annoy and amuse someone more religious than me.

Frank Henderson - Life on the Track; Memoirs of a socialist worker

Since I heard it was going to be published, I've desperately be waiting for Frank Henderson's auto-biography to be published. For those who've never met him, or heard him speak, Frank is a retiring character - for someone whose life has been as full as his, he doesn't seem to be someone who has spent his life in struggle.

Born in 1925 to a Trade Union family in the West Midlands, Frank was old enough to serve in the later days of the Second World War, and be part of the British forces that put down rebellion in Greece and Palestine in the war's aftermath. But for most of his life, Frank was a socialist militant working in the car industry "on the track". Much of this time was spent working in the Longbridge plant. That giant car factory that dominated so much of working class life for the people of Birmingham for many years. Frank describes a time when Trade Union organisation was so powerful it seems almost impossible today.

Working in car industry in the 1960s, a period of boom for the UK companies, Trade Unionists had effectively controlled production. If the workers didn't like something, the profits stopped until management had solved the problem. Even before and during the war the union movement had great power. Frank describes being 15 and being asked to do the job of a 16 year old. Despite his manager wanting this done, the union Branch Committee had to make a ruling. Their ruling was that Frank could do the work, but only if management paid him the adult rate - twice what he was on. Management accepted the decision.

Trade Union politics for much of Frank's life were dominated by the politics of the Communist Party. Frank never joined the CP - instead his political life followed the ups and downs of the British Trotskyist movement, though eventually he joined the International Socialists, forerunners of the current Socialist Workers Party in the UK.

Frank sees being in a socialist organisation as crucial to his activity. Describing the aftermath of the Birmingham Pub Bombings at Longbridge he says he had "never been so scared in his life". In the anti-Irish lynch mob atmosphere that followed the IRA attacks, Frank had to speak out.

"I said the people responsible for the bombing were the people responsible for all the trouble in Northern Ireland and that was the British imperialists."

While the meeting voted to go on a planned protest march, Frank thinks that he made a small different to the atmosphere.

"I noticed, possibly as a result of what I'd said, that a lot of banners saying "Sack all the Irish bastards", "Kill the Irish Bastards", and slogans like that were chucked on the floor and people were walking over them. From the end where I'd spoke people were carrying banners saying, "Bring our boys home". Now, "Bring our boys home" is a long way from a slogan like "Troops out now", but it's a bigger distance from "Hang all Irish bastards".

Frank doesn't think that he could have done what he did without being a member of the IS, "giving him a bit of backbone when things are tough." I think he is right to feel proud when he goes on to say;

"I felt, possibly for the first time in my life, a little pride in myself for doing something. It was a lesson in the value of being a party member that has stuck with me ever since."

Frank saw it all. From the Battle of Satley Gates and the miners strikes that destroyed the Tory governments of the early 1970s, to the 1984 miners strike, Thatcher's victory and the defeat of the Trade Union movement. His thoughts on the role of rank and file movements to give confidence to genuine shop stewards networks, the role of the Communist Party in undermining the left, as well as militancy in a time of economic downturn are particularly interesting and relevant.

If you're interested in Oral history and the working class movement of the last 60 years, this is an excellent read. It finishes with a afterword by Marxist historian Matt Perry who goes through some of the detail of the period, in particular the reasons behind the decline of British manufacturing industry.

Bookmarks have done a great service to a new generation of political activists by bringing out this book. It will help them understand the importance of workplace organisation and socialist politics. There could be no greater tribute to the life of a socialist than being able to learn the lessons from him or her and Frank Henderson certainly has much to teach us.

Iain M. Banks - Matter

The sheer scale of Iain M Banks' Science Fiction always excites me. His ability to blend far reaching ideas with a galactic scale, without ever loosing sight of the minutae that make up society gives his fiction a real depth. His latest SF outing, Matter, doesn't disappoint, not least in the scale of the printed book. Weighing in with 550 plus pages, a glossary of characters and ship names, you know as you pick it up, that you are in for a detailed read.

At it's most basic, this is a classic story of revenge. In fact, the basic tale of a murdered King's son seeking justice as well as a route to the throne in the context of a changing Feudalistic society is one that has been done many times in the fantasy genre. What is clever about this take, is that the Fuedal society we read about in Matter is actually located on a "Shell World". Not only is it bottom of the league in terms of technological development, it is actually physically underneath many other layers of this artifical planet.

In Iain M. Banks' universe, such constructs are not unusual, though no one really knows their point. In this novel they serve as a metaphor for social and technological power. Leaving aside the technical details of how such worlds work (something the author doesn't do, I should add), as you rise through the strated societies, each alien grouping tends, in the simplest explanation, to control, or at least influence the weaker societies below.

The stage is of course set for a clever interaction of different societies and different cultural understandings. Central to this is the journey of Prince Ferbin out into the external galaxy to search for his sister. As he encounters other races, societies and cultures his own conceptions of the status quo break down. His sister has gone through a similar process. Most interesting though, is the Prince's relationship with his servant - someone whose understanding of how society really works is much more critical than his Prince would dare suspect.

With this novel, Banks' has made his imaginary universe a much more real and deep place. It isn't all good - when a more powerful society intervenes in the internal workings of a weaker one - things don't often turn out well for the majority of people in the weaker place. (You might want to think about foreign intervention in the Middle East or Africa while you read the book, as, I am sure the author would have wanted you too).

Alongside most of Iain Banks' more recent SF, this novel is one to read and re-read. Unfortunately, his recent non-SF fiction tends to be more plodding and shallow. Perhaps this is pro-SF prejudice on my part, but I think sometimes political polemic works better in a novel when its slightly below the surface, rather than thrown at the reader.

If you want to know more about the book, you might like to read the interview that Iain M. Banks gave to Socialist Review when it was first published, it gives more information on the ideas behind its development. SR's own review is here.

Raymond Chandler - The Little Sister

The Little Sister is not one of Raymond Chandlers better known novels. It is however one of the classic Phillip Marlowe novels and has all the hall marks of the better known stories like "The Long Goodbye" and "The Lady in the Lake".

It begins with Marlowe, bored in his office, chasing the flies that are annoying him. His boredom is disturbed when the oddly named Orfamy Quest visits, looking for a private detective to help her find her missing brother. Orfamy comes from a tiny town in Kansas and holds all the prejudices that you might imagine for someone visiting the big city, with all its vices, for the first time.

The plot itself matters little - Chandler's novels should be read for their atmosphere and description, rather than the complex tales of intrigue and betrayal. This is the sort of story that you just join up to for the ride. On this trip, we follow Marlowe as he meets sex-starved movie starlets, murder victims with ice-picks in their necks and corrupt policemen, as well as nasty gangsters. In some ways, all the cliches are here, in others it's a fabulous example of the detective genre.

Chandler is an amazing writer, whose cynicism towards the inhabitants of the big city will bring many a dry smile to the modern reader. Worth digging this one out from the library.

Related Review

Chandler - The Long Goodbye