Published by Bloomsbury Publishing / Pelican Press, 2014, 528 pages. I am one of those people who have a mental block about economics. When I read about it, my eyes glaze over and my brain goes “are you kidding?” and shuts down. I think this is ridiculous. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, and …
Category: Non-Fiction
The Riches of Al-Fahim’s Biography
From Rags to Riches—A Story of Abu Dhabi: Mohammed Al-FahimPublished by CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 1995, 192 pages. Review by Lesley O’DowdMohammed Al-Fahim’s biography, From Rags to Riches was first published in 1995. By the time he wrote this illuminating story, Al-Fahim was an eminent, highly respected Emirati businessman in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. As he …
Shady Characters—Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities: Keith Houston
Published by Particular Books / Penguin, 2013, 252 pages. Writing and typeface are things we take for granted, almost as if the letters, punctuation signs and symbols we use have always been around. So it’s good to have someone remind us that behind these characters is a long and interesting history. Keith Houston picks a …
An Ideal Boy: Charts of India
Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2001, 120 pages. Review by Imran Ali Khan There are images and then there are words, or is it the other way around? I am never quite sure. But a good way to ‘instruct’ is to say it without spelling it out, and so it is with the Indian Charts …
Adiós muchachos: Una memoria de la revolución sandinista—Sergio Ramírez
Translated from Spanish by Stacey Alba D. SkarPublished by Alfaguara, 2007, 320 pages. Published in English by Duke University Press Books, 2011, 264 pages. This is the story of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, written by someone who—in the late 1980s—became the country’s vice-president in the Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government of Daniel …
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I am Malala—The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban: Malala Yousafzai
Review by Lesley O’Dowd National news in countries around the world showed 16 year old Malala addressing the United Nations in July 2013. Viewers heard her eloquent plea for the right to an education. Since recommencing in England the education interrupted by the near-fatal Taliban bullet in her head, Malala has produced an autobiography, co-authored …
News of a Kidnapping: Gabriel García Márquez
Review by Usha RamanTranslated from Spanish by Edith GrossmanPublished by Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin, 1997, 304 pages. Original version published in 1996. Okay, this book sat on my bedside table for over a month, waiting to be finished. I finally speed-read it. Not what I would usually do, but this is not the kind …
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Wild—From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail: Cheryl Strayed
Published by Thorndike Press / Penguin Random House, 2012, 315 pages. This is an amazing book about a woman’s journey to heal herself. Cheryl Strayed’s world collapses when she loses her beloved mother to cancer. Her marriage to a man she loves breaks up. And without her mother to hold them together, her family drifts …
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Charles Dickens—A Life: Claire Tomalin
Review by Abbas HassanPublished by Penguin, 2011, 527 pages This is a very readable and sweeping account of Charles Dickens' life. What I found striking about the book was that it presented a very lucid, chatty narrative with trivia about all the books he wrote, the friends he kept (and did not), his habits, his …
Nickle and Dimed—Undercover in Low-Wage USA: Barbara Ehrenreich
Published by Metropolitan Books, 2001, 224 pages. The America of mimimum wage workers is not one that gets a lot of attention in the media. To quote Polly Toynbee’s introduction to this book, it is “a secret continent”. “The barely reported truth about the American dream is that it exists in a country of widespread, …
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