Orthodox countries celebrate Easter this weekend – today is Easter Monday and most shops – even the chemists’ are closed. I went out to buy some vitamin B1 and C3 only to find all 5 chemists I tried closed.
The saving grace is that I lunch on the famous drob whose ingredients remind
me of those of the Scottish delicacy, haggis – namely sheep stomach contents.
And lunch on Sunday was fish
I confess – another 15 books
Statecraft – the new rules of power in a divided world Jack Watling (2026) This book is about how states compete in a dynamic contemporary environment.
It is about how they exert leverage and influence, how they can plan and manage
contingencies, when they may or may not be the most powerful actor, but do not
hold a majority of the power within the environment.
Crucially, this book is about how states can protect their interests and advance
their prosperity – partially at one another’s expense –without driving competitors
to escalate.
In short, it is hoped that the following chapters provide observations that are useful
in allowing NATO members to achieve better strategic outcomes through their
statecraft. The Beginning Comes After the End – notes on a world of change Rebecca Solnit (2026)– reviewed in The Guardian To Catch A Fascist – the fight to challenge the radical right Chris Mathias (2026)A British journalist interviewed here World Builders – technology and the new geopolitics Bruno Macaes (2025) a Minister inthe Portugese government more than a decade ago and now a “geo-strategist”– whatever that is Capitalism – a global history Sven Beckert (2025) Be warned - a 1,900 page tomb!! The Great Global Transformation – national market liberalism in a multi-polar worldBranko Milanovic (2025) a copy which lacks a bibliography A Theory of Complex Democracy – governing in the 21st Century D Innerarity (2025)A Spanish political scientist The Age of Diagnosis – how our obsession with medical labels is making us sickerSuzanne O’Sullivan (2025) A neurologist from the UK explains Crude Capitalism – oil, corporate power and the making of the world marketAdam Hannieh (2024). Looks very useful The Web of Meaning – integrating science and traditional wisdom Jeremy Lent (2021).A book I want to spend some time with The Economic Naturalist – why economics explains almost everything Robert Frank (2008).
Looks my sort of text My Stroke of Insight – a brain scientist’s personal journey Jill Taylor (2006)
A very personal account Essays on the Garrison State Harold Lasswell (1997)
The US political scientist famous in the 1950s Simple Rules for a Complex World Richard Epstein (1995) A book predicated on the
assumption that there are, in the US, too many lawyers and too may laws. The World As I Found It Bruce Duffy (1987) a novel which explores the life of Moore,Russell and Wittgenstein.
This was the week I renewed my Romanian citizenship, entitling me to live in the country for the next three years. Anticipating a long wait - with gigantic queus at the HQ of the Immigration Ministry in Strada Militarie - we had first sought an interview with the Head of the Immigration Authority to plead our difficulties with downloading the relevant papers (some 8 in number).
In the event, it proved to be a very useful decision – the whole process took about
half an hour, although it will be a month before I receive the relevant certificate.
My latest -
Virtue Hoarders – the case against the PMC Catherine Liu (2021) The Professional MiddleClass is a concept which continues to fascinate me The Alibi of Capital – how we broke the earth to steal the future to build a betterfuture Timothy Mitchell (2026). A fascinating title for a fascinating bookThe fragmentationist grand strategy Nel Bonilla - interesting article which coversthe next 2 booksThe Grand Chessboard – american strategy and its socio-strategic imperativesZ Brzezinski (1997) American Empire – the realities and consequences of US diplomacy Andrew Bacewich(2002)The Search for Modern China Jon Spence (2012) Any book on the subject is worth reading Jan Morris – a life Sarah Wheeler (2026). about a fascinating travel writer The Aristocracy of Talent – how meritocracy made the modern world Adrian Wooldridge(2021). Novara interviews Adrian Wooldridge on his latest book “Centrists of the World,Unite” (2026)Twenty First Inequality and capitalism – Pikety, Marx and beyond ed L Langman (2018)Promises great thingsAntonio Gramsci – Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism R Holub (1992) This Is For Everyone - the unfinished story of the WWW Tim Berners-Lee (2025) thegreat man of the web. review by Nik Carr Zbig – the life of Brzezinski, America’s great power prophet Edward Luce (2025) On Strategists and Strategy – essays 2014-24 Lawrence Freedman (2025) Freedmansenior – author of “on Strategy” - is always worth a read Ukraine and the Art of Strategy Lawrence Freedman (2019) Escape from Capitalism – an intervention Clara Mattei (2026) interview herewith Mattei Stephen Fry on his manic depression
Still a sense of ennui – although I should be pleased that, for the second time in the blog’s history, monthly clicks in March surpassed the 100,000 mark! (The previous month it was 33,000)
I’ve been doing a lot of viewing recently – mainly on the dangerous war on Iran
in which Israel has embroiled the USA Recent books downloaded Just Transitions – a roadmap to the Century ahead ed L Byrne (2020) 31 Network Propoganda, Manipulation, Disinformation and radicalization in US Politics
Y Binkler et al (2019) 30 Damn You, England – collected prose John Osborne (1994) Enough Said Alan Bennett (2026) My Diaries - 1888-1900 Wilfrid Blunt (1919) Travelling to Work - Diaries 1988-98 Michael Palin (2014) 50 Economics Classics Tom Butler-Bowen (2017) 50 Politics Classics Tom Butler-Bowen full book (2021) 50 Politics Classics - a summary Tom Butler-Bowen (2021) Triumph of the Will https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n15Uj6-vffI 1934 Haywire – the best of Craig Brown (2022) 29 Difference and Orientation – an Alex Kluge Reader ed LANGSTON (2019) The Revolutionary Temper – Paris 1748-89 Robert Darnton 2023 The Revolutionary Temper Robert Darnton (2023) sample 28 Democracy at Work – a cure for capitalism Richard Wolff (2012) Reverence – renewing a forgotten virtue Paul Woodruff (2001) The Room Where it Happened – a White House Memoir John Bolton (2020) The Economics of Poverty Martin Ravaillon (2016) Washington is Burning – corruption and lies in the age of Trump Andrew Cockburn (2026) 26 AJP Taylor – radical historian of Europe Chris Wrigley (2006) Notes Toward the Definition of Culture TS Eliot (2008)
I have to confess to some ennui – as will be obvious to the long delays in recent posts. These are the recent book downloadings
and Geronimo de la Torre (2024)The fall of the Soviet Union was hailed as the end of history. The onset of globalisation was hailed as the end of geography. The growth of artificial intelligence is being hailed as the end of human labour. The identification of the Anthropocene has become a warning for the end of humanity itself. When epochs are labelled and called into being, even if arbitrarily or retrospectively, it is always followed by claims of a crisis or death of something. Why, then, does the state seem to endure all these crises and deaths, sometimes coming out of them even stronger and more assured than before? The same state whose actions and inactions are at the very centre of so many crises and deaths, both literal and figurative? We live in a present era marked by a seemingly endless stream of crises that should, in principle, be solvable by states, but which are not; crises caused by economic crashes, environmental catastrophes, wars, famines, as well as everyday crises of culture, health or quality of life. The state is not singularly to blame for most of such crises, but it plays a central role in causing, exacerbating, or responding to them (often a combination of these roles).
That the state, with its vast resources and coercive power, seems unable or unwilling to substantially address the systemic problems that beset present society, yet still remains at the centre of our political imaginations, is evidence of its remarkable endurance and resilience. The many leftwing and decolonial projects that have attempted to reform the state across the globe in recent years are testament to the enchantment of the state as a space of political action, as well as its ability to quash radical change within its framework of ordering our worlds. This is not to say that they have not made positive material changes, but that those changes invariably fall far short of their intentions and very quickly become enveloped within its logics.
This is a book about how the idea of the state survives and maintains its ubiquity as the pivot of territorial organisation and order. However, it is also about how other stories of our world exist, and persist, in spite of it.
As anarchists have said for at least the last 150 years, we need a different imagination of how society could be governed if we are to save humanity and make our lives truly liveable, and the so-called ‘disaster anarchy’ of mutual aid and spontaneous self-organisation that erupts at times of crisis is testament to how this can feel so tantalisingly close. Even those who wish to reform the state, rather than overthrowing it, are already looking to new forms of governance that move beyond its limits. We therefore look to ‘other’ accounts of life that highlight ways of being and organising – forms of order amidst the disorder of state power – that can be used to decentre the state from our political and geographical imaginations and envision much wider future horizons that may include the state as one option but also vastly exceed it. We draw from otherwise very different disciplines – geography, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy and more – as well as multiple different cosmovisions and worldviews, some of which might even conflict or contrast with each other, to highlight the endurance and inventive resourcefulness of orders despite the state. The academic quest for perfect theoretical unity is rarely reflected in the messy realities of life.
Therefore, this book begins by asking: what if the state had never existed?
10
Peak Oil – environmentalism and libertarian political culture Schneider-Mayerson (2015)Bestsellers of the Third Reich – readers, writers and the politics of literature Christian Adam (2021) Y Jisheng (2020)Strongmen – how they rise, why they succeed, how they fall Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2020)9
Essays in honor of Nancy Fraser ed Bargu and Battici (2018)Rethinking Capitalism 2022What the Future Looks Like ed El-Khalilih 2017Nomad Century – how climate migration will reshape our world Gaia Vince (2022)With every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes overwhelming and deadly. Migration is not the problem; it is the solution. 8
War and Power Philip O’brien 2026 sample
Yet, even then, at the height of its power, with the world seemingly at its feet, the ability of the US to achieve clearly stated goals at the end of the war, in countries that it thought were of vital interest, such as China, was shown to be shockingly weaker than expected. So, there was certainly no one standard of great power in World War II that might help us understand the power relationship between the states involved, and nor could the greatest of the so- called great powers in many centuries – the United States – achieve many of its goals. 6
Labour Forces – from Ernest Bevin to Gordon Brown ed Kevin Jefferys (2002)Broken Vows – Tony Bliar, the tragedy of power Tom Bower (2016)Scottish Nationalism – history, ideology and the question of independence Richard Finlay (2022)Gordon Brown – power with purpose James Macintyre (2026)Another World is Possible – how to reignite social and political imagination Geoff Mulgan (2022)Big Mind – how collective intelligence can change our world Geoff Mulgan (2017)Political Advice – past, present and future Colin Kidd and Jackie Rose (2021)Governing in Turbulent Times Geoff Mulgan 2026 Words that Work – it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear you say Frank Luntz (2007) This book is about the art and science of words that work. Examining the strategic and tactical use of language in politics, business, and everyday life, it shows how you can achieve better results by narrowing the gap between what you intend to convey and what your audiences actually interpret. The critical task, as I’ve suggested, is to go beyond your own understanding and to look at the world from your listener’s point of view. In essence, it is listener-centered; their perceptions trump whatever “objective” reality a given word or phrase you use might be presumed to have. Again, what matters isn’t what you say, it’s what people hear.
Dan Davies (2018)the world lost its mind Dan Davies (2024)Hans Ostrom and William Haltom (2019)In our book as in this chapter we enter that meeting place to converse precisely, clearly, and honestly about “Politics and the English Language.”
To be honest, clear, and precise, we contend that the essay is a muddle—something its status and that of its author often obscure. In this chapter we show that most of the famed parts of the essay do not suit the whole as tightly as they might and that many parts entertain more than enlighten. The essay’s most momentous major claim is served poorly when it is served at all by such features as Orwell’s five “specimens,” by his catalogue of four “swindles and perversions,” by his six “rules,” and by his unnumbered gibes and gripes.
Labour Chris Baker et al (2009)Complicit – Britain’s role in the destruction of Gaza Peter Oborne (2025)March of the Moderates – Bill Clinton, Tony B liar and the rebirth(?) of progressive politics Richard Carr (2019)H Landemore (2020)Democracy without Politics A Oleart (2023)Thomas Merton’s Paradise – journey writings on contemplation Thomas Merton and William Shannon (2000) I toiled during my studies in the early 1960s to make sense of its focus on marginal calculations and “indifference curves” but can remember only the following lessons from my four years engrossed in economics books
the strictness of the various preconditions which governed the idea of (perfect) competition – making it a highly improbable occurrence;
the questionable nature of the of notion of “profit-maximisation”;
the belief (thanks to the writings of James Burnham and Tony Crosland) that management (not ownership) was the all- important factor
trust (thanks to Keynes whose work was dinned into me) in the ability of government to deal with such things as “exuberant expectations”
the realization (through the report of the 1959 Radcliffe Commission) that cash was but a small part of money supply. Financial economics was in its infancy then.
For
someone with my education and political motivation and experience,
however, my continued financial illiteracy is almost criminal but
not, I feel, in any way unusual. Most of us seem to lack the
patience to buckle down and take the time and discipline it needs to
understand the operation of the system of financial capitalism
which now has us all in its thrall.
We leave it to the "experts"
and have thereby surrendered what is left to us of citizenship and
political power. Like many people, I’ve clicked, skimmed and saved
– but rarely gone back to read thoroughly. The folders in which
they have collected have had various names – such as “urgent
reading” or “what is to be done” – but rarely accessed.
Occasionally I remember one and blog about it.
There are, however, a couple of short books which I heartily recommend for anyone wanting to beat the (w)ankers in the banks - The Production of Money – how to break the power of bankers by Ann Pettifor (2017) and Just Money – mission-driven banks and the future of finance Kaufer and Stepanopolous (2021)
These are the books I downloaded In the last couple of days – with some explanatory notes -
Educating the Germans – people and policy in the british zone of Germany 1945-49 David Phillips (2018). I have a certain fixation about Germany. This is a book about the difficulty of making sense of the immediate post-war years in the country Personal Impressions Isaiah Berlin (2014) Berlin was one of England’s most prolific writers
and this is a great analysis of some of the key intellectuals of the 20th Century Our Age – English intellectuals between the Wars – a group portrait Noel Annan (1990)
Annan was an academic who knew everybody worth knowing History in our Time David Cannadine (1991) essays from an English historian Dashing for the Post – the letters of Leigh-Fermor ed Adam Sisman (2016). Leigh-Fermor
was you might call an “intrepid traveller” famous for walking through Germany, Austria, Romania and Bulgaria in the the 1930s Patrick Leigh-Fermor – Encounters between Budapest and Transylvania Michael O’Sullivan
(2019). New insights on his his classic trilogy Joan - the remarkable Life of Joan Leigh-Fermor Simon Fenwick (2025) A debutante
hardly worth bothering about 5 Feb
The Death of Men Allan Massie (1981) Massie (who died this week) was one of my favourite writers Political English – language and the decay of politics Thomas Docherty (2019) An interesting take tCulture, Community and Development ed Phillips et al (2020) The Good Society Alan Draper (2013) Get Carter a film with Michael Caine which is a classic gangster film Capitalism – the future of an illusion Fred Block (2018) One of the best The Progress Illusion – reclaiming our future from the fairlytale of economics
Jon Erickson (2022) I’m always a sucker for critiques of economics The Racial basis of Trump Support – important article Identity Crisis – the 2016 presidential campaign and the battle for the meaning of
America Michael Tesler (2018)The election was also symptomatic of a broader American identity crisis. Issues like immigration, racial discrimination, and the integration of Muslims boil down to competing visions of American identity and inclusiveness. To have politics oriented around this debate—as opposed to more prosaic issues like, say, entitlement reform—makes politics “feel” angrier, precisely because debates about ethnic, racial, and national identities engender strong emotions. It is possible to have a technocratic discussion about how to calculate cost-of-living increases in Social Security payments. It is harder to have such a discussion about whether undocumented immigrants deserve a chance for permanent residency or even citizenship. It is even harder when group loyalties and attitudes are aligned with partisanship, and harder still when presidential candidates are stoking the divisions. Elections will then polarize people not only in terms of party—which is virtually inevitable—but also in terms of other group identities. The upshot is a more divisive and explosive politics.
Authoritarian Nightmare – Trump and his followers J Dean and R Altemeyer (2020) Perhaps the definitive explanation
If you Google “books about Trump,” the answer seems obvious: “You’ve got to be kidding!” But while there are many books about the man and his presidency, favorable and not so favorable, we could find no book that explains why he acts the way he does. Nor are there any books that explain his base, the source of his power. In fact, many observers have thrown up their hands in despair at Trump’s very steadfast supporters. They seem beyond the pale, beyond understanding. Well, give us a chance, for we believe we have solid science-based answers.First things first. Many people have opined there is something seriously wrong, psychologically, with Donald Trump. If you proudly wear a Make America Great Again hat, you may be offended by the suggestion. For you, as for him, Trump should be immortalized on his own Mount Rushmore, maybe renamed Mount Trump, as America’s greatest president. But if you have passed on a twenty-five-dollar official MAGA hat while observing Donald Trump for any time at all, you may believe the man is deeply troubled mentally. Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have been riveted by his behavior from the outset of his presidential bid. They wondered during the campaign, “Is this an act just to get elected?” But by the time he moved into the White House, many concluded Trump was not “crazy like a fox” but “crazy like a crazy.” This point was made by one of the mental health professionals who wrote the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, edited by Dr. Bandy Lee of the Yale School of Medicine.
The conclusions of these analysts and therapists varied quite a bit, understandably, since clinical diagnosis remains something of an art. But more than anything, these psychiatrists and psychologists believed that Trump displayed extreme narcissism with more than a touch of psychopathy. He is, as one therapist put it, in a phrase reflecting years of professional training, “a dog with both ticks and fleas.” These professionals have company. Many sophisticated Washington pundits and presidential observers have deep concerns about Trump.
Republican leaders and other influential conservatives who hoped he would grow into the job have often been disappointed. Trump’s interactions with his cabinet and senior advisors led some of them to expose the man, warts, more warts, and even more warts, to journalists such as Bob Woodward, who compiled them in his bestseller, “Fear: Trump in the White House”. One senior official, “Anonymous,” reported strikingly similar information in an op-ed in the New York Times on September 5, 2018, and later, a book, revealing that a group of alarmed officials had quietly banded together to keep some of Trump’s decisions from being enacted. Other aides, competing with one another for the president’s favor, leaked damaging information about their opponents in Trump’s inner circle, which implicitly diss Trump for hiring their opponents. The Trump White House “leaks” more than Nixon’s did when he formed the infamous “Plumbers” unit to shut off the flow. It appears everybody is trying to get even. John Bolton’s book “The Room Where It Happened” revealed just how dysfunctional the White House had become by 2018 and what a terrible manager and decision maker Trump was. During the first five months of the 2016 GOP primaries, the New York Times was so struck by Trump’s demagogic rhetoric they gathered and analyzed “every public utterance” by him, some 95,000 words. They retained historians, psychologists, and political scientists to review the material, and the experts concluded it echoed “some of the [worst] demagogues of the past century.” Trump was campaigning in the traditions of segregationist George Wallace and anticommunist red-baiter Joseph McCarthy, “vilifying groups” and “stoking insecurities of his audiences,” except the Times noted, by contrast, Trump was a more “energetic and charismatic speaker who can be entertaining and ingratiating,” thus more engaging than his predecessors, which the Times found made his demagoguery “more palatable when it is leavened with a smile and joke.” Nonetheless, in words and action, Trump was and is a demagogue, pure and simple, albeit ranked stylistically slightly better by one leading American news organization than his predecessors, like Joe McCarthy and George Wallace (p27). In 1950, they published “The Authoritarian Personality”, nearly one thousand pages filled with psychoanalytic theory and preliminary explorations in the fields of personality and social psychology. A fourth contributor, Theodor Adorno, was added to the project by its sponsor after the work was nearly finished. Other American researchers at the time believed that what happened in Germany in the 1930s “could happen here” as well. The experience of McCarthyism soon after The Authoritarian Personality was published convinced many social scientists that a large segment of the American public could be stampeded into surrendering the democratic rights the country had just fought to preserve in the war against fascism (p28). Authoritarianism is studied by psychologists, political scientists, and sociologists, with each discipline developing its own focus and definitions while using its preferred methods. We have focused on the psychological research in this field. No one in the media apparently knows about this body of evidence but we do not think it is a secret. Our narrative is largely based on the findings of one academic investigator, who happens to be the person Dean asked to cowrite this book. If that was a mistake, blame him. He, however, believes he has chosen wisely because the data, set forth in the pages that follow, speaks for itself and should not be ignored as America faces the crisis we believe lies immediately ahead.
“There really is no such thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ It all boils down to what you can get away with.”
• “One of the most useful skills a person should develop is how to look someone straight in the eye and lie convincingly.”
• “The best skill you can have is knowing the ‘right move at the right time’: when to ‘soft-sell’ someone, when to be tough, when to flatter, when to threaten, when to bribe, etc.”
• “There’s a sucker born every minute, and smart people learn how to take advantage of them.”
• “It is more important to create a good image of yourself in the minds of others than to actually be the person others think you are.”
• “One of the best ways to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.”
4 February