Latest Reviews

With a embossed colour cover and glossy pages, this volume has the look and feel of a textbook. The impression is further reinforced with a compartmentalized layout, large colour photos and the use of technical descriptions and terminology.

Chuvalo:A Fighter's Life:The Story of Boxing's Last Gladiator by George Chuvalo with Murray Greig, 2013 is an entertaining read.

Boxing, “the sweet science” has always had a select fan base and its popularity has been waning maybe partly because it is too violent, and in some camps recently, because it isn't violent enough.

This book is a window on a life few people know, and many don't care to know, through the eyes of one of the most violent and durable practitioners of the sport.

I don't recall ever having read a non-fiction book that was such a page turner. Part of that certainly is my personal interest in the subject, but David Epstein, a senior writer for the magazine Sports Illustrated, has not unexpectedly, a great storytelling knack. He employs it regularly at the outset of every chapter as well as within them to introduce heavier material more painlessly.

Essentially this book is a kind of 'fountain of youth' manual for those with the discipline to follow it.

Not only is the formula designed to lengthen one's life, but maybe more importantly, improve the quality by expanding one's options of activities.

It is to change the trajectory of aging from one of progressively steeper decline to one of a gradually descending plateau.

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-rich and Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland, 2012

With no background on this book, I had been expecting a Naomi Klein-type of visceral rant against wealth and the wealthy. And the latter part of the title “and fall of everyone else” does nothing to dispel this boding.

This book is more developmental psychology than philosophy, but it certainly offers thinking points. At the age of 10, author Alison Gopnik was reading Plato and questioning his thought. So it may be no surprise that as an adult, while giving answers, she is asking questions from various perspectives. Through this book I have come to quite like the author and the way she combines thought, ideas, science and personal observations.

‘Anthill’ by E.O. Wilson is that renowned biologist/naturalist’s first venture into fiction. And while I am loath to use the word “unique” he employs a technique here I have never encountered before. In the midst of a 370 page novel devoted to the story of a boy growing up in South Alabama, is a story of the life and complex societal organization of ants. Wilson, one of the world authorities on that subject, delivers what could be seen as a scientific paper, in a highly palatable narrative about the ants in their home and how they may view the world.

‘Cool it’ by Bjorn Lomborg is another in the long line of global warming and related books. I had been led to believe by his detractors that he was a “denier”. I did not find that to be the case. He says that global warming is occurring and it is mainly caused by CO2 produced by human activities. He is even suggesting a 4.5 F temperature increase this century.

‘The Prehistory of the Mind:the Cognitive origins of Art Religion and Science’ by Steven Mithen deals with the evolution of the human mind from the common ancestor with the apes six million years ago to the most modern humans who appeared sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

The author is a British archaeologist.

The book ’Chasing a Mirage;The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State'’ by Tarek Fatah is about the illusion that Islamists have of replicating the golden age of Islam (800-1350 AD) with an Islamic state.

The dour homogeneity exuded by Wahhabism is the antithesis of the energy and diversity that reigned during the best periods of that golden age.

While the form of government developed in that period served those times, it lacked key features of transition of leadership and political institutions that would have allowed it to evolve.