Authors know everythingIn a week in which a Cheshire woman took the pom-pom from a bobble hat to a wildlife hospital under the impression that it was a baby hedgehog...“It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our lives.”
Finding part of a woolly hat probably wasn't what Scottish poet John Burnside had in mind for a “true encounter”, but well done to that woman anyway, for being kind. And also for giving the Mental Floss website the opportunity to write this excellent paragraph... “ The people who called animal control on a ‘tree beast’ that turned out to be a croissant finally have some competition for the strangest case of ‘animal-related mistaken identity’ award.” Buy some Burnside poetry
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The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson. Allen Lane, £25
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I confess I'm a couple of weeks late to this and – amazingly – it has been generating plenty of attention without my help, but The Trading Game may end up repeating the unexpected outcome of Michael Lewis' 1989 high-finance exposé Liar's Poker. When Lewis let light in on the shameless racket of his time as a trader at Wall Street's Salomon Brothers, he expected the world to turn purple in outrage. Instead he found himself bombarded with enquiries from greedy young men seeking tips as to the best way in. Gary Stevenson grew up in proletarian Ilford with a view over the money mines of Canary Wharf, but used his gifts for maths and economics to get into the LSE, then employed strategy and self-confidence in a recruitment competition (the eponymous trading game) to catapult himself over the fortifications of Citibank. Once inside, he set about the making of many millions – most for the bank, some for himself – but along the way drew some very bleak conclusions about the state of the world and the direction of the economy. Financially ambitious graduates will probably want to skip that bit – it comes at the end anyway. Everyone else will likely find themselves a little queasy at what is going on in there, and how easy Gary makes it seem. Buy this book
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The Strong Words Hot List Easter: traditionally the time to think about new history books... |
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5. Writing on the Wall by Madeleine Pelling Profile, £25
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Whether rioters at Newgate, a shopkeeper's daughter expressing herself with a lump of coal, or a condemned highwayman leaving his initials on the wall of his cell, the people of 18th century Britain apparently enjoyed nothing more than to scribble their thoughts on a wall or similarly welcoming surface. From this grafitti by “homesick sailors, Romantic poets and the artisans of the industrial revolution”, cultural historian Pelling pieces together the age from their unguarded perspectives. Buy this book
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4. The Pirate Menace by Angus Konstam Osprey, £25
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Although the stereotype of the pirate today is little more than a fancy dress costume with added rustic grunting, Konstam – “one of the world's leading pirate experts” – has plenty of history and legend to share, as generated by some truly odious seafarers. As the British sought French and Spanish ships to de-treasure during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), they realised their plunder was of little value if they couldn't exchange it for some pieces of eight. This need for a trading hub gave birth to Nassau in the Bahamas as a pirate business solution, a development that in turn enabled the rise to fame of all your one-eyed, rum-swilling favourites. Buy this book
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3.The Eastern Front by Nick Lloyd Viking, £25
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Vol II of a major World War One trilogy, The Eastern Front turns the focus away from the Somme, Verdun and other more familiar charnel houses, to an arguably even more blood-soaked mega-theatre (Churchill certainly thought it worse) on a front that stretched from the Baltic to the Alps. A more conventional warfare than the trench-based futility in the west, events in the east led to millions of casualties, colossal civilian misery, and tied a tag on the toes of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. Buy this book
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2. House of Lilies by Justine Firnhaber–Baker Allen Lane, £30
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This “dynasty that made medieval France” is the Capetian, founded in the tenth century by Hugh Capet. Guided for the next 350 years by monarchs with soubriquets such as “the fat”, “the bold” and “the stubborn” the house stitched together a vast territory, built great Gothic edifices upon it, dispatched crusading knights from it, then had them suffer the agonies of courtly love whether home or abroad. They also tested the flammability of heretics, laid the glorious foundations of Paris, and made their creation the most powerful nation in Europe. Buy this book
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1. Final Verdict by Tobias Buck W&N, £25
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In 2019, journalist Buck attends the trial of Bruno Dey, a Nazi death camp guard now in his 90s accused of the murder of 5,230 people. This may be the last such trial. “Yes I was there”, but “no, I didn't know what was happening”, says Dey from his wheelchair, a familiar defence. Buck runs through the history of such arguments in death camp case law, meets survivors, examines his family's own Nazi record, and with virtually all those present as primary sources now all gone, wonders how will German engagement with the Holocaust evolve? Buy this book
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One of mankind's oldest questions arises again: how to pass the time in prison?
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Somewhat unfortunate book news for Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted crypto-currency fraudster who was sentenced to spend a long time in the jailhouse this week. The kind of Californian medium-security prison where he’ll be living is not exactly a Disneyland of entertainment options. One of the few aids allowed to prisoners in their quest to pass the time is access to the library. But sadly for SBF, books are not his thing. He once responded to a writer describing his addiction to reading by saying, “Oh, yeah? I would never read a book.” He then added, “I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. … If you wrote a book, you f***ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.” After making his “books are stupid and so are writers” observations, Bankman-Fried went on to show how clever he is by separating investors from $8bn, and on Thursday was rewarded by the authorities for his efforts with 25 years of boredom at their expense. Want more SBF? Buy Michael Lewis' Going Infinite
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On the subject of vintage wine forgery and the intoxicating appeal of high prices to vin snobs, as discussed in last week's Sunday Book Club, leading American author and Strong Words subscriber Chuck Thompson has been in touch to explain the connection...“Ed, I covered this very issue in [my recent book] THE STATUS REVOLUTION. A professor named Hilke Plassmann at Caltech conducted a fascinating study using real-time fMRI scans to watch what happened inside the brain when she administered subjects samples of what they were informed were a very cheap wine, then a medium-priced wine and then a very expensive wine. Each time participants were told the wine they were tasting was more expensive than the previous wine, activity in the pleasure centers of their brain heightened dramatically, mostly by a rush of dopamine, the brain's primary reward chemical. Of course, what the subjects didn't know was that all three of the wines were the same cheap bottle of Cabernet picked up at a Trader Joe's for $10. They were simply told the prices on the samples were different. What this proved is the people really do get measurably more enjoyment from expensive wine than they do from cheap wine. Just not for the reasons one might assume. The study showed that, independent of taste or other physical properties, it's the perceived value – and the perception of status that perceived value confers – that literally gets people high, that changes their brain chemistry. So let's be a little kinder to our snobby friends who insist on pricey bottles. They really do produce more enjoyment.” Chuck T.Thanks Chuck. As someone who gets just as much pleasure from “modestly-priced” wine as the expensive stuff, I also get something of a thrill from ordering the cheapest bottle on the menu. If its good enough for a restaurant to put it on the list it should be good enough to drink, right? But even people at my end of the wine list are often too ashamed to ask for the lowest priced wine of all, and so go for the second cheapest, even when familiar with the “fact” that the restaurant is lying in wait there to trap that branch of wine snobs with something genuinely over-priced. EdReaders – are you privy to the wine industry's Big Book of How We Dupe Status-Obsessed Customers? Please share any useful wine psychology at info@strong-words.comAnd don't forget to buy Chuck's book hereIn other mysteries...Hi Ed, in connection to your Last Words comment today I don’t know if you’ve read Parting Shots collated by Matthew Parris… mostly undiplomatic final letters from diplomats…it’s got some really unwoke, searing, funny views on various countries and nationals from Nepal to Nicaragua. Best regards, Jane C.Thanks Jane, I'm not familiar with this book of ambassadorial insults, but of an even more puzzling nature, I'm not sure what my “Last Words” comments were, because there are no Last Words comments in the Sunday Book Club. Are there? Any clarification in the diplomatic bag please, to info@strong-words.com. Buy this book
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If you're planning a sideline in chocolate production...
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On this day when Christian tradition and Big Chocolate most closely align, I wanted to try and find the book I once read about just how difficult it is to grow the cacao trees that chocolate is made from – but I couldn't find it. Which is kind of appropriate as it seems cacao is one of the most enigmatic and difficult of crops to bend to your will – sort of half diva, half gentleman of the road. I remember that it demands really specific tropical conditions to even begin to think about growing. If the temperature and rainfall and sunlight aren't to its satisfaction – forget it. This means that it grows in a narrow corridor across Mexico and Central and South America, the Caribbean and the equivalent latitude in West Africa. And that corridor is being narrowed by climate change. It's also apparently hard to cultivate – you can't really farm it, it just grows wild if it feels like it, and even if you do plant a tree and get it to grow, there's no guarantee that having waited however many years it takes to reach maturity, that it will produce any pods. Then if it is still in the mood to cooperate, its flowers only stick around for a day, leaving a tiny window for pollination. And if it does fruit, it's utterly indifferent to the march of technology and still insists on being harvested by hand. (This often seems to mean lots of forced labour, especially by children. *Awkward* and *a bit off-brand*.) Apparently they have managed to grow one at Kew – there's a picture of it on their website, and they very charmingly have a cacao expert come from Colombia each year to consult on its progress. But they also discovered yet another hurdle to its cultivation. When it did produce pods, they had to put nets up to stop people stealing them. Well done people. So while getting your chocolate on this Sunday, give thanks for this annual miracle – that chocolate has overcome all these obstacles to make it to the festival again. (If you know which book all these details are from, please remind me and I'll revise them. You know how badly “facts” and memory play together.) (And in a final piece of chocolate news, “chocolate” can be added to the list of words that sound exotic but are staggeringly mundane in their original language – see Mississippi (“big river”) and Sahara (“desert”). “Chocolate” says Emma Kay in A Dark History of Chocolate, “derives from the Maya words chacau and kaa – hot drink.”
Buy this book
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How to subscribe to Strong Words
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If you're not yet a subscriber, now would be an excellent time to get on board, as the next issue of Strong Words is the landmark fiftieth. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, but have no idea what you'd be getting involved with, take a look at this selection of pages from some previous issues here. The simple business of subscribing can then be conducted by following this link. Or if you prefer to perform such transactions by talking to a real person, you can call on weekdays on 01442 820580. Against all economic good sense, I'm holding down the price of an annual subscription for first-time buyers to just £40, a saving of £14 off the cover price, and an act of near criminal lunacy on my part. So please take advantage while this golden opportunity lasts – here's that link again.
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