Category: Books

I bought this book at the Exclusive books sale, partly because it looked interesting and partly because it was really cheap. Now that I’ve read it, I would be happy to have paid full price for it. Some people have an amazing talent for writing, which makes anything they write engaging, Steven Poole is one of…

Climate change has (finally) become a global issue which demands the attention of every human living on this planet of ours. In order to take or support the required corrective actions, we need to familiarise ourselves with the concepts and the implications. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves.  These days there are so many books out there on…

What makes Stuffed and Starved more than just an excellent read is that the author, Raj Patel, is South African. This means that some of the examples he uses to illustrate some of his points are from a South African context rather than the the list of countries generally cited. That’s not to say he…

It was interesting reading this book straight after reading Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. In Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein mentions the author of End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs, several times. The reason being that he was involved in developing economic policies in a lot of the countries which she used as case studies. The interesting…

I’ve been reading quite a lot of books lately, as you can probably tell from all the reviews which you can find in the book review category. As with the documentaries I choose to watch, they are mostly about globalisation, consumerism and the abuse of corporate power. These things underlie most of the problems we face…

I’ve just finished reading this book and I am pleased to have an opportunity to tell others about it. There are many books out there that will tell you all the bad things about globalisation. There are also books that will give you a more balanced view, illustrating both the good and the bad things…

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about this book and a good friend finally tipped the scales when she insisted I read it. I’m glad I did, it’s very interesting and I learnt a lot, but I have to say it was frustrating. When you read about all these things going on, blatant abuses…

Most people have heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s other book, The Tipping Point (my review here), but this one is less well known. Although it is less well known, it is no less interesting. Like The Tipping Point, it is not a long read. However, it provides much food for thought. The author shares a mixture of…

This book is a very short read, which gives it a very high time to benefit ratio. The concept of a tipping point is not new, but Malcom Gladwell uses very interesting and relevant real-life examples to illustrate how small things make the difference without us even realising it. He shares some interesting thoughts on…

The headline in the Cape Times today was ‘SA farming on knife-edge’. The article goes on to explain that because our food markets have been opened up to the rest of the world, our farmers face competition from countries which subsidise their agriculture and there is no way we can compete against that. This is…