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This impressive book sets out Maori aspirations for more political, economic and cultural self determination in the face of ongoing settlements with the Crown. Durie discusses this self determination under six distinct headings which are separated as chapters. These are: the environment, cultural identity, social policy, land issues, fisheries and the Treaty of Waitangi. In each of these areas he looks at the power historically held by the Crown and also looks to more recent developments which have influenced Maori relationships with the Crown.
As well as this the book is aspirational about what could be offered to Maori in the future and how this can be extracted through the current framework of the public sector. By the end of the book, ideas for how tino rangatiratanga can best be offered to Maori is shaped within possible future governance and sovereignty structures. He offers the idea that sovereignty can be maintained both at a tribal level and at higher levels of governance, allowing for both arguments which have traditionally been the focus of much debate.
Through this, Durie focuses on the 1835 Declaration of Independence by Maori iwi as an important constitutional document alongside the Treaty of Waitangi. He sees the sovereignty aspired to by Maori as existing within and not apart from the wider nationhood of New Zealand.
This is a very well written and argued book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Maori and constitutional law in New Zealand.
This book, written in the 1970s is a well-structured account of the arguments for animal liberation. Singer's arguments are put forward in a way that starts on a premise that the majority of people would agree with. Arguments are then set out which clearly lead to conclusions that are not perhaps as well-regarded. Singer's philosophy is flawless and his arguments are convincing.
Singer has written a more recent book which I plan on reading when I get the chance. The only complaint I would have about this first book is that much of the evidence it uses is now vastly outdated and it's hard to tell what is still in use and what is not. Moreover, there has been a huge boom in factory farming in recent years which would possibly make many of his arguments even stronger. I look forward to reading his most recent book where I would assume newer evidence has been used.
The main argument Singer uses in this book is that of Jeremy Bentham, that is: "can it suffer?" Singer offers ample evidence of the pain that animals clearly feel being kept in cramped cages, being branded as a farming procedure, untreated injuries and a lot more. He asks why we are willing to inflict such pain on animals when we would not do so ethically on humans. He labels this speciecism, forcing us to confront that we base this strange ethic on nothing other than the fact that these animals are different species than us.
I highly recommend this book. Even though I would not go quite as far as Singer in some respects, I think he puts forward an argument that is persuasive and difficult to ignore.
This book tells the story of the team who came to a conclusion based on Type 1A Supernovae data that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This is out of a choice of three models - either that it is slowing down due to gravity and will eventually come to a stop before collapsing in on itself and culminating in a "big crunch." The second option is that the acceleration of the universe is constant and it will keep expanding at the same rate. The third is obviously the one which was proven by their data - that the expansion of the universe is in fact accelerating.
The team (known as the High-z Supernova Search Team) used large telescopes to look for type 1a supernovae. This kind of supernova is rare - there is approximately one per galaxy per century, but since the universe is pretty big, high powered telescopes can be used to find these and measure their redshifts (redshifts mean they are moving away, blueshifts moving towards us). Kirshner has recounted the methods the team used and the other team they were competing with. He has also looked at how a variety of different universities across several countries colluded to get these results.
Kirshner has tried to keep this book relatively unscientific. In other words, it is made for the lay-reader and written so the wider public can understand how this operation played out, what it means and its ramifications for modern physics. In this mission, he did a relatively good job. It seemed sometimes like he was trying a bit too hard to amuse the reader with amusing anecdotes and jokes. Although this was a good idea, it was a little too often and came across or desperate. The book was highly interesting without this added information.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone interested in what's going on in the world of science.
Susie Orbach famously acted as a therapist to Princess Diana and wrote Fat is a feminist issue. As well as this, she was one of the driving forces behind Dove's "real beauty" campaign of recent times. In this most recent book, Orbach has explored the changeable nature of our bodies in the 21st century. This includes the changes in BMI, the new surgeries available all over the world and the fight to look Western with eye surgeries in Asia, leg shortening procedures in Scandinavia and phalloplasties, which I'm sure I don't have to tell you about.
Through all of this new technology, Orbach confronts the reader to explore our relationships with our bodies. Through this, she demonstrates how the media has an influence on the way we view our own bodies. With evidence, including the amount of digitally manipulated images we see per day, Orbach makes it clear that we are underestimating the role of the media and the environment in these self-perceptions.
As usual, Orbach has provided a well-written and evidenced account that is both persuasive and thought provoking. I would have preferred if the book had been a bit longer or a bit more detailed, but as it was which was a relatively small book, it could serve well as part of a larger series.
I thoroughly recommend it.
I had actually read this book before a few years ao. There is no doubt in my mind that Hornbacher is an incredibly gifted writer and the fact that she wrote this book at such a young age is testament to this. Now with two other books to her name, both of which I have read I thought I'd read this one again.
Wasted documents Hornbacher's descent into bulimia as a child and her struggle to gain some control over her behaviours which flip-flop between anorexia and bulimia. She gives a unique insight into the life of someone whose life is governed by starvation, binging, purging and a battle with her own mind that never seems to end. Hornbacher was offered an ultimatum when she entered hospital: continue to die or accept the help she so desperately needed and learn to live. She chose the latter and we get the impression in the opening pages of this book that she has remained relatively healthy ever since.
I do have a couple of complaints about this book. Firstly, she constantly documents her weight at different stages throughout her illness. This struck a note of competition that is often seen between eating disordered patients. It could be argued that this reflects her mindset at different stages throughout the book. That is, her mind revolves aorund the number she sees on the scale. However, these numbers could be incredibly triggering for anyone with an eating disorder who reads the book. It also focuses on weiht as a measure of the seriousness of her eating disorder, which while seemingly logical is not necessarily helpful.
I have read two other of Hornbacher's books: one is another memoir about her diagnosis of Type I (rapid cycle) Bipolar disorder and the other is a fictional book about grief. Both were more maturely written than this one was and it seems her writing is only improving.
I look forward to her next book.
I can't say this or that that was the reason. There is no reason and every reason. Why do you want to die, I ask myself. How else does it stop? If I die, the trouble stops with me. I can see her, Tammamo, her hand closing her husband's eyes, breathing in the air to make the fire-breath, his family, watching her. Enough, she'd be thinking. Fire on her lips. It ends with me now.
...
Coe walks in to my room. Wake up, he says. Time for practice. The clock reads 6 A.M. We've joined the crew team. I pull back my covers and dress quickly in clothes Coe helped me pick: we decided I could wear gray for exercise. We run the distance between Clark and the boathouse down by the river, more or less straight down the long hill of the campus. In the dark morning the sun is the gold centre of everything. Death feels far away in that instant, impossible. We arrive at the cold river as summer touches the beginning of its last days, and Coe smiles. The sun. Coe."
(p. 98)
My wonderful friend Vita recommended this book to me and it has to be one of the best reads of this year for me. Alexander Chee was little known to me as an author and a quick search reveals Edinburgh as his first and possibly only book. I hope he keeps writing. Edinburgh is written from the perspective of a Korean-American kid we know only as Fee. He joins a boy's choir where he and several other boys are molested by the choir director 'Big Eric' who picks on only boys who look a certain way. This includes Fee's secret love and close friend, Peter.
His life unfolds from this central event and the way in which Fee remembers and describes his abuse can be seen in the quote above. Fee is gay, but not because of the abuse, in fact it almost seems it is in spite of what has happened. Fee's life is affected hugely - he engages in a series of relationships at university as he sees his friends crumble around him (one even kills himself). Despite this, Fee manages to build a life for himself until he is confronted by a boy at the school he teaches, who reminds him far too much of a boy he loved in the choir.
This book is written amazingly and is both heart-wrenching and at times amusing. Chee has demonstrated an amazing and empathetic stance towards characters. At the same time, he hasn't denied them agency or taken away from their experience in any way. His literary phrase unfolds magically and he has the ability within this to provoke emotion in (I would say) most readers.
I really hope I read more from this author. This is the best fiction book I have read in a long time.
Having read both The Idiot and Crime and Punishment, I felt it was time to finally read this daunting looking i.e. rather large book, which I had bought cheaply at a book shop. It tells the story of three brothers: Dmitri, Ivan and Aleksey. The brothers are brought together when Dmitri returns to his father as a soldier to request money he believes is rightfully his. They decided to meet with Zosima who works in a monastery where Alyosha (Aleksey) is placed. From here the book explores philosophy, religion and politics and each of the brothers explores a different perspective. Another brother is added to the mix, when we discover that Pavel Smerdyakov was likely fathered by Fyodor. Pavel shares Ivan's atheist beliefs and appears to look up to him throughout the book.
The book also explores the responsibility of the different brothers towards each other and towards a more general good. This leads to the further analysis oh each character's philosophy and is guided by the early words of the Elder Zosima as well as the frenzied actions of Dmitri as he chases the woman he loves, Grushenka. Ivan's philosophy is forced to change from the complete rejection of morals with no God that he preaches at the beginning of the book. This is just one of many examples of the way different philosophies are explored in the book.
Like any great Russian novel, this one is full of extravagance. It contains well thought out characters and plot lines that keeps the reader guessing throughout the book. Dostoyevsky also lets the characters speak for themselves rather than explaining their actions or movements which aids the telling of the story.
I cannot do this book justice and I recommend it to all for its wonder and its amazingness and because it looks at important social issues in a unique way.
