Ceasefire's Frederick Andrews reviews The Golden Cage, an intriguing semi-fictional collation of personal memories, encounters and stories by the Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.
Andrew Fleming reviews Mapping London, the new book by Simon Foxell, which examines the ways the British capital has been transcribed, mapped and understood over the centuries, from the mid-sixteenth century Shoreditch surrounded by windmills to the 1951 attempt to delineate the architecture of the South Bank.
In his new book, 'Third World Protest', Rahul Rao attempts to ground the sterile world of international normative theory in the practices and discourses of subaltern protest groups. Ceasefire's deputy editor, Musab Younis, reviews Rao's arguments.
Can you run experiments on the past? A groundbreaking book seems to suggest the answer might be yes. 'National Experiments of History", co-authored by celebrated thinker Jared Diamond, attempts to propose a radical new way of studying history and other social sciences. Ceasefire's Omer Ali gives his verdict.
Jamal J. Elias spent almost a decade travelling up and down the clogged arteries of Pakistan’s road network studying the unlikely but fascinating subject of Pakistani truck art and culture. ‘On Wings of Diesel’, the resulting book, is reviewed by Layli Uddin.
Ilan Pappe, one of Israel's most prominent historians, started out as a leftist Zionist until, faced with the full reality of the facts he had uncovered about the Nakbah, he turned to anti-Zionism. Ceasefire contributor Asa Winstanley reviews his autobiography, 'Out of the frame'.
Is the mainstream media biased? Do you find its bias to be always against your own opinions and views? Is this a coincidence? In this Month's science column. Sebastian Meznaric takes a look at a recent book, 'True enough' by Farhad Majoo, that aims to uncover how humans interpret and detect bias in the information they receive, with surprising results.
Books - Thursday, September 23, 2010 11:15 - 6 Comments
Love him or loathe him, Slavoj Žižek is a cultural phenomenon. He seems to inspire unconditional adulation amongst his legions of followers and, predictably, equally unbridled derision amongst his many detractors. Some see him as a serious and original thinker, others as an overrated fraudulent showman. So who's right? Alex Baker tries to find clues in the pages of Zizek's latest offering 'Living in the end times'.
Kosovo's quest for independence throughout a turbulent 20th century is the subject of a book that aims to disentangle myths from realities. Omayr Ghani, Ceasefire's Political Editor, is impressed at the scholarship but sceptical of the analysis.
What is reality? Is the universe, ultimately, no more than bits of information?
Physics, and Quantum Theory in particular, have grappled with the fundamental structure of nature's basic building blocks for decades, but the answers remain elusive. Quantum physicist and Ceasefire columnist Sebastian Meznaric takes a look at a new book on the topic and finds it full of intriguing and original insights.