MUST READS
Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy by Tim Harford (Abacus £9.99)
Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy
by Tim Harford (Abacus £9.99)
Barbed wire, television dinners, the barcode and Ikea’s ubiquitous Billy bookcase — are these really the drivers of the modern economy?
In 50 pithy chapters, the economist Tim Harford (who presents More Or Less, Radio 4’s surprisingly entertaining statistics programme) explains how an eclectic range of inventions contributed to the global economy of fast-moving innovation in which we currently live.
Each bite-sized chapter offers a potted history of an individual item, tracing its impact from the local to the global. It also explores the downside, as well as the benefits.
Packed full of intriguing details and bizarre facts, this witty and engaging book offers the most fun you’re likely to have when studying the development of modern economics.
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My Father’s Wake
My Father’s Wake by Kevin Toolis (W&N £8.99)
by Kevin Toolis (W&N £8.99)
‘Death comes in many guises . . . On death’s shore there will be no right or wrong, only a better or worse way to die. And there will be a lesson, too, in how to live, and how to love.’
In his work reporting on conflicts across the world, the award-winning writer and filmmaker Kevin Toolis has witnessed death in many guises. Even when he was a child, growing up on a remote island off the coast of County Mayo, death was a familiar companion: he was taken to his first wake when he was just seven years old.
But it was his father’s wake that inspired this lyrical meditation on living and dying. ‘How can it be possible to never talk out loud about death in a world where everyone dies?’ Toolis wonders.
His moving memoir is a powerful reminder that the end of life is as precious as its beginning.
The Hungry Empire by Lizzie Collingham (Vintage £9.99)
The Hungry Empire
by Lizzie Collingham (Vintage £9.99)
From cups of tea to Christmas pudding, Britain’s traditional foods represent our Imperial history in edible form. Historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how food fuelled the British Empire and shaped the world in 20 chapters, each inspired by a single meal.
The sinking of Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, on July 19, 1545, yielded fascinating insights into the diet of its unfortunate crew.
While much of their food was home-produced, their staple meal of salt cod came from the American coast, thousands of miles away.
‘This reliance on faraway places to supply food was to become a hallmark of empire,’ Collingham notes.
From Samuel Pepys’s first encounter with ‘a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never drank before’, to a wartime meal of bully beef and sweet potatoes, this is a fascinating and timely study of the far-flung sources of our food supply.
