BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past (2001) Douwe Draaisma Teach Yourself Jung (2005 ) Ruth Snowden 50 Psychology Classics (2006) Tom Butler-Bowdon 50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need To Know (2008)  Adrian Furnham Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older is a set of connected but discrete essays opening up a relatively new area for psychology - autobiographical memory. It should be of great value to creative writers. Draaisma (Professor of the History of Psychology at Groningen Unversity) is not afraid to go beyond science into literature in order to demonstrate a point. It is well worth reading if you are interested in how you see the world yourself and why you might do so. It also respects subjectivity in a way that one hopes others, with equal communications skills, will develop.     Teach Yourself Jung is a good basic introduction to Jung's life and thinking. It can be recommended, although Frieda Fordham's 1953 classic text approved by ...

Phaidon Colour Library Picasso (1971) Roland Penrose   Max Ernst (1979) Ian Turpin   Surrealist Painting (1982) Simon Wilson   Pop Art ((1996) Jamie James    Chagall (1998) Gill Polonsky   Taschen   Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973: Genius of the Century (2000) Ingo F. Walther   Surrealism (2004)  Cathrin Klingsohr-Leroy   Abstract Expressionism (2005) Barbara Hess  The Phaidon Colour Library is a remarkably cheap if old-fashioned set of full colour guides to the great artists and to some of the schools of art that make up the canon. Three particular choice from three successive decades are Roland Penrose on Picasso, Simon Wilson on Surrealism and Jamie James on Pop Art.  The Phaidon Guide to Picasso (48 pages) is, unfortunately, somewhat hagiographic because the extensive Introduction is by his friend, the surrealist painter Roland Penrose. At this time, Picasso's post-war work was not being widely appreciated by critics (wit...

The History of Rome (2010-2012)   Mike Duncan    UC Classics Ancient World Podcasts (2012-2013) University of Cincinnatti Classics Department   The Fall of Rome Podcast (2016-2017) Patrick Wyman/Wondery    Anglo Saxon England Podcast (2015-2017) David Crowther   The Viking Age Podcast (2016-2019)  Lee Accomando These five podcasts will take you from the founding of Rome to the tail end of the early medieval world when North Eastern Europe started to see the formation of viable Kingdoms. Mike Duncan's History of Rome is as legendary as the subject matter of its first episode, extending over a further 178 episodes of straight narrative to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. It a no-nonsense old fashioned tale of what happened in the order in which it happened. Enjoyable for those who like a continuous good story with analysis placed second.    University of Cincinnati Classics Department produced a series of seven witty and enjoyabl...

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...