I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

There’s something about Italy

Food, fashion, art, architecture: there’s no denying Italy has captured the world’s imagination. And we’re here to celebrate it. The Italian Way invites you to explore the country’s countless wonders, from ancient Roman relics to innovative modern art and beyond. By the end, you’ll be more in love with Italy than ever before.

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The Verdict:

If you’re planning a holiday in Italy and want to get more of a sense of its history, geography, food, social life, design and culture then this book is a handy introduction. Broad in scope, it’s full of photographic illustrations and nuggets of information that extend to locations outside the normal tourist zones but it is slightly spoilt by some typographical errors within the text, which is not acceptable for a book with a £20 cover price.

THE ITALIAN WAY was released in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2025. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Since the end of the Second World War, we have moved from an international system in which war was accepted as the ultimate arbiter of disputes between nations, to one in which it was not. This remarkable book, which combined political, legal and intellectual history, traces the origins and course of one of the great shifts in the modern world.

The pivot was the Paris Peace Pact of 1928, when virtually every nation renounced war as a means of international policy. By 1939, however, that Pact looked like a naive experiment. Hathaway and Shapiro show that it was in fact the critical moment of a new attitude to war, and how it shaped the thinking of those who framed a new world order after 1945.

Though this is a book about the power of ideas and their impact upon history, it is peopled throughout by individuals who brought about these momentous changes. The Internationalists is a significant contribution to understanding international affairs, and how great historical changes come about.

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The Verdict:

Oona Hathaway is Professor of International Law and Political Science at Yale and Scott Shapiro is Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale. This is a thorough and engaging look at the legal framework underpinning war as a means of dispute resolution and how the Grotius view of “might is right” was overturned with the 1928 Paris Peace Pact, which changed attitudes to the legitimacy of war and formed the basis of the modern international order.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

In this important new book, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi take a fresh look at the big questions surrounding the peculiar social form known as “capitalism”, upending many of our commonly held assumptions about what capitalism is and how to subject it to critique. They show how, throughout its history, various regimes of capitalism have relied on a series of institutional separations between economy and polity, production and social reproduction, and human and non-human nature, periodically readjusting the boundaries between these domains in response to crises and upheavals. They consider how these “boundary struggles” offer a key to understanding capitalism’s contradictions and the multiple forms of conflict to which it gives rise.

What emerges is a renewed crises critique of capitalism which puts our present conjuncture into broader perspective, along with sharp diagnoses of the recent resurgence of right-wing populism and what would be required of a viable Left alternative. This major new book by two leading critical theorists will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the nature and future of capitalism and with the key questions of progressive politics today.

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The Verdict:

Nancy Fraser is Professor of Political & Social Science at the New School for Social Research and Rahel Jaeggi is professor of practical and social philosophy at the Humboldt University, Berlin. This highly academic book, framed as a conversation between the authors uses (and assumes that the reader is grounded in) critical theory to explore what capitalism is, how it’s been viewed in history, how it can be capitalised and how it can be defeated.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

There is no Blurb on the Back, instead there are the following quotes:

“Stevenson had a meteoric rise from the rags of east London to the riches of Citibank, and his book charts that journey … A darkly funny book that makes a convincing case that high finance is as toxic, reckless and deeply cynical as ever.”
The Guardian

“The Wolf of Wall Street with a moral compass.”
Irvine Walsh

“Hilarious, shocking and deeply sad - often in the same sentence.”
Sunday Times

“Terrific … an unlikely hero, brimming with wit and a low tolerance for nonsense.”
Daily Telegraph

“A sharp observer, with a gift for colourful if merciless description.”
Financial Times

“Rude and funny … fast-paced … Gary Stevenson’s account of the frenzy and follies of trading ‘trillions a day’ is powerful … he tells a vivid story.”
TLS

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The Verdict:

Gary Stevenson is a former Citibank trader turned YouTuber and anti-inequality activist. This is an absorbing memoir of his life as a top trader at Citibank but the sections setting out how he rose from a working class upbringing in Ilford, Essex to become a top trader making millions of pounds in bonuses are more convincing than the final section, which charts how he became disillusioned with his job and its role in fuelling societal inequality.

The Blurb On The Back:

”Where’s a place in the world for me?
How do I move on with my life?
I’ve done my time.”

Meet the women inside Britain’s biggest female-only prison. The ‘frequent flyers’. The lifers. And the mothers with their babies behind bars.

With her trademark insight and compassion, Dr Amanda Brown shares the most horrifying, heartbreaking tories of the women inside.

From drug addiction to child abuse, self-harm to sex work, the women in her care have been both perpetrators and victims of terrible crimes. But Amanda is doctor to them all.

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The Verdict:

Dr Amanda Brown is a GP who has previously worked in a youth detention centre and Wormwood Scrubs and currently works at Bronzefield. This compassionate sequel to THE PRISON DOCTOR focuses on her work at Bronzefield and provides an interesting insight into what drives some women to crime and the role of homelessness but the tone of the anecdotes never quite rings true and you never find out what happens to the women after their diagnoses.

The Blurb On The Back:

Today Google and Facebook receive 90% of the world’s news and ad-spending. Amazon takes half of all commerce in the US. Google and Apple operating systems run on all but 1% of cell phones globally and 80% of corporate wealth is now held by 10% of companies - not the Gas and Toyotas of this world, but the digital titans.

How did we get here? How did once-idealistic and innovative companies come to manipulate elections, violate our privacy and pose a threat to the fabric of our democracy? In Don’t Be Evil, Financial Times global business columnist Rana Foroohar documents how Big Tech lost is soul - and became the new Wall Street.

Through her skilled reporting and unparalleled access, she shows the true extent to which the ‘Faang’s (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) crush or absorb any potential competitors, hijack our personal data and mental space and offshore their exorbitant profits. Yet Foroohar also lays out a plan for how we can resist, creating a framework that fosters innovation while also protecting us from the dark side of digital technology.

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The Verdict:

Rana Foroohar is global business columnist and associate editor at the Financial Times and CNN’s global economic analyst. Published in 2019 it’s an absorbing and frightening look at how Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google hoard data and intellectual property to maintain market dominance, influence politics and maintain their value and a prescient warning given how the companies are now jostling to influence the incoming Trump presidency.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

”Fish and chips, bacon and curry in particular … These meals are more than food - more even than good food. They’re soul. Heart. Comfort. Home. They’re who I really am, and possibly, who many of us really are.”

In Britain, we have always had an awkward relationship with food. We’ve been told for so long that we are terrible cooks and yet according to a 2012 YouGov survey, our traditional food and drink are more important than the monarchy and at least as significant as our landscape and national monuments in defining a collective notion of who we are. Taking nine archetypically British dishes - Pie and Peas, A Cheese Sandwich, Fish and Chips, Spag Bol, Devonshire Cream Tea, Curry, The Full English, The Sunday Roast and a Crumble with Custard - and examining them in their perfect context, Pete Brown reveals just how fundamental food is to our sense of identity, perhaps even our sense of pride, and the ways in which we understand our place in the world.

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The Verdict:

Pete Brown is a food and drink commentator and food award judge. This is a fascinating look at 9 dishes that have come to be regarded as quintessentially British (including curry, cream teas and fish and chips) with Brown mixing comment on their development, place in British society, questions of authenticity and what they say about British class and culture with his own relationship with food, having grown up working class in Barnsley.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

From international drag queen superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul comes his most revealing and personal work to date - a brutally honest and deeply intimate memoir.

From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s chameleonic nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and super mogul. It is this adaptability that has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.

Stripping away all artifice, RuPaul recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental other, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes in Atlanta and New York and finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living - a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of a chosen family, the importance of harassing what makes you different and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.

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The Verdict:

RuPaul Charles is a drag icon, actor, podcaster and the host and producer of an international drag show competition franchise. Although this memoir intends to reveal the real RuPaul and he talks a lot about a traumatic childhood through to the beginnings of his drag career and how he met his husband Georges LeBar, there’s a therapy filter at play here, which creates a sense of distance so I came away feeling like I hadn’t seen the real RuPaul.

The Blurb On The Back:

What is a ‘custard’ wind? - Why is a rainy wedding lucky? - What’s the difference between ‘daggle’ and ‘dibble’ weather? - Does sunshine make us kinder? - Why were weather reports once banned?

The British obsession with the weather is world famous. We talk about it endlessly - five whole months of our lives, to be precise. We use it to start conversations with complete strangers. It affects our moods, shopping habits and even how we vote.

This book is packed with information you’ll want to share about this most important subject - quirky history, surprising facts, fascinating folklore, strange words and intriguing people.

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The Verdict:

Alex Johnson is a journalist, magazine editor, designer and author. This is a lovely book about the British national obsession - the weather - that mixes folklore, local dialects, psychology, economics and, of course, the weather itself. There are loads of facts and nuggets grouped around different types of weather and, yes, there are 100 words for rain as well. It’s a perfect read to enjoy in your garden on a warm sunny day with a cold drink.

100 WORDS FOR RAIN was released in the United Kingdom on 11th April 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

An ambitious oral history charting the epic highs and crashing lows of the UK’s most creative and hedonistic period: the nineties, told in the words of its architects.

Remember when …

Blue and Oasis battled to be Top of the Pops?

You raved the night away in a baggy T-shirt and dungarees?

Football was coming home?

New Labour won a landslide victory and things could only get better?

We really, really, really wanted to be Baby, Scary, Posh, Ginger or Sporty?

You rushed home from the pub to watch TFI Friday?

‘Girls and Boys’ embraced Girl Power and Lad Culture?

The Young British Artists were household names?

Whichever aspect of the nineties you feel nostalgic for, there is something in this book for you?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Daniel Rachel is a musician turned critically acclaimed author. On balance this account of the 1990s ‘Cool Britannia’ phenomenon is worth a read as Rachel has secured interviews with some key figures (including Tony Blair, Noel Gallagher, Jarvis Cocker, Tracey Emin and Melanie Chisholm) if only to get their view on what happened and what it meant but there are notable omissions (e.g. Justine Frischmann) and nothing on Black British contributions.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.