Tag: Global

Tom Nichols – The Death of Expertise | Review

Title: The Death of Expertise

Author: Tom Nichols

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count: 254

Rating: 4.5/5

This is easily one of the best non-fiction books that I’ve picked up this year and so I was a very happy bunny. It’s also pretty cool because it was recommended to me by one of my clients, to the point at which he paid for me to purchase a copy of it.

It’s basically all about the way in which everyone thinks they’re an expert today. We overrule doctors because we can Google our symptoms, but we also overrule experts in their different fields instead of taking their hard earned advice.

This is a huge problem, of course, but it’s even more of a problem in the midst of a global pandemic when people are convincing themselves that there’s some sort of secret conspiracy to deprive us all of our liberty by getting us to wear masks in shops. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I found this book more enjoyable than I normally would have because of the time in which I read it.

Arguably my favourite example in the whole book was that of American attitudes towards military action in Ukraine. It turns out that the less people knew about the Ukraine, the more likely they were to demand military action. Those who thought it was in Australia or South America were those who were most likely to support military involvement. What a world, man.

Learn more about The Death of Expertise.


Graham Greene – Yours Etc. | Review

Title: Yours Etc.

Author: Graham Greene

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 280

Rating: 3*/5

 

Graham Greene - Yours Etc.

Graham Greene – Yours Etc.

 

I’m not really too sure what I expected from this book because it is just a collection of Greene’s letters to the press. I guess I expected to understand what he was talking about a little more. That’s because the letters are pretty much just printed in chronological order without any real context.

Actually, that’s not true. You occasionally get what happened after the letter was published because it wasn’t unusual for someone else to then write in to make a reply. The problem is that it doesn’t really help if you don’t know what they’re talking about in the first place, as is often the case when he starts talking about global politics in the 1950s and 1960s.

Still, I mean this book is billed as Greene’s letters to the press and it’s exactly that, I just didn’t enjoy reading them as much as I thought I would. I’ve been a Graham Greene fan for years now and I’ve read a whole bunch of his books, so I ought to have loved this. Not the case, though. I think it would have been better if it had included footnotes or some other short introductions and information to expand upon what was there in the actual letters.

All in all, you’re not going to enjoy this unless you’re a serious Graham Greene fan, and even then it’s not that great. It might come in useful if you’re looking for citations for an essay or something like that but otherwise, it’s only so so. Read it at your peril and in chunks.

 

Graham Greene

Graham Greene

 

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