Optimism over despair - Noam Chomsky & C.J. Polychroniou

This is a collection of interviews to Noam Chomsky on US and world affairs, conducted by C. J. Polychroniou and published in the magazine Truthout. The topics are: American politics, neoliberalism, economics, social issues, environment, the war on terror, refugee crisis and many more.

Being a collection of separate interviews the book might not always been coherent or homogeneous, and is sometimes repetitive. However Chomsky always appears to be extremely informed and sharp minded. What he seems to be most concerned about is social inequality at various levels: those self fueling mechanisms whereby the richest tend to exert an ever stronger hold on politics, which in turn will operate in a way that will make them more rich, and therefore more politically influential, and so on.

Eating animals - Jonathan Safran Foer

When Jonathan Safran Foer, the American novelist, was about to become father for the first time, he started to wonder what the best way to feed his child would be, and particularly whether a human being born in the 21st century should eat animal products. Or what animal products they should eat. That question started a comprehensive research on the food industry, especially factory farming. Foer read lots of books and articles, interviewed factory farm employees, traditional husbandry farmers, slaughterhouse workers and activists. He even sneaked into a number of intensive farms to see for himself what was going on (the public is not allowed to enter the plants; his numerous requests to be admitted for visits were always ignored - not even turned down, outright ignored).

School blues - Daniel Pennac

Maybe not everyone knows that Mr. Pennacchioni, AKA Daniel Pennac, the world renowned French novelist, is also a school teacher.

In this book Pennac writes about his days as a school dunce. How frustrated this made him (and how upset his well educated parents were about it), how he finally managed to find motivation, become an educator himself and even achieve success as a writer. Four teachers actually “saved” him. One of them by asking him to write a novel, secretly, a chapter at a time, for the whole duration of the school year.

A man (Un uomo) - Oriana Fallaci

At the time of publishing this book was categorized as a novel. Well, it’s not: it is the real story of Aleksandros (Alekos) Panagulis, the Greek poet, revolutionary and politician who opposed the military junta that ruled the Hellenic country from 1967 to 1974.

The uninhabitable earth - David Wallace-Wells

This book about climate change - global warming in particular - is a tough one. Both because it’s not an easy read - especially the first part, so full of technical details, facts and figures, many, many of them - and because it’s a very alarmist text: the worst case scenario that it depicts is a grim one. And even if you take into account the base case scenario, well, it’s not a merry one either. Basically, we might be doomed. Damage has already been done, and that will hardly be fixed in the near future. Even worse, more damage is being added by the year, at a considerable speed. We might just have a few decades to reverse the tide before it’s too late, and judging by the global level of commitment and coordination, that could turn out to be an extremely long shot.

The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks is not just a physician who writes book: he’s a literary talent who happens to be a brilliant neuroscientist. The set of clinical cases he deals with are told with academic accuracy and a style worth of a talented short story author. Patient after patient, syndrome after syndrome, the reader learns how evolved and sophisticated the human nervous system is, and how catastrophic a minor glitch in one of its numerous components can be. We also learn how (fortunately) rare those glitches are, and how science can help cure the corresponding illnesses.

Mythos - Stephen Fry

Reading list. Item #25

I’ve read this book on a trip to the Greek Dodecanese archipelago. How appropriate.

You can find references to Greek mythology pretty much everywhere in Greece: names of islands, cities, restaurants, drinks, hotels, temples. Even the world renowned Greek hospitality has been interpreted as an Olympian sacred rule, any breach of which is punished by Zeus with mighty thunderbolt attacks.