Desert Island Library

This is a post I did all of 15 years ago - Paul Mason, one of the BBC economics correspondent (all of whom do excellent blogs), is running a lovely Christmas challenge at the moment – the 50 books which your library has to have. The challenge was apparently first made in 1930 by an American journalist who received a letter from a friend who wrote:

"As for the library, I want no more than fifty books. And none of them modern; that is, 

no novels that are coming off the presses these last ten years. Are there fifty intelligent 

books in the world? If you have time send along a list of fifty books, I promise to buy 

them and have them beautifully bound. I am consulting you as I would my lawyer. 

I have not time to develop a literary consciousness at my age. So if you were cutting 

your own library down to fifty books, which books would you keep?"

He has made the challenge more difficult by preventing us from consulting our 

shelves or the internet – so I did my best last night but have now had the time to 

reflect more and consult some booklists; What follows is therefore a slightly updated 

version of the entry I posted on his site (number 81 I think)

A library should be for consulting – the glories of novels, short stories, poetry, essays 

should be available there but also art and human knowledge. With only 50 books allowed, 

novels (of any sort) will have to be excluded - which means no “Buddenbrooks” (Thomas 

Mann) or “Candide” (Voltaire) let alone any of the powerful South Americans 

(Jorge Amado's "Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon", Allende’s “Eva Luna”, Marquez’s , 

“Love in the Time of Cholera” or Llosa ‘s “The War of the End of the World”) or Yehoshuova’s 

“The Liberated Bride” from Israel.

However, some books come in multi-volume collections eg Lewis Crassic Gibbon’s 

“Sunset Song”; Lawrence Durrell’s “The Alexandrian Quartet”; Olivia Manning’s “Balkan 

Trilogy”; and Naguib Mahfouz’s “Children of the Alley” and therefore give good bangs for 

bucks. Perhaps they might be allowed to stay.

And remember what Nassim Taleb calls Umberto Eco's "antilibrary" concept - that read 

books are less valuable than unread ones - a library should be a research tool. 

Collections of essays, poetry and short stories also give much more reading per book 

(unless it’s War and Peace) - so the collected poetry of Brecht, TS Eliot, Norman McCaig 

and WS Graham would be the first four books; as well as the Collected Short Stories of 

Nabokov, William Trevor, Carol Shields, Heinrich Boell and Alice Munro; and the essays 

of Montaigne.

If allowed, I would also have a few collections of painters eg the Russian Itinerants or 

Scottish colourists. Chuck in an Etymology and a couple of overviews of intellectual 

endeavours of recent times such as Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” 

and Peter Watson’s “A Terrible Beauty” - and I would then have space for 35 individual 

titles.

My basic criteria would be (a) the light thrown on the European dilemmas of the last 

century and (b) the quality of the language and the book as a whole.

The books I would keep are

Robert Michels; Political Parties (1911)

Reinhold Niebuhr; Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)

Joseph Schumpeter; Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)

Arthur Koestler; The Invisible Writing (1955)

Leopold Kohr; The Breakdown of Nations (1977)

Gerald Brennan; South from Granada (1957)

JK Galbraith; The Affluent Society (1958)

Ivan Illich; Deschooling Society (1971)

Robert Greene; 48 laws of power (for the breadth of the stories from the medieval world including China)

Tony Judt; Postwar History of Europe since 1945

Richard Cobb; Paris and Elswhere

Vassily Grossman; Life and Fate

Roger Harrison; The Collected Papers (in the early days of organisational analysis)

Clive James; Cultural Amnesia (on neglected European literary figures particularly of 

the early 20th century – written with verbal fireworks)

JR Saul; Voltaire’s Bastards – the dictatorship of reason in the west

Amos Oz; Tale of Love and Darkness

Claude Magris; Danube

Julian Barnes; Nothing to be Frightened Of

Michael Foley; The Age of Absurdity – why modern life makes it impossible to be 

happy

Toby Jones; Utopian Dreams

Michael Pollan; The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Nassim Taleb; The Black Swan – the impact of the highly improbable

Roger Deakin; Notes from walnut tree farm

Geert Maak; In Europe – travels through the twentieth century

Donald Sassoon; A Hundred Years of Socialism – a history of the western left in 

the 20th century

Theodor Zeldin; The Intimate History of Humanity

Of course Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Machiavelli’s The Prince should be there – 

and at least one book on the Chinese contribution to the world.

This leaves 6 empty spots - about which I shall think carefully!

This time in 2009 I was in the mountain house (also with minimal snow) and 

thinking about the useful literature on public administrative reform!

What about Intellectual Fare? The state of English-speaking journals and mags

It’s some 5 years since I last did an annotated list of interesting journals, As the number of newspaper titles shrinks, the number of weekly, monthly and even quarterly journals seems to increase - although substack is now offering a highly competitive (paying) model which may challenge their future.

My question then was - which (English language) journals would pass a test which included such criteria as –

- Depth of treatment

- Breadth of coverage (not just political)

- Cosmopolitan in taste (not just anglo-saxon)

- clarity of writing

- sceptical in tone

That’s a tough test but this was the list -

3 Quarks Daily; I last said “my daily fix - an amazing site which offers carefully chosen articles which suit my demanding taste perfectly” but I don’t actually receive it any more. But Nous y verrons

Aeon; an impressive cultural journal (online since 2012) whose articles are about big issues and have real “zing”

Arts and Letters Daily; this daily internet service highlights an article and book but I’ve only recently resubscribed.

Boston Review; a mag I rate highly for originality

Brave New Europe; greatly improved site which contains essential reading for leftists such as this conversation between Varoufakis and Jeffrey Sachs

Consortium News; a leftist radical US site

Current affairs; a bi-monthly and slightly anarchistic American mag

Dissent; a US leftist stalwart 

Dublin Review of Books; great crack

Eurozine; a network of some 90 European cultural mags which gives a great sense of the diversity of European writing

Jacobin; a leftist mag which has improved with age.

Lettre International; a fascinating quarterly published in German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Romanian.

Literary Hub; a literary site with daily selections but one, for some reason, I haven’t looked at recently

London Review of Books; my favourite for the past 40 years to which I generally subscribe

Los Angeles Review of Books; tries too hard to run with the politically correct

Marginalia; gives extended excerpts from classic texts about creativity etc. a personal endeavour of a Bulgarian woman now living in the States which, recently, I’ve found it a bit too predictable 

Monthly Review; an old US stalwart with good solid analysis

Mother Jones; more journalistic US progressive

N+1; a centrist mag published only 3 times a year

New Humanist; an important monthly strand of UK thought

New Left Review; THE UK leftist journal publishing every 2 months since 1960. Always worth a look 

Prospect (UK); rather too smooth centrist UK monthly

The American Prospect (US); ditto US

Public Books – an impressive recent website (2012) to encourage open intellectual debate

Quillette; a "free-thinking" contrarian and libertarian journal 

Resurgence and Ecologist; dependable UK Green mag

Sceptic; celebration of important strand of UK scepticism

Social Europe; a european social democratic E-journal whose short articles are a bit too predictable for my taste

Soundings; if you want to keep up with UK leftist thought, this is the journal for you – issued only 3 times a year

Spiked; a libertarian net-based journal with challenging articles always guaranteed to be anti-PC

Sydney Review of Books; still can’t make up my mind

The Alternative UK; an excellent new platform aimed at establishing a "friendly revolution" to transform politics - it actually gives  space to interesting new thinkers

The Atlantic; one of the US oldest mags (founded in 1857)

The Baffler; great writing. Apparently founded in 1988, it surfaced for me only recently

The Conversation; a rare venture which uses academics as journalists 

The Cultural Tutor; an amazing site which offers each week a taste of music, literature and architecture – produced by Sheehan Quirke

The Nation; America's oldest (1865) weekly, for the "progressive" community

The New Republic Progressive US monthly which has been publishing for more than a century

The New Yorker; very impressive US writing

The New York Review of Books; I used to love this journal but have not renewed my sub – partly in protest about what’s happening in US politics

The Point;  a quiet rightist mag

Tribune; the original left paper for which Orwell wrote and to which I am currently subscribed. Has some great writers such as Owen Hatherley and Grace Blakely

Verfassungs blog; an excellent Anglo-German site which focuses on constitutional issues

Washington Independent Review; a new website borne of the frustration about the disappearance of so many book review columns

Words without Borders; a journal of translation

Wrong Side of History; Ed West writes that “every writer has an axe, or multiple axes to grind, and I’m obviously politically conservative – although I would more describe myself as a depressive realist – but I’m not anti-liberal. Liberalism works in certain circumstances, but it needs saving from itself. If there’s a campaigning theme to Wrong Side of History, it’s my belief that there is a political drift towards a form of soft totalitarianism, which includes a fixation with inserting activism into every aspect of our lives, whether it’s sport, education or visiting a cultural attraction. I want less politics in our daily lives”

Substack favourites

Aurelien; very thoughtful posts

Chris Hedges Report; the guy who rivals Chomsky

Critical perspectives; rigorous international research revealing how global systems actually shape our world- from Rex McKenzie

The long memo; posts on politics, collapse, and the architecture of exit by William Finnegan

Thoughts from the shire; highly literary thoughts from a wee Hobbit trying to escape clown world

https://www.kitklarenberg.com/; a male investigative journalist explores global risks

https://athenamac83.substack.com/; Anthropologist and a rare female author, specializing in bioethics and anthropogenic existential risk.

Academic journals

I would not normally deign academic journals with a second glance since theirs is an incestuous breed – with arcane language and specialized focus which breaches at least two of the above five tests. But Political Quarterly stands apart with the superbly written (social democratic) analyses which have been briefing us for almost a century and to which I have recommenced an (internet) sub. Parliamentary Affairs; West European Politics and Governance run it close with more global coverage.

A concept with unrealized potential, I feel, is that of the “global roundup” ” with selections of representative writing from around the globe. Courrier international is a good, physical, Francophone example – with Eurozine takes the main award for its selection of the most interesting articles from Europe’s 90 cultural journals

The archive on journalism

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2011/03/investigative-journalism.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2011/07/british-bread-oz-circus-and-bulgarian.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/03/fighting-big-brother.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/04/suborning-democracy.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/06/getting-under-skin.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2015/05/confessionals.html Pat Chalmers
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2015/05/is-british-journalism-dead.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/05/journals-worth-reading.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/08/in-praise-of-journalists.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2017/09/making-sense-of-global-crisis.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-we-should-not-be-so-cynical-about.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/03/brexit-and-reassertion-of-nation-state.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-writers-craft.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/11/kenneth-roy-voice-to-renew-faith-in.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-stuff-of-journalism.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/03/in-praise-of-literary-magazines.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/03/what-does-brexit-tell-us-about-ourselves.html

THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE

Another interesting reflection from Geoff Mulgan – this time a lecture he delivered in 2022 at the Academy of Social Sciences on its role in mapping and shaping the future

Search for well informed proposals for how welfare, democracy, tax could be a 

generation or two from now and you’ll find surprisingly little. Why has this happened? 

My suggestion is that this has partly happened as a unfortunate by-product of 

perfectly sound, well-intentioned shifts.  Healthy pressures to attend to hard data 

and evidence have had the unintended consequence of squeezing out attention to the 

future since by definition evidence and data refer to the past and present. 

A well-intentioned focus on impact has encouraged incremental work on policy – 

how to tweak a little, ideally aligned with the interests of the government of the day 

but discouraged the serious design of how our society or economy might be a 

generation out since of course a brilliant idea that will flourish in 30 years’ time won’t 

show up in the REF.  

An equally healthy commitment to rigour has made it hard or even career threatening 

to be creative, since any genuinely new idea risks sounding flaky, vague or half-baked 

(as any radical idea will be in its infancy). Similarly, as evidence now shows very clearly,

 the very valid reliance on peer review as a near-universal assessment method, by its 

nature discourages the boldest most speculative thinking, favouring safe proposals 

over more radical ones that tend to get a mix of very high and very low scores. 

So many of the brightest opt either for analytical work or for the safer space of 

commentary and critique - often brilliantly – but steer clear of the riskier space of 

saying what they think should be done. And although within every university there 

are pockets of bold thinking,  some very creative and dynamic, and although many 

want to play a part in the great transitions that may be needed in the next few years, 

they are almost without exception on the margins of their fields, happening despite, 

not because of, the incentives of the system. 

He goes on argue that 

Few in 1900 expected a brutal world war and revolutions in the next generation. 

Few in 1925 anticipated a boom, a depression and then another war. 

Few in the 1950s expected the scale of cultural change of the 1960s. Few in the 1980s 

expected the imminent collapse of the USSR, resurgent Islamic fundamentalism, or 

the rise of personal computing and the internet. Few in the 2000s anticipated the 

scale of the financial crisis, or the boom in populist authoritarianism, or that the 

world would grind to a halt thanks to a pandemic.  Few in 2021 predicted a brutal war 

in 2022 or a glorious time for oil companies. 
Thinking about which trends will continue, which will bend, invert, break sharpens our 

thinking and focuses us on the pace of change in different fields – on the one hand 

the slow but remorseless pace of demography or infrastructures that may take 50 

years to change; on the other the feverish pace of social media that gets a billion 

people onto Tiktok in a couple of years.  All of us usually overestimate how much 

changes fast and underestimate how much can change over longer periods, 

yet we still lack a plausible social science of time. 

This is, in fact, a theme picked up in a 2013 report I have just come across 

which was commissioned by the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations 

and entitled Now for the Long Term 

Within democracies, there are clear tensions between the capacity of governments to deliver long-term solutions in the collective interest and more short-term political demands. Politicians are increasingly punished in times of crisis, making it harder to take difficult long-term decisions that produce immediate pain. Since mid-2010, the leaders of more than 75 percent of the European Union’s 28 states have fallen or been voted out of office, including the leaders of France, Spain and Italy. Increasingly difficult decisions, particularly on controversial reforms such as on carbon taxes, nuclear power or abortion, are often delayed or are beset with uncertainty.

All societies face increasing demands for political accountability, higher living standards, economic opportunities and a more sustainable and healthy environment…..

Meanwhile in democracies, more frequent opinion polls, longer election campaigns, the pressures of increasingly vocal and well funded lobbies and the preference for sound bites over detailed analysis can mean the capacity to think and articulate a vision beyond the electoral term are increasingly limited.

Corporate myopia

Responsibility to think and act in the longerterm interest is not confined to the political sphere. The global business community also has a vital role to play. Yet with notable exceptions, businesses are failing to show leadership and grasp responsibility on the scale required. Some businesses, often through their corporate social responsibility activities or philanthropy, have sparked action, but these are only rarely mainstreamed within the firm. This is particularly acute in the financial sector where Andy Haldane, Executive Director of the Bank of England, argues that there is evidence that “myopia is mounting”.

Performance metrics of CEOs based on share prices arguably encourage a focus on short-term stock prices, rather than long-term value creation. Meanwhile shortterm investors who often hold shares for a few days (or potentially just a few seconds) have the same voting power as those who hold shares for a longer period, with this perversely rewarding those who want to make a quick return and are not necessarily committed to a company’s longterm well-being.

And the report doesn’t shy away from exploring the constraints on thinking 

ahead or from making recommendations – the second section asks “What Makes 

Change so Hard?” and looks in detail at 5 possible reasons viz

• Institutional Inertia; “20th century structures and institutions are poorly equipped 

for 21st century challenges, and suffer from legitimacy, authority and effectiveness deficits”.

• Time; “Electoral cycles, media pressures, company reporting timetables and just-in-time 

systems encourage short-sightedness”

• Political engagement and public Trust; “Limited opportunities for constructive 

engagement and declining trust in politics and institutions undermine citizens’ 
involvement in policy. Yet new online tools and methods of participation are potentially widening opportunities for discussion and debate.”

• Growing Complexity; “Issues are becoming more complex and the evidence 

base can be uncertain, whilst an emphasis on consensus undermines our ability to act”.

• Cultural Bias; “Entrenched barriers shut many women and young people out of 

critical conversations and activities, whilst cultural differences provide barriers to change.”

Mulgan’s lecture then points to the contrast between the hard sciences and 

social policy

In sciences – whether life science or computer science – it’s taken for granted 

that if you are ambitious you speculate and design options for the future.  

You are encouraged by research councils, university departments and venture 

capital to generate ideas, the more radical the better.  A future orientation is 

seen as necessary and admirable.  And it’s recognised that although most ideas will 

fail, the rare successes will be useful and some incredibly valuable. In science 

and technology there is no shortage of support for imagination – thinktanks, 

conferences, accelerators, funds - on smart cities, smart homes, AI, genomics: much of it 

speculative and much of it hype and hot air but some of it very real and feeding 

into well-developed systems.  Drug discovery and new surgical procedures on the 

one hand and much of technology have long-established systems for generating options,

 selecting the best and then scaling them up.   By contrast social action and policy 

lacks any comparable systems of support.  There is little support for radical thought 

and variation – little support for experiment and testing and only patchy systems 

for then selecting and scaling the successes.  

TO BE CONTINUED