Sapiens

I don't say this often, but... everyone should read this book. Sapiens offers a rare chance to step outside of your life and look at the big picture, while being throughly entertained by some brilliantly clear and compelling writing.

From cave men to artificial intelligence, Harari covers where humans come from, what we've done, why we've done it and what we might do next. It's highly readable, incredibly succinct considering the scope and certainly never dull.

In tracking human progress, from hunter-gatherers 'of no signifiance' to the atomic bomb and the internet, Harai is particularly adept at identifying and exploring the ideas, myths and beliefs that have made it all possible. He explores big concepts with breezy simplicity - gender, money, writing, empire, religion, science and ideology - explaining how they came about and how they have influenced the development of human societies.

This is all illustrated with fascinating detail, zooming into relatable events in order to reflect wider trends. In this way Harari navigates the complexity of human history, while retaining his expansive perspective. He also manages to challenge over-simplified or distorted interpretations of events - albeit with a light touch relative to more academic texts.

While largely balanced, there is a welcome polemic element to his writing too. Harai often returns to man made environmental change and animal welfare in order to raise questions about the impact of mankind beyond the mirrored walls of of human culture. He also identifies a number of traits which appear to have shaped his own worldview. These include the importance of imagination in the organisation of human society, a fascination for our individual capacity to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time, and a longitudinal trend towards an ever closer integration of the world population.

It is the author's ability to frame big questions within the broad sweep of human history in such an accessible and entertaining way that make this book so good. I can honestly say that it has changed my way of thinking.

Spook Country revisted

When it was first published, I found the cover design and title 'Spook Country' a little perplexing. It seemed somehow un-Gibson, like the novel had been packaged as a mass-market spy thriller. I could only hope that this would lead more people to discover the depth of perspective that it offered. Of course, like so much of of Gibson's writing, I don't think I appreciated this depth at the time. It now seems even more prescient.

All the usual Gibson traits are there: near future-technology (this time 'locative' virtual reality - which could now be seen as both fore-runner of augmented reality and the new generation of VR); subcultures (art world, systema, free-running, BASE jumping) habitual drug use (benzos, coffee and broasted potatoes); enthralling story; profound insights and a cast of characters who effortlessly redefine cool.

There's also the sense of zeitgeist. Unlike previous trilogies, which reflect their time through projections of the future, Gibson has very intentionally rooted this series in the culture it was written. The use of present or near future technology in fiction is always going to timestamp your work. Here Gibson is explicit in this use - drawing on wi-fi, iPods, clam phones (soon to be made obselete by the smart phone) and specific brand names. As a result, with the series published between 2003 and 2010, he has documented one of the most rapid and significant decades of change in regard to our relationship with communications technology.

The point about brand names is important, Gibson was keen to stress when speaking in London at the publication of 'Zero History'. This codified language is central to our experience in the world of the early 21st century. Whereas his previous novels painted corporations as machivellian international powers (think 1990s anti-globalisation protests), the relationship here is more complex. It is personified in the charachter of Hubertus Bigend, the London-based Belgian marketing guru behind the mysterious Blue Ant and the one constant in all three books. Often the fixer and the enabler, he guides the achingly cool female lead characters down the rabbit hole of cutting edge cool in search of truth. And yet his motives are never clear. Through an R&D division with bottomless resources, he is ostensibly on the hunt for anything cool that he can co-opt into his marketing business to sell brands. In doing so he co-opts the female leads themselves, challenging them to question how far they want to sign themselves away to this seemingly benign, yet alarmingly omnipient, commercial entity. Sound familiar?

The Invention of News

A lot happened in the western world between the 15th and 18th centuries. 'The Invention of News' spans four hundred years that saw the Reformation of the church, the expansion of global trade routes, spawling international conflicts and unprecedented poltical revolutions.

With all this going on, it's unsurprising that a market for information developped within populations that were increasingly literate and interested in current affairs. Yet despite Gutenberg's breakthrough with the moveable type press in 1439, for much of this period the newspaper was not the primary method of delivery. Not 'invented' until around 1600, it was in fact more of a product of these times than their herald.

Petegree's book is an study of the diversity of the information landscape into which newspapers emerged. Not dissimilar, he notes, to the blending of various forms of print, broadcast and digital media over the last 100 years.

Pre-Gutenberg, news would travel through a large illiterate population by word-of-mouth, or through court messangers employed by those few people who could afford them. The personal reputation of trusted sources was key.

The forerunners of printed news were hand-written manuscript services used by Italian merchants in the 16th century to keep abreast of international affairs and changing prices for goods which might affect their business. These Avissi would collate verbal reports and written correspondence from foreign cities in the order that they arrived, citing the date, city of origin, and often the personal source of the news - a practice still common in newswires.

It was this format that the first enterprising newspapers copied from the start of the 17th century. Yet the stream of data would come with no context, explanation or analysis. A literate population who could now afford the luxury of a newspaper might be able access information previously only available to the inner circles of power, but they might not be aware of its significance.

The marshaling of public opinion was a battle fought instead through pamphlets, which enjoyed their first explosion during the wars sparked by the Reformation and reached their frenzied peak during the French Revolution two and a half centuries later. These ephemeral publications could be produced and distributed quickly and cheaply in response to demand for news of major events. Unlike the subscription-based model of newspapers, they had no need to acknowledge their publisher in the interest of repeat business, and so could be far more liberal in their often contentious opinion.

It is no coincidence that such developments went hand in hand with the emergence of Europe from a feudal system into a place of commerce, and an awakening of conciousness which saw people question first the church, then the rights of their rulers and eventually their own role in civil society.

In fact the potential to excite the population was one quickly recognised by civil authorities, who initially imposed strict copy-checking policy on very closely controlled monopolies, as in the Netherlands, or even completely  nationalised the press, as in the case of The Gazette in France. In this climate, when one word wrong could leave to arrest, many printers were initially happy to restrict their content to the coverage of less contentious foreign affairs.

The most notable exception the rule was England where, following the English Civil War and subsequent Glorious Revolution, a unique news ecology developped which saw publications effectively bought as propoganda tools by rival political parties. The French and American revolutions saw later relaxation of domestic news coverage - albeit temporary in the case of the former.

One of the major strengths of Petegree's book is an ability to link the development of news with the emergence of other industries of the time, including financial markets in the 18th century, first evidenced in the Tulip crisis and South Sea Bubble, or the establishment of coffee houses as centres of discussion and debate closely associated with the rise of other forms of journal and periodical.

Besides the printing press, the innovation most central to the establishment of regular news services was the development of a European postal network during the 16th century, to link the major trade centres of Italy and the Netherlands via the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. In an age of instantaneous alert, it is fascinating to consider how the speed of news depended for so long on the speed of horse travel - around 50 miles a day with the fastest couriers - often delayed indefinatley by rough sea crossings and political turmoil. It took until the early 18th century for printed news to establish itself as a regular feature in daily life.

Petegree also examines the role of advertising, in introducing domestic news and affairs into the pages of newspapers through the first personal and business ads.

One of the most charming aspects of the book is its ability to illustrate the times in which it trades, calling on first hand accounts of consumers of news as well as contemporary reportage and insight into the lives of news producers and distributors. The way in which superstitious tales tales of strange occurrences give way to more factual reports is evidence of a mankind's changing awareness of the world at this time. Yet it some news, such as battle reports, gruesome murders, moral tales and societal gossip, remain of timeless interest.

This is a fascinating and illuminating history which explores a momentous period of political and economic development towards the world we live in today through contemporary sources and perceptions. It successfully paints a complex picture of the news ecology, while demonstrating how the interest in, market for and presentation of information developped in tandem with commercial growth, civil engagement and enlightenment thinking. There were a few times when I found myself wondering whether I needed the depth of study provided on certain topics, but these were far between and recompensed by the quality of research and the lucidity of the greater narrative. 

Excellent.

Have you ever seen a smeuse? How would you know?

Print by Stanley Donwood

'We are making do with an impoverished and increasingly homogenized language to describe the landscapes outside of our cities' says Robert Macfarlane, author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places and The Old Ways. He's at the Foyles on Charing Cross Road, talking about his new book Landmarks. To prove his point, he turns to the Junior Oxford English Dictionary which in 2007 removed seemingly essential words such as dandelion, nectar and cauliflower to be replaced with others such as broadband, email and analogue. Should children really learn to spell blackberry with a capital B before they've tasted the fruit?

When he's not lecturing in English at Cambridge, Macfarlane spends a lot of his time walking in and writing about these landscapes, so you might expect him to have developed a richer vocabulary for them. But the point that he's making is relevant to us all. How often have you been for a walk in the countryside and found yourself unable to name the plant, animal or distinct weather that catches your eye? What does the act of naming bring to our experience? What does it matter?

It's about cognition as much as anything, Macfarlane seems to be saying. Once you know the name for something, such as a ‘smeuse’ (Sussex dialect for ‘the hole in the base of a hedgerow made by the repeated passage of a small animal’), you're more likely to be aware of it and actually see one. He gives the example of a period in which he was reading J A Baker's Peregrine, a singular exploration of the Essex landscape in search of these beautiful raptors. Around this time Mcfarlane started seeing these birds in his own area, tuning into their presence with an awareness that he had not previously held. Language and books about nature can, he says, change the way that we see. Macfarlane's own writing, infused with the culture, history and people of the landscapes that he visits, certainly achieves this for me.

He describes a campaign to save the peat moors of Lewis, the North most of the Outer Hebredies. For the company hoping to build Europe's largest wind-farm here, it made sense to describe the place as empty and desolate. To anyone looking at pictures of these open, windswept places, that's how they seem. For locals such as Finlay Macleod, however, it's a landscape steeped in the experience of the crofters who once cut the turf from it's ground. Macleod's lexicon, included in one of nine glossaries in Landmarks, gives us phrases such as the wonderfully precise 'rionnach maoim’ (a Hebridean Gaelic term for ‘the shadows cast by cumulus clouds on moorland on a sunny, windy day’).

As I stood at the train station this morning, and realised that I was suffering 'sun-scald' from the glare of the rails, it dawned on me that it's not just our countryside that requires a richer language. Many of us can't even describe the landscape of our everyday urban environment. The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape is a good start, but perhaps there should be a word the shadow cast by a tree upon a brick wall, for litter trapped against a fence by the wind, or the way that you can look back in time by glancing above the modern shop fronts of a high street. Maybe there already is. I've always been a fan of desire lines (that muddy corner of the grass in a park that everyone cuts to make their journey shorter).

Macfarlane wants to encourage his readers to experiment with their own language, highlighting the fun that Douglas Adams and John Lloyd had re-appropriating English place names in The Meaning of Liff. It's time, he says, to re-wild our language, and there's a page at the back of the book left blank for you to start your own lexicon. My wife and I begin with 'The Best Bits' - a phrase we use to describe those rays of sun that break through the clouds like beams of god (as an Art History graduate I'm sure I used to know the correct word for this phenomenon but it's since been supplanted. Where can I turn for a decent visual dictionary?). In the interest of linguistic diversity, I'm sure we can do better than that.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue: And Other Stories by Edgar Allen Poe

Poe was a literary pioneer, one of the first American writers to make a living from his work, during the 1830s and 1840s. Known for penning gothic tales of the macabre and some of the first known detective mysteries, his influence extends through the penny dreadful fiction of the Victorians and weird tales of the 1930s right through to the best horror and crime writers of today. Although I'd like to report that I was dazzled, thanks to Poe's peculiar early nineteenth century style of writing and rather long-winded method of storytelling I found this collection to be more of an enjoyable exercise in literary archaeology than a revelation. Most of the classic tales are in there, including ' The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Masque of the Red Death' and the eponymous title, but it's a shame that his most famous story 'The Raven' isn't included. If I were to pick a favourite, 'The Masque of the Red Death' manages to convey a brilliantly original idea with more flair and brevity than the rest. Worth reading for literary completion.

Read: In bed before lights out.
Filed alongside: Wilke Collins, HP Lovecraft

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Book Review: Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

A mystery thriller mixing pugalism, etomology, Nazi memorabilia and sex might not be your first choice of reading material, but if you can get over your inhibitions this ambitious debut is well worth it.

Switching between the present day and 1930s London, Beauman eases us into the narrative by way of introduction to an affable young collector who confounds our pre-conceptions and quickly finds himself at the centre of a murder mystery so unlikely that his 'fishy' nickname is probably part of the joke. The hidden history that he discovers, linking an East End Jewish boxer and an upper class fascist entomologist, is equally bonkers, yet Beauman's description of pre-war London, with it's protection rackets, dive bars, gentleman's clubs and their denizens, is so compelling that you're pulled right through. On the way there's some surprising sex, a few more murders and an (un)healthy dose of Ayran conspiracy theory.

The only time I really felt let down was the last third of the book in which everything culminates far too neatly. My disbelief grounded as soon as the mystery dissolved. I suspect this is intentional though. Conspiracy theories are all a bit too neat aren't they? It's as if Beauman's suggesting that if you can buy into this, you're as susceptible as the mad Ayran eugenicists of the early 20th century. A great tongue in-cheek read and well executed idea. Look forward to the next one.

Like: Not much that I've read before
Read: At speed on trains, August 2012
Time on bookshelf before reading: 10 months

Book Review: The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn

Don't be misled by the 'comic' label. This is an accomplished novel that ties together themes of aging, ambition, social cohesion, media, celebrity and urban regeneration, whilst keeping it personal and acutely poignant. There are undoubtedly lots of comic moments and characters, but they seem almost to reflect rather than exaggerate real life. I picked this up for a light read but ended up quite affected. Touching.

Book Review: Perdido Street Station

In this other-worldly, steam-punk fantasy, China Miéville introduces us to the fetid streets of New Crobuzon, a city rife with corruption, teeming with strange races, humming with thaumuturgy (magic) and clamouring with the din of steam-powered constructs.

Bas-Lag is not the tired old fantasy realm of elves, dwarves and orcs, though, but a refreshingly original land of water-dwelling vodyanoi, cactae men, beetle-headed kephri and the remade, pitiful mash-ups of flesh and machine.

Through this mélange of cultures, Mieville explores notions of race and identity set against bigger themes of poltics and the polis, whilst propelling us through the book with a thrilling tale of horror, intrigue and pursuit. Like a ramshackle Victorian London, the city itself is beautifully described, not so much a backdrop as part of the action. The characters, despite their alien appearance, remain endearingly human in action, emotion and capacity for thought. As with most fantasies, this is a book about humanity after all.

Perdido Street Station is a dauntingly fat volume, yet I don't think I've ever got through 800+ pages so quickly.

Like: Clive Barker takes on a steampunk Discworld with a dash of HP Lovecraft
Read: Summer 2011, everywhere I could grab 5 mins