BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

The Jew of Linz: Wittgenstein, Hitler and Their Secret Battle for the Mind (1998) Kimberley Cornish   What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy (2002) Zachary Shore  Diana Mosley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler's Angel (2003) Anne De Courcy   Hitler's Spy Chief: The William Canaris Mystery (2004) Richard Bassett   Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidante of Hitler, Ally of FDR (2004)   Peter Conradi How To Read Hitler (2005) Neil Gregor Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich (2017) Eric Kurlander     I am rather amazed that I read the thoroughly weird book The Jew of Linz through to the end, possibly because I was seduced by its first chapters. Essentially it postulates (on slim evidence) that the course of history was changed by boyhood contact in Linz between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler. The seduction of the first chapters was caused by the fact t...

Sartre: A Biography (1986) Ronald Hayman   Barthes for Beginners (1997) Philip Thody and Piero   1968: Marching in the Streets (1998) Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins   How To Read Foucault (2007) Johanna Oksala I will get Hayman's 1986 biography of Sartre out of the way quickly. It has few real insights into the man or his thoughts (except perhaps giving us some indication of his curious turn towards support for Zionism in later life) but it does have the virtue of laying out the basic facts of his life clearly. One for the library as reference text but not otherwise particularly recommended.  We will lay Sartre aside for the moment.   Barthes for Beginners is equally unsatisfactory. It should have got three stars as a bog standard basic introduction to the semiologist, Roland Barthes, but the graphics really do let it down. Clear graphics are an essential element in this series which sells itself on using imagery to help get across complex ideas. The fact t...

How To Get Rich (2008) Felix Dennis     Over a decade ago, I passed this book straight on to my late teenage son, not because of its insights into business (although it rings true on that account) but because of its insights into human nature and into the world 'out there' that he was going to have to negotiate in the coming years. Like all sons, he might not listen to his Dad (and no real reason why he should) but he might listen to 'uncle' Felix. I have no idea if he actually read it or not but I am rather proud of how he turned out (not much to do with me and a lot to his mother). Why should have read it and why should it be read by all young adults with a mind to dabbling in the world of capitalism? Because Felix Dennis is going to stop him wasting a lot of time believing that some people are nicer and cleverer than they are or that reading those idiotic books about leadership from people who could not navigate their way to an ice cream parlour on a hot day ...

Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism & Nazi Survival (1992) Joscelyn Godwin   The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann & the Origins of Modern Irrationalism (1993) Isaiah Berlin   Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (2004) Mark Sedgwick    Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (2008) Gary Lachman   Although published by Adventures Unlimited which tends not to be, shall we say, conventional in its authors (who cover conspiracy, lost worlds, free energy and what-have-you), Arktos is a serious and interesting account of polar mythology in popular culture, in the history of science and in esoteric lore. Joscelyn Goodwin provides an intelligent and often wry overview that remains well within scholarly standards. It is a valuable addition to that shelf in the library that is dominated by the work of Goodrick Clark (of whom more in a later review) and ...