MILES 13 BEST NON FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
I find that reviewing books helps me to understand what they are about. The reviews have my personal slant on the books. I only review my non fiction reading. Here is my selection for 2022.
Summary of Reviews
Born to Run – The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners and the Greatest Race the World has never seen by Christopher McDougall 2010
Aftermath. Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich by Harald Jahner 2022
Freezing Order by Bill Browder 2022
Viral The Search for the Origins of Covid 19 by Anita Chan and Matt Ridley 2021
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson 2006
This is they tell me how the world ends – the cyber-weapons arms race by Nicole Perlroth 2021
What on earth can go wrong. Takes from the risk business by Richard Fenning 2021
The Avoidable War : The dangers of a catastrophic conflict between the US and Xi Jing Ping’s China by Kevin Rudd 2022
The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder 2018
Volt Rush . the winners and losers in the race to go green by Henry Sanderson 2022
Feral by Geoge Monbiot 2013
Regenesis by Geoge Monbiot 2022
New Merchants of Grain by Jonathan Kinsman 2019
Individual Reviews
1. Born to Run – The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners and the Greatest Race the World has never seen by Christopher McDougall 2010
Fascinating book about the Tarahumara – a near mystical tribe who live in the wild impenetrable Barrancas del Cobre – the Copper Canyons - in Mexico, reckoned to be the healthiest and most serene people on earth and the greatest runners of all times.
Rich in stories it tells how the author tracked down Caballo Blanco – the White Horse – who had been adopted by the Tarahumara as a friend and a kindred spirit . He had mastered the two Tarahumara skills – invisibility and extraordinary endurance
The Tarahumara enjoy life. Before ultra events they have a party and drink and sing and dance and still run extraordinary distances through the inhospitable mountains of the Barrancas in bare feet.
They get no foot or knee injuries. McDougall claims that the cause of foot and knee injuries is the modern athletic shoe, invented by Nike in 1972. He claims 65 -70% of all runners suffer injury every year and he tells the intriguing story of the battle between various experts and Nike and Addidas in refuting their claims with the painful truths:
The Best Shoes are the worst
Feet like a good beating
Human beings are designed to run without shoes.
But it is the rich stories of how he organised for the best Tarahumara runners to compete with the best ultra runners in the US and how after they had thoroughly beaten them, they declined to participate in further organised races that reflects the attitude of the PTarahumaras. They had done that and they were not interested in money or public acclaim.
2. Aftermath. Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich by Harald Jahner 2022
This powerful book is of special interest to me. My father was a refugee from Nazi Germany escaping from a re-education camp in 1933, and worked in intelligence during the War at Chatham House and was listed in the Gestapo’s Black Book of 2,500 Germans in the UK to be eliminated. He came from Kiel which was devastated by UK blanket bombing and my sister remembers sending food parcels to my Oma (grandmother) post war. My father never spoke about his experiences but in my childhood he was very much in contact with his surviving family and with frequent visits back to Germany -and even was seated next to Her Huckener - the Nazi who had organised his arrest and detention – at a dinner in Frankfurt in the 1950’s where Huckner was post war mayor.
So Harald Jahner’s vivid description of post war Germans attitude to emigres is very sobering. He describes the collective agreement of most Germans to count themselves among Hitler’s victims which he sees amounts to an intolerable insolence. And the prevailing attitude of resident Germans to those who left as escaping their responsibilities. Seen from the perspective of historical justice, this kind of excuse – like the overwhelmingly lenient treatment of the perpertrators is infuriating. However, for the establishment of democracy in West Germany it was a necessary prerequisite because it formed the mental basis for a new beginning. As Chancellor Adenhauer put it when he appointed ex Nazis to senior positions in the Federal Republic “one does not throw out dirty water while was not have clean”.
Jahner describes the intention of the book is to explain how the majority of Germans , for all stubborn rejection of individual guilt , at the same time managed to rid themselves of the mentality that made the Nazi regime possible.
He describes the dreadful post war devastation the country faced with the return of 12 million expellees, 10 million demobilised soldiers and at least as any bombed out residents to be housed somewhere. He describes the starvation in winter 1946-47 and the bitter education of the rampant black market and the severe rationing system. He is particularly fascinating about the fractious controversies between newspaper editors and the spectacular arguments about abstract art and the pleasures, or decadence, of new design. Whether the Federal Republic would have achieved its legendary political stability without the ”economic miracle“ remains pure speculation.
He describes how the Americans provided a whole range of measures to help the German economy get back on its feet in 1947.
First currency reform – replacement of the worthless Reichsmark with the hard Deutsch Mark currency. 93 % of the old Reichsmark supply was destroyed without replacement. Savers were left with only 6.5% of their assets. Black market traders were the only ones who demonstrated against the reform.
Subsequently the Marshall Plan which pumped investment into all the European economies – Britain being the greatest beneficiary , Germany receiving only 10% and being the only one required to repay the funds, in order to preserve some sense of proportion between victory and defeat. He describes the foundation of then European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in 1947 which was the forerunnerof the European Union.
And he describes how all of this American investment led to the split of Berlin which would result in the political and economic division of the city. From June 1948 the Soviets tried to starve West Berlin by blockading access routes. The Berlin airlift saved West Berlin but the Cold War had started.
Every page stops you dead with insight and revelation.
Murrel’s Experiences
I am very much enjoying this book, fascinating and comprehensive account of post-war Germany.
It rings lots of bells for me and puts current concerns in perspective. I as particularly struck by the chapter on migration. We all knew about the great migration from the east, fleeing the Russians. But there were so many other chaotic movements, released prisoners of war returning home, discharged soldiers, people whose homes and cities had been destroyed by bombing. Berten and Kurt's stories are typical, Kurt walking home across Germany as a 14 year old conscript told to run away and go home and Berten as a nanny escorting a large family fleeing from the East. I clearly remember the publicity about 'displaced persons'. Indeed our first au pair/mother's help, Herte, was one of them; she as a spirited young woman from Austria who used to argue with Dad
I also impressed by the description of Hamburg as a lively exciting on-the -edge city. That is how I remember it from a visit to Antje with Henry and the children when they were young. I thought it was due to our lively and exciting cousin but I think she and her family were typical Hamburgers.
I was disappointed that the chapter on education had no mention of British contribution, concentrating on Americans, as Dad returned to Germany several times for lecture tours.
3. Freezing Order by Bill Browder 2022
This book could not be more topical and compelling. Bill Browder designed and implemented his Magnitsky Act in 2012 in the US and 33 other countries, empowering officials to freeze assets and block travel for those suspected of human rights abuses and laundering dirty money. Whilst prosecutions followed in the US, in the UK none took place as the City of London benefitted from the huge amount of dirty money. The invasion of the Ukraine generated a U turn in the UK. The publication of this book its publication coincides with some 500 of Russia’s oligarchs, including Chelsea’s owner Roman Abramovich, being sanctioned by UK under the Economic Crimes Act. This UK Act, is based on the Magnitsky Act.
Bill Browder made his fortune in the “wild east” of 1990’s Moscow by identifying and investing in undervalued companies, using smart reseachers to spot diversion of funds, generating publicity and putting pressure on boards to reform and drive up share prices.
Initially he supported Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undermine Russia’s overly powerful business oligarchs and was less focussed on changing the country’s weak legislation. But that changed. His dogged persistence made him realise that much expropriated wealth was channelled abroad, much to the benefit of money men in London and the west. And he discovered trails leading to Putin himself when he did not curtail his activities after fleeing Russia in 2005, he was ruthlessly pursued and his lawyer , Sergei Magnitsky, and other contacts were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and died. Bill Browder dedicated himself to developing and promoting the Act in Magnitsky’s name.. All this in the face of not just death threats form Russia but with the ability of the Russian authorities to pursue him abroad on trumped up charges and very nearly extradite him to Russia.
What impresses in this thriller like account is his sheer bravery, persistence in the face of such dangerous odds, his ability to operate at the highest levels, and his energy in continually flying round the world to where he could meet face to face leading politicians, bankers and journalists. He and his wife, who actively supported his frequent departures in the middle of family holidays or celebrations, were expert in maintaining high profile with the press to put pressure on politicians and also to help protect him from kidnap or assassination.
4. Viral - The Search for the Origins of Covid 19 by Anita Chan and Matt Ridley 2021
Matt Ridley has the ability to turn a complex scientific issue into comprehendible, readable and compelling material. Anita Chan is a leading US based researcher into epidemediology and Covid -19. But she apparently has close contacts with the leading scientists in the Wuhan laboratories. The depth of their knowledge and information on the background and response the pandemic appears great. Their interpretation can be left to your judgement.
The book certainly made for the best Non Fiction Book Club discussion we have held, aided by a valuable contribution from Prof Sean Heahy a retired professor of virology from Leicester University.
John Town’s introduction to the book cannot be bettered He describes the two possible origins of Covid-19 which the book then proceeds to investigate.
The first theory is spillover or zoonosis.
From time to time, fairly regularly, strange new diseases spring up. Examples have included Ebola, SARS, MERS, Nipah,.
.
They are usually pretty virulent but often infections spread slowly because they are not well adapted to doing so in people. An investigation takes place and it’s found that the virus causing them started in an animal species, often in primates or bats. Usually this has passed into an intermediate species such as civet cats, camels or horses for example, which are regularly in contact with people and where the virus may adapt a little to their intermediate host, before passing on to humans.
The second theory is the lab leakage origin.
Some men cleaning up bat guano in a cave in Yunnan get ill in 2014. Three die but it doesn’t spread between people. Some scientists get interested and start collecting samples of the bat virus which caused it and lots of others. They don’t take many safety precautions.
They take many such samples back to lab in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which specialises in collecting, sequencing and experimenting on bat corona viruses. They would like to carry out “gain of function” experiments which involves mixing and matching bits of the viruses to create hybrids which are more transmissible le to humans.
Western scientists are interested in this, especially as they are not allowed to do this at home for safety reasons. The French build them a big new level 4 biosafety lab and they start to collaborate with an American group who bring in lots of American money from the National Institutes of Health.
The French are kicked out. The work goes on. In 2018 the US Embassy make multiple visits to the lab and report safety and management problems. Much of the gain of function work is done at level 2.In September 2019 there is some kind of problem at the Lab and it closes for a short period. In December 2019 a new virus starts to spread in Wuhan and in the following months to the rest of the world. It transmits well and millions of people die - Lancet 10/3/2022 estimates 18.2 million.
The new virus Covid 19 is similar to a bat virus collected by the Wuhan Lab, (the Chinese try to hide this) but it has some differences which allow it to infect human cells more easily. Within a few weeks the Chinese take down all data concerning work at the Wuhan. So far we haven’t found Covid 19 in any intermediate species which would have assisted spillover.
There are only three ways a pathogenic virus can start an outbreak in human populations - spillover - an accidental lab leak - or a deliberate leak.
Now read the book to form your own conclusions.
PS The opinion of Prof Shawn Heahy – e Prof of Bioscience at the uni of Leicester and a specialist in virus research
I though the book was badly written, overlong and repetitive. It made me fear for the future. If this wasn't an accidental lab leak of an engineered virus, then it is only a matter of time before one does happen. Even worse as the technology becomes more powerful and easy to use I fear for a deliberate terrorist release. I often wonder if the foot and mouth disease outbreak at the beginning of the century timed with one of the Iraqi conflicts was accidental or a deliberate act of the Iraqis. Look forward to seeing you on the bike soon.
Shaun
5. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson 2006
This book revolves around John Snow and Henry Whitehead and the Broad Street Pump cholera outbreak in the London in 1854 and their identification of cholera as being a waterborne disease break - and not carried by “miasma”the air as was the conventional wisdom.
He paints a picture of London in 1854 of a city of scavengers, bone- pickers, rag gatherers, pure-finders, dredgermen, mudlarks, sewer hunters, dustmen, night-soil men, bunters, and toshers.
These were the London underclasses but essential in the rapidly growing largest city in the world – but one without a sewage system, the severity of the cholera out break in 1854 is unimaginable. Thousands dying in days in a tightly constrained area around Soho. Steven Johnson describes it in full technicolour from the detailed descriptions of John Snow – the local doctor - and Keith Whitehead – a clergyman who regularly visited his parish of Soho. In addition to his religious training Whitehead had a sharp, empirical mind and a good memory for detail . He was also unusually tolerant of maverick ideas and immune to the bromide of popular opinion. He was often heard saying “ Mind you, the man who is in the minority of one is almost sure to be right.
By the late 1840’s the miasma theory had established a far more prestigious following : the sanitation commissioner , Edwin Chadwick, the city’s main demographer , Willian Farr, along with many other public officials and members of parliament. All sewage was flushed into the Thames . The authorities were fully aware that this waste was having a disastrous effect on the quality of the water that the Londoners were drinking. But still the foul air , which was so immediate, was considered the major health hazard. Steven Johnson became to suspect that the pattern of infection did not correlate with the conventional wisdom of miasma or air borne disease theory.
But John Snow’s first hand close contact with the community convinced him that the killer disease was infecting people from the most foul air places to better ventilated homes and then certain groups, like the brewery workers, were immune. He came to suspect cholera was waterborne – but where was the source and why was it infected?. Initially Keith Whitehead was sceptical but he looked at Snow’s evidence and became persuaded. Then they needed to persuade the pubic officials and water authorities – a mammoth task.
Steven Johnson uses this detective story to illuminate wider issues.
Such as his assertions that the history of knowledge conventionally focusses on breakthrough ideas and the conceptual leaps. But the blind spots on the map , the dark continents of error and prejudice, carry their own mystery as well. How could so many intelligent people be so greviously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted thaeir most basic theories?
Such as his assertion that the work of Snow and Whitehouse was the dawn of epidemiology. John Snow as a doctor and physician had already established a reputation as the most sought after anaesthesiologist – chosen by Queen Victoria for palliative care during the birth of her 8th child- - through his development of ether and chloroform as anaesthetics. But bearing in mind that in1854 the technology was not available to see the cholera bacterium, he could never have proved his theory of the waterborne mechanism of its medium without seeing around the conceptual obstructions of the age through the nascent epidemiology. Part of what made Snow’s map groundbreaking was the fact that it wedded state of the art information design to a scientifically valid theory of cholera transmission. It was not the map making technique that mattered ; it was the underlying science the map revealed.
Steven Johnson extends the experience of the cholera epidemic of 1854 to his theories on the generation and development of ideas and innovation in cities, which he develops in other books.
Bearing in mind he wrote this book in 2006, his prophesy that a flu virus could well lead to a runaway epidemic that would burn through some of the world’s largest cities at a staggering rate , thanks to both the extreme densities of our cities and the global connectivity of jet travel, was vindicated by the 2020 Covid pandemic.
A man worth listening to.
6. This is they tell me how the world ends – the cyber-weapons arms race by Nicole Perlroth 2021
How does a New York Times journalist establish such a reputation among hackers throughout the world, as well as senior cybersecurity people in multinational companies, as well as national authorities such as the NSA , GCHQ , the Russian, Chinese etc authorities, that they both run scared of the publicity she creates as well as use her to further their causes? This is an authoritative book,
The book reads like a spy story starting in 2014 through to the Trump era. It is scary. Starting with compromised servers in Singapore and Holland the blaring red warning lights came on with Russian cyber attacks upon the Ukraine after the independence day celebrations. As Perlroth says “we might have seen that the end game wasn’t the Ukraine - it was us”.
The US’s National Security Agency regarded Russia and China to be their most formidable adversaries – with chinese hackers being mostprolific at stealing Ameriacn trade secrets. But the US regarded themselves as exceeding the capabilities of their oppositon. Then in 2016,the NSA’s own cyber arsenal was dribbled out on line by a mysterious group of hackers – The Shadow Brokers. They trickled out NSA’s offensive hacking tools and code for any nation state or cyber criminal to pick up. They exposed the most powerful cyber arsenal on earth.
Perlroth’s New York Times and the Guardian had in 2013 published the were leaks of Edward Snowden, the infamous NSA contractor who had removed thousands of classified document from the NSA’s computers before fleeing to Hong Kong and then Russia. Snowden leaked the NSA data to show the public the unlimited nature of the US’s surveillance and the lawful interception programs that compelled companies like Microsoft and Google to secretly turn over their customer data.
But the bigger revelation was the extent to which the agency had acquired a vast library if invisible backdoor into almost every major app, social media platform , server, router, firewall and ante virus software. In the hacking world these invisible backdoors were called “zero days”. The zero day is a software or hardware flaw for which their is no existing patch.. Until the vendor learns of the flaw in their system and comes up with a patch everyone who uses the affected system is vulnerable. Zero days are the most critical tool in a hackers arsenal.
Hackers have been around for years – Pablo Picasso hacked art, Turin hacked the Nazi code and Benjamin Franklin hacked electricity. Although we have come to be conflate hackers with black hats and criminals , in reality Perlroth maintains we owe them much of our progress and ironically our digital security.
In 2011 security researchers started picking up traces of a worm which was darting all round the world infecting tens of thousands of machines. They called it Stuxnet. A German security analyst , revealed the fact that the worm had been developed by NASA to destroy the Iranian centrifuges used in their nuclear weapons programme. It had then accidentally been released. Later Langer delivered a TED talk in which he delivered the most coherent description of the world’s first digital cyber weapon of mass destruction.
It became common practice for states like Russia, China and the US to outsource their hacking capabilities, paying hackers for their hacks. And the hacks they paid for were not just military. In 2009 Chinese hackers had hacked Google and dozens of other US companies including Adobe and Intel. They were after Google’s source code. Most laypeople assume hackers are after money, credit card information or bribe-worthy medical information but the most sophisticated hackers wanted source code. – the tech companies crown jewels.
So the major tech companies started paying hackers top dollar for their hacks and pay them to scour versions of their software before it hit the market. But in 2014 three Dutch men realised that Google, Facebook and Microsoft were all in fierce competition to hire the best security analysists driving up prices. They established HackerOne to provide a trusted platform through which hackers might engage across industries. By 2016 they had signed up the biggest names in tech as well as banks, oil companies, automakers airlines and even the Pentagon to their common platform.
Perlroth ends the book on a sombre note. Hacking is now a plague reaching into our infrastructure, our democracy, our elections and our privacy with no end in sight. In the words of Jim Gosner, the godfather of American cyberwar “You would have to be a cloistered monk on a mountain in Africa not to be concerned about cyber vulnerabilities”.
7. What on earth can go wrong. Takes from the risk business by Richard Fenning 2021
The concept of Black Swans, used as an event that is unforeseeable and comes as a surprise, has fascinated me. I believe they overshadow regular management skills and resources – my business has prospered and then been turned upside down by Black Swans – through BSE in 1996, through my warehouse burning down in 2010, through the financial melt down in 2008 and then through Covid in 2020. Not only turned upside down but each time resulting in fundamental change in the nature of the business and rebuilding.
This thoughtful, entertaining, wide ranging book holds that designating something as a Black Swan let's us off the hook, and excuses our failure to think hard enough about what the future may hold.
Richard Fenning describes some of his experiences in Colombia, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia , China, India and the US – all countries with their wild side as well as their strategic importance. In this gritty, witty , but not pretty book. He blends his personal experiences with his assessment of the strengths, faults and prospects for each country.
Richard was CEO of Controlled Risks whose role was to help international companies stay safe, to peer round the corners and warn them of trouble ahead. When that was not possible or there was no room to dodge out of the way, then it was time to fire their loins, stiffen their sinews, weather the storm and deploy all kinds of mixed metaphors to keep the show on the road. He writes humbly, is self denigrating, continually pokes fun and makes light of what clearly was sometimes hair-rasingly dangerous work.
He started in the industry in 1973 when the world was entering the era of globalisation - the year NAFTA was ratified by the US Congress, the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union and the World Trade Organisation was formed. Three mega-trends defined his time in the risk business: globilisation, fuelled by a financial system that was as vulnerable as it was intricate; the immediate impact and consequences of the 9/11 wars in the Middle East and heightened fear of extremism of all kinds; and the digital revolution which has fundamentally reprinted how we define security.
But the book is down to earth. He describes individual cases of human ineptitude – such as the US based investor who hired him to find out why his Colombian hydroelectric power plant was losing money. It turned out that the local management had tried to cut costs by hiring illegal Venezualan labour resulting in a massive brawl between the workers and management and closing the plant. This all happened before the investor put his money in. It seems crazy that he risked millions without establishing what has happened on the ground. And it was apparent that his advisors, like so many, operated in the passive-aggressive world of corporate decision making: agree, comply and evade.
He describes hairy encounters in Russia but puts them in the context of the divergent opinions – the proportion of the Russian population who believes in America’s hypocrisy – they do not like what Russia has done in Ukraine or Syria after their military interventions in Central America, Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya and elsewhere. Or the other reality - that the Russian state was captured a long time ago by the elite that used its oil and other wealth to medicate enough of the population into compliance. He is scathing about pompous and myopic western politicians pontificating on Russia. What is indisputable is that the Russian leadership is wily and cunning.
He describes intimidating situations in each country he works in but reflects a highly professional approach and clearly has the ear of leading politicians and company bosses. Whilst coming face to face with the corruption, mismanagement and violent responses, generally he retains a positive attitude.
It is reassuring to hear the one universal truth that informs everything else he knows. Just when you are on top of your game, that you have not got the hang of whatever it is you do, that you have crawled to the top of your particular hill, then almost certainly something is about to go wrong. Phew – not just me!
8. The Avoidable War : The dangers of a catastrophic conflict between the US and Xi Jing Ping’s China by Kevin Rudd 2022
This book oozes authority. Kevin Rudd was an active participant, he was prime minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013. He has met and knows XI Jing Ping. He has lived and worked in China and is fluent in mandarin. He has had a close interest in China all his life.
But he is a worried man. He sees jingoism and nationalism growing in both the US and China. He describes a history of mistrust over the centuries - a recurring theme of mutual non comprehension and deep suspicion followed by periods of exaggerated hope and expectations that then collapse in the face of fundamentally different political and strategic moves. His fear he couches is the Thucydides’s Trap –“ the natural and inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power. Like the rise of Athens displacing Sparta”.
If the primary factor dissuading China from engaging militarily against the US was its belief that it was too weak, that is fading fast. And despite the protestations of successive US administrations (at least until Trump) that the US had no interest in overthrowing Communist Party (CCP) rule, successive generations of party leaders have never believed them.
The CCP is deeply conscious of the long-term threats it faces to its domestic political legitimacy. It is not just the challenge to the party’s authority and China’s state-capitalist model from the booming self-confident private sector, it includes the spectacular rise of Buddhism and Christianity as spiritual alternatives to Marxist- Leninism. There are now 100 million protestant believers in China – more than the entire membership of the communist party.
There is also the equally potent enduring and understandable theme in Chinese perceptions about America on the questions of race. The Chinese see to this day persistent racial prejudice. Many American government officials routinely trample on basic protocols of respect either by ignorance or design.
China sees the US as unable to restrain itself from interfering in the internal matters of other states. China by contrast simply works with whatever government is thrown up as a result of local political circumstances – be they dictatorships or democracies.
Where Xi has changed China’s worldview has been the reinvigoration of the party’s Marxist – Leninist foundations. The cornerstone of his vision is the China Dream of becoming a moderately prosperous society (this was achieved in 2021 with the doubling of per capita income to $10,000 since 2010) and a fully advanced economy by the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic in 2049.
Xi’s economic advisors know that the future of Chinese productivity, innovation and employment hangs on whether there is sufficient business confidence in the private sector to make the investment decisions necessary to guarantee long term sustainable growth. Yet his instincts are to strengthen party control over the private sector.
Probably the biggest threat to a managed relationship between the US and China is Taiwan. Complete national security is seen by Xi as more important than any wider reputational cost and with the rest of the world increasingly depend upon Chinese trade and the limited international reaction to Tiananmen in 1989 and to the removal of Hong Kong’s freedoms in 2019 – 2020 he concludes a muted response to China exerting full control over Taiwan.
To support these goals are Xi’s belief in environmental sustainability and achieving targets over the coming years to achieve net zero by 2060; in modernising all aspects of the military and securing China’s maritime periphery especially the South China and East China Seas; and going west with the Belt and Road Initiative.
Kevin Rudd then gives full attention to America’s strategic response and alternative futures for US-China relations.
Altogether a sobering book.
9. The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder 2018
What a topical read. In the media at the moment, Putin is typically portrayed as a megalomaniac impervious to realism. Snyder provides the explanation of the historical context. It is a powerful history of Putin’s conversion to the theory of the place of the greater Russia – Russia, Ukraine and his methods. Snyder provides remarkably impressive research of the conversion of Putin from collaboration with Europe and the West to his total dedication to reestablishing Ukraine as an integral part of greater Russia. He examines in forensic detail the descent of Russia into fascism using the fascist philosophy of Ivan Ilyin as a guide.
Snyder sets up a classification of the philosophies of the underlying political creeds of the US and Europe as being the politics of inevitability in contrast to the Russian philosophy of eternity.
The theory of inevitability holds that the future is more than just the present, that the laws of progress are known, and that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing can be done. In the American capitalist version of this story, nature brought about the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness. In the European version, history brought the nation, which learnt from war that peace was good and hence chose integration and prosperity. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, communism had its own politics of inevitability: nature permits technology; technology brings social change; social change causes revolution; revolution enacts utopia.
The collapse of the theory of inevitability ushers in the politics of eternity. Whereas inevitability promises a better future for everyone , eternity places one nation at the centre of a cyclical story of victimhood. In 2012 Putin created a fake foreign threat to Russian sovereignty. The fictional problem became the designs of the European Union and the US to destroy Russia.
He adopted a model of Eurasia – a model of unification open to the former republics of the Soviet Union and also member of the current EU. Its basis of cooperation was the preservation and extension of a common cultural and civilisational heritage. If Ukraine wished to negotiate with the EU it should accept Russia as its intermediary. In Eurasia Russa was dominant.
At too greater length with unnecessary detail, he describes the move from integration to the concept of an empire, based on distortion of the truth, the use of cyberwarfare, and chillingly Putin’s very effective campaign to undermine American democracy with his total support and financing of Donald Trump.
The book certainly provided for a greater understanding of the motivation and means of Putin’s obsession with reestablishing Ukraine as an integral part of Russia. And Putin’s bid to undermine democracy in the US. A hard read.
10. Volt Rush . the winners and losers in the race to go green by Henry Sanderson 2022
Henry Sanderson was the FT business correspondent in China for a number of years. He covered the raw materials that electric cars need: lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper as well as aluminium and steel. While Elon Musk and Tesla took all the media attention there was a shadow war of the billionaires who were set to get rich. A gold rush had begun.
The explosion of demand for these metals was not just batteries for electric cars - for example by 2007 worldwide ownership of mobile phones passed the one billion mark : lithium batteries had cemented their position at the centre of our digital lives. It is not difficult to recall all the other micro gadgets that require batteries.
As the Chinese correspondent he saw the focus that China was putting on setting out to dominate this market. He visited the Chinese companies leading the battery manufacture and those processing these minerals and recounts the ambition and risks that they shouldered to secure supplies. He tracks the development of these companies and their founders, including Robert Zeng of CATL, who was known as the Battery King. By 2020 CATL was supplying almost every electric car maker, Chinese, European or US including Tesla, giving the company a dominant position in the transition away from fossil fuels. CATL also owned stakes in lithium projects in Argentina and Australia, a nickel project in Indonesia and a cobalt deposit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
His graphical description of the huge amounts of energy and the horrendous social and environmental costs of the extraction of these minerals is sobering. Do they outweigh the environmental benefits of electric batteries? On balance he concludes not. But in his first hand accounts of mining for lithium in Australia’s vast deposits or of artisanal dangerous mining for cobalt often using child and slave labour throughout the Congo or Glencore’s corrupt practices or of the huge Ramu nickel mine in Papua New Guinea owned by Minmetals, China’s largest state-owned metals giant, the social and environmental costs look daunting.
He looks to the future – the potential and costs of dredging for the enormous metal deposits on the seabed at mind boggling depths and the potential for green batteries.
It is a compelling book if you are at all interested in the subject.
Feral by Geoge Monbiot 2013, Regenesis by Geoge Monbiot 2022 and the New Merchants of Grain by Jonathan Kinsman 2019
In Feral, George Monbiot presents a very persuasive case for the damage that is being done to agriculture by modern farming methods. He concentrates on rewilding as part of the solution. In Regenesis, he repeats the doomsday analysis of the horrendous extent to which species are being eradicated and biodiversity annihilated both in the land and marine environment. In that book he then launches his remedies. He is balanced and open minded.
But you cannot influence farmers to respond to the threats unless you identify how it can be effectively done in the real world. Merchants of Grain examines in detail the 6 major international corporations that control the vast trade in agricultural commodities. These are the people to whom farmers sell their crops and to whom they respond not just in what they grow, but importantly, in how they grow it. It is a thoughtful and stimulating read. The message comes across that historically grain and other crop trading have been solely price driven. Certainly price remains dominant. But the segregation of the demand and therefore price according to sourcing or quality by the supermarkets and retail markets, (witness the sustainability certification that has been introduced by the timber trade which has received widespread recognition by furniture retailers) provides the dominant opportunity to determine farmers’ behaviour.
I hope the reason for putting these three important books together becomes apparent in my reviews.
11. Feral - Wilding the land,sea and human life by George Monbiot 2013
This book changed my opinion on the response to loss of biodiversity.
There is tendency to read books which confirm your prejudices. I regarded wilding as interesting but hardly applicable to the highly developed agricultural economy of the UK. George Monbiot , through his exceptionally well researched book combined with his deep expertise as a naturalist and ecologist, argues that it is applicable, as well as difficult bearing in mind the current rural economy plus the entrenched interests of farmers stalkers and fishermen , but it is possible to make a significant difference. He wavers between highlighting the huge damage already caused and the difficulties of overcoming the obstacles and stressing the opportunities for addressing the issue.
I regarded the reintroduction whales, beavers and wolves and lynx and other large animals as being good publicity but hardly fundamental to the ecosystem. George Monbiot argues that the dominant predators are necessary to limit the numbers of their prey and restore the ecological balance. In the whole of Europe Britain is the only country to have prevented the reintroduction of predators.
I also regarded the hill sheep farming economy as ecologically friendly. Monbiot hates sheep. Sheep graze too destructively. It is only by removing the dominance of sheep that will allow the re-emergence of native trees and a rich diversity of flora. Monbiot is weakest when confronted by a very intelligent sheep farmer who accused him of prioritising wild animals over living rural communities.
But Monbiot is humble and open minded and listens to his critics. And the book combines the comprehensive consideration of the UK’s land, water, and sea ecosystems with his personal experiences and adventures and description of encounters with interesting and influential people. His access to such people presumably enhanced by his journalistic reputation. As a journalist he knows how to make a complex readable and interesting.
12. Regenesis – Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot 2022
This poetic and hard hitting book, full of his personal descriptions of the countryside and his diving or gardening or hillwalking trips as well as many face to face meetings with people doing extraordinary things focusses on the soil and on the monumental threats to its biodiversity and his ideas on how to tackle the problems.
Most of us perceive the soil as a dead and passive substrate. Calling someone a worm is an insult. But he maintains that understanding it is crucial to addressing some of the greatest questions that confront us : how we might feed ourselves without destroying the basis of our own survival.
His answer is that we radically need to change the way we grow foods. He grimly highlights all the multiple mega issues from water pollution to deforestation to the wastefulness of meat diets and the need to remove meat from our diets to the damage caused by pesticides and anti biotics. By the end of this you feel like you do watching David Attenborough’s impending doomsday and want to slit your own throat.
But although the problems are wicked and paradoxical, he believes there are some counter-intuitive solutions. The experience of environmental campaigners has so far been bitter but the experience of all effective movements also shows that success is a function of thier preparedness for a moment of transformation. He thinks we are beginning to see an alignment of technological change, systematic fragility and public disquiet sufficient to trigger a techno-ethical shift that could allow us to recast our relationship with the living planet. All, he believes, is needed to provoke this state of change is the hardwork of a small number of committed people.
I buy into his persuasive arguments of the seriousness of the many threats to the environment. I do not buy into his optimism about all that is needed is the hardwork of a small number of people. Public opinion and concerns certainly are vital and the efforts to change opinions by campaigners is important in influencing governments, legislation and the behaviour of supermarkets but it is not sufficient.
In the book he decries the concentration of financial power and how a few big corporations have taken control of the agricultural commodity markets and supply chain. He is right about this concentration of power. And this to my mind provides the realistic opportunity to effect the behaviour of farmers who respond to financial pressures as much as they may wish to farm sustainably. Hence why I lead onto The Merchants of Grain.
13. The New Merchants of Grain – Out of the Shadows by Jonathan Kingsman 2019
I should say at the outset that this book will only appeal to a limited audience. It is written focussing on the strategic developments in the food and agricultural markets and supply chains of the few, dominant corporations. Maybe too business oriented for many.
But Jonathan knows his industry and the position and development of each of these international traders as well as the background of the rise and fall of such corporations.
You might not like international commodity traders but everyday we all buy products that contain grain and palm oil or meat fed on soya. Now 7 companies handle 50% of international trade in grain and oilseeds and they crush and process 35% of the world’s soyabeans. Like it or not , they are the real influence on farmers. The public might have real sympathy with Rita Thumberg and governments can have a real effect by subsidy policy and legislative controls. But governments face budget pressures which limit subsidies and they invariably lack real enforcement of their environmental legislation. Farmers are driven by harsh economic realities which are determined by their customers – the international commodity traders.
These traders trade at miniscule margins in huge volumes with no room for premium payments for environmental benefits. They face economies of scale that result in great size – building a one million tonne commodity processing plant or port loading facility will not cost twice as much as building a 50,000 tonne facility.
However non price influences are apparently beginning to modify their behaviour; firstly financial institutions are introducing ESG policies (Environmental , Social and Governance criteria) whereby banks will increasingly only finance sustainable production. If you look at the coal industry, not a single international bank will finance a new project in the coal fired power generation. Similarly banks will have to exit non-sustainable agribusiness.
Secondly end consumers are willing to pay more for gluten-free or lactose-free or organic or non-genetically modified or locally produced food. And the big brands are willing to pay more for specific food varieties which fit their recipes.
Thirdly grain traders alone cannot make acceptable returns. They are moving into added value operations. Some grain merchandisers are moving to become the whole supply chain. This strategy also fits well with blockchain and the movement towards traceable supplies. Others are going further to becoming fully integrated food companies producing and managing retail brands.
Each of the 7 major corporations are adopting different routes to adding value. Cargill are the biggest. They handle 25% of the grains and soya produced by US farmers. ADM, Bunge, the Louis Dreyfus company and Glencore are also US and European based conglomerates. Wilmar has the strongest foothold in China and handles 40% of the world trade in palm oil. COFCO is the disruptor of the group. It is China’s state owned enterprise.
Bunge are the world’s largest meat trader. They are investing heavily in alternative meat ventures. Their shareholding in Beyond Meat represented 36% of their total profits in 2019’s second quarter. Cargill have invested in both cultured meat (lab-grown) and plant based meat. ADM is investing in alternative meat supplies.
Wilmar is consolidating their advantage in palm and oilseeds, while making supply chains more sustainable and traceable. They are publicly committed to No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation Policy whereby they became the first major palm oil player to ensure its supply chain was delinked from any forest destruction and human rights abuse. They believe that soon no one will be able to be active on the food and agri supply chains without demonstrating total control of quality and origins and providing reliable and certifiable information about their trades. Blockchain technology will be necessary to facilitate such traceability on a wide scale.
It is the rate of change of attitude and the real implementation (not green washing) of these major corporations which, I believe, offer the most effective route by which environmentally sound agricultural practices will be effected.
14. The Invention of Nature. The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt. The Lost hero of Science. By Andrea Wulf 2015
I have overwritten the review – so no review!
But Von Humbolt was an extraordinary character.
Von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
He was Charles Darwin’s inspiration and provided the fore running of the Gaia theory and Global Climate Change. A visionary.