Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra

The latest outpouring of resentment and anger happens to be in Chemnitz in eastern Germany (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fear-and-loathing-in-neo-nazi-chemnitz-cvzmw52fx), but it’s only an example of what’s cropping up all over the world. In this case, something truly horrible – the resurrection of the fascist far right in Germany – should set all sorts of alarm bells ringing. What

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New Dark Age

The breakneck rush into digital technologies has delivered much that is useful, impressive and dazzling. But what have we lost, and what are the dangers? James Bridle (http://jamesbridle.com/) takes on these concerns here. We live in times of increasing bafflement. Our news feeds are filled with unverified, unverifiable speculation, much of it automatically generated by

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Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Psychological research has been digging about in that highly subjective matter – personal happiness. It’s against a background of consumer culture which offers ‘solutions’ about how we can be ‘made’ to be happy.  These offers come in various forms of chemical compound, guru generated bullshit and lifestyle choices which (not co-incidentally) cost a lot of

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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Long on the ‘to do’ list for reading fiction, I’m delighted to have completed Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/oct/06/fiction.impacprize) over the Easter break 2018. An American novelist and short story writer, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this novel in 2003. Not many multi-generational American novels are narrated by an omniscient hermaphrodite. Cal Stephanides

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