Shlomo Sand – The Invention of the Jewish People
Shlomo Sand is one of the academic writers that Israel loves to hate. He vigorously researches his work and turns up evidence of things that the Israeli leadership, and Zionist academia would rather keep hidden. The more evidence unearthed that disproves the fictitious historic claim to the land of Israel, the more grasping and ill-tempered … Continue reading
Stephen Chan – The End of Certainty
This book from Stephen Chan aims to approach different arguments from a multi-layered platform. He asks us what a magical realist novel would look like as an intellectual essay? The answer is, rather pompous and self serving. That is not to say there aren’t some important contributions to this book. He meshes together what has … Continue reading
Richard Dawkins – The Greatest Show on Earth
Although he may not care for the description, this latest book by Richard Dawkins is perhaps his “missing link” in his long series of books on the subject of evolution. It provides the concrete proof for the theory and shows that as much as we can say that gravity is true, we can say non-random … Continue reading
Arundhati Roy – Listening to Grasshoppers:
We know Arundhati Roy predominantly as a fiction author in this country, this book however is a collection of essays on the recent history of India. It focuses on Kashmir, terrorism and corruption which then feeds in to the wider debate about global power struggles and democracy. There is a vigorous passion to the writing … Continue reading
Gilbert Achcar – The Arabs and the Holocaust
This book is myth-dispelling of the highest order. It takes long held prejudices of Arab-Jewish relations and turns them upside down. The central theme of Holocaust reactions in the Arab world is an area that has required some tidying up over the years and here we have it. He recognises that now Holocaust denial is … Continue reading
Hugh O’Shaughnessy – The Priest of Paraguay:
A short biography of Fernando Lugo, the president of Paraguay. From his humble origins as a Catholic priest to join the ranks of the leftist bloc of Latin American leaders as president of his native land. It is quite a short book and easy to digest. One of the main themes is the constant problems … Continue reading
A C Grayling – Towards the Light
Although the title sounds like this may be a religious text on conversion, it couldn’t be more opposite. Perhaps a deliberate play on words, the true point of this book is the long, drawn out battle for human rights that is still being fought today. It is very much a Whig history of the rights … Continue reading
Sahar Kalifeh – Wild Thorns
This novel is set about five years after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and is the tale of a small number of relatives and friends in Nablus in the West Bank. Usama has been working abroad and has returned to Palestine to help with the recovery of his nation and to see his family once again. … Continue reading
Christopher Hitchens – God is Not Great
Although I agree with the sentiment of this book and the central point that religion has caused more harm throughout the world than good is a justified one, I struggled with Hitchens’ own way of arguing his point. As with many of the professional liberal philosophy elite he gets couched in silly arguments without looking … Continue reading
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redosiris
Belleaddona's books 
Ben Wilson – What Price Liberty?
Posted by redosiris on 3 March, 2011 · Leave a Comment
If cataloguing this book I’m not sure I would know whether it should be placed in the history section, or the politics section of a library. The first half, maybe slightly more, is concerned with the historic growth of liberty in the British Isles. Wilson, a historian himself avoids the pitfalls of the polemicist in … Continue reading →
Category economics, History, Non Fiction, politics, religion, Reviews, social commentary · Tagged with enlightenment, equaity, freedom, liberty, new labour, society, Terrorism