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Institute of Ideas staff have selected a list of books that particularly impressed us this year and which we would like to share with you - see it as our holiday reading list. To buy a book, click on its cover (from every purchase made via this link, the IoI gets a little bit of revenue from Amazon, so please do shop via us). Thanks and happy reading!
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Licensed to Hug - Jennie Bristow and Frank Furedi (Civitas, 2008)
'Society has gone mad; we need to do something about it and this must involve robust governmental direction as well as courage at an individual level from all of us.'
Review: Culture Wars
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The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education - Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes (Routledge, 2008)
'It's one thing for individual citizens and educators to note, with bewilderment, the rising tendency to obsess about students' self-esteem, but quite another to pull together the evidence to provide an explanation and searching critique, the goal of this provocative and original new book.'
Review: Culture Wars
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The Enemies of Progress: Dangers of Sustainability - Austin Williams (Imprint Academic, 2008)
'To disagree with sustainability seems to mean standing up for unsustainability, defending houses that will collapse: who would be mad enough? Architect Austin Williams' new book gets beneath the sustainable agenda to reveal its true character and aim.'
Review: Culture Wars
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The Broken Word - Adam Foulds (Jonathan Cape, 2008)
'What Foulds brings to the portrayal of violence and terror is the elegance of accuracy combined with emotional power and imaginative finesse.'
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Strange Fruit: why both sides are wrong in the race debate - Kenan Malik (Oneworld, 2008)
'Kenan Malik's gloriously sharp and combative new book cuts through the cant and confusion that so often surrounds the fraught issue of race.'
Review: Culture Wars
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Fever - Gerry Feehily (Parthian, 2007)
'16 year old Jerome Maguire, the town's one gothic punk, communist and poet laureate (self elected), wants to 'find out about love'. A funny and painfully truthful novella about growing up, coming of age and Risk.'
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Paranoid Parenting - Frank Furedi (Continuum, 2008, 2nd edn.)
'This new edition of Frank Furedi's best-selling book has now become even more relevant than when it was first published six years ago.'
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Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris (Penguin, 2008)
'This shows better than almost any other novel I can think of the sense of pointlessness that pervades office life today, the emptiness that lingers when we find no common purpose in the work we do together.' [Except for in the IoI office, of course]
Review: Guardian Books blog
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Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion - Michael Fitzpatrick (Routledge, 2008)
'With eloquent and persuasive writing, Fitzpatrick uncovers the political agendas that lie behind current fears of an autism crisis, and challenges the epidemic of unproven and expensive treatments.'
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid (Penguin, 2008)
'Contemporary and current-affairish as this book is, Mohsin Hamid lifts a beautiful, delicate and compelling pearl of a narrative out of the stale, raked-over material about America and its critics that newspapers have gorged on since 9/11.'
Review: Culture Wars
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The Death of the Critic - Ronan McDonald (Continuum, 2007)
'McDonald's careful and engaged critique defends the idea of criticism through a historical discussion of the critics' changing role, dealing on the way with the 'democratisation' of criticism aided by the internet, and its obscurantist elevation into self-reflection by post-structuralists.'
Review: Culture Wars
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EU Phrasebook: 27 Ways to Say, 'No Doesn't Really Mean No' - Josie Appleton (Manifesto Club, 2008)
'This is one guide to Europe's modus operandi you will be able to understand. The beauty is that the author lets Europe's leaders speak for themselves, in all their pomposity.'
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The Future of Community: Reports of a Death Greatly Exaggerated - D Clements, A Donald, M Earnshaw, A Williams, eds. (Continuum, 2008)
'This powerful book shows that official and semi-official 'community creators' can only construct fragile pretend communities that often reveal their deep distrust of citizens.'
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An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming - Nigel Lawson (Gerald Duckworth & Co, 2008)
'Lawson's contribution to the debate over climate change is a very useful one. The real pity is that there seems to be so little interest in having that debate more often.'
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Can I Recycle My Granny?: And 39 Other Eco-dilemmas - Ethan Greenhart (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008)
'A skidmark on the gusset of environmentalism.'
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