Books Indexed

An alphabetical index of books reviewed on Culture Wars, the online review. Choose a letter below to browse by title, and click on any book title below for more information... Or just select one of the five most recent books.

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 The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life (Penguin Modern Classics)
  • Author: Richard Hoggart
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
  • ISBN-10: 0141191589
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141191584

With some scraps, please

Can we construct a radical politics which takes into account the complexities and contradictions in contemporary culture and does not end up anti-humanist or with a thinly-veiled contempt for ‘the masses’?

 The Education of a British-Protected Child
  • Author: Chinua Achebe
  • Publisher: Allen Lane
  • ISBN-10: 1846142598
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846142598

To and of humanity

A 1988 essay entitled ‘The University and the Leadership Factor in Nigerian Politics’ perhaps surprisingly offers a message directly applicable to the current moment in British politics. ‘Leadership is a sacred trust, like the priesthood in civilised, humane religions’, Achebe writes. His writings should be on a list of required reading for all those thinking of taking up office; perhaps then we might end up with a political class ready to treat the electorate with the respect it is due.

BooksIntellectuals & the PublicWorld Development
Thursday, March 11, 2010

 When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
  • Author: James S Fishkin
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN-10: 0199572100
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199572106

‘Democracy’ without politics

Fishkin seems more interested in extracting approval from the public in order to legitimise the power of the elites, than in giving the public a role in political change. Democracy should mean that power is challenged and limited in response to political decisions, not confirmed in advance of them.

BooksIntellectuals & the Public
Thursday, February 25, 2010

 Living dolls: thre return of sexism
  • Author: Natasha Walter
  • Publisher: Virago Press
  • ISBN-10: 1844084841
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844084845

Living dolls: reconsidering the legacy of the 1960s

The cultural outgrowths of the new left in general play a key role in many of the processes of social change which Walter hints at. Its stress on ‘independence and self-expression’, the focus on authenticity and self-discovery, ultimately are capable of being uncoupled from their political content and rearticulated in a resolutely depoliticised way. Far from undermining capitalism through a reclamation of authentic subjectivity, this cultural radicalism in fact helped fuel the emergence of contemporary consumer capitalism.

BooksRadicalism, past, present and future
Thursday, February 18, 2010

 Lark and Termite
  • Author: Jayne Anne Phillips
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape
  • ISBN-10: 0224059769
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224059763

Shades of light and dark

Phillips is able to deliver a powerful and evocative message through four central characters whose close familial bond is described between shifting narrative perspectives of past and present, to illustrate the endurance of close, personal relationships which permeate and surpass the boundaries of place and time.

Fiction
Thursday, February 11, 2010

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