BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

Rubbish! (2005)  Richard Girling Rubbish! is a tirade against the Blair Government but also by extension any British Government since all governments are essentially the same crew whatever the party. Environment policy is seen here through the eyes of a senior specialist journalist whose text ostensibly majors on 'rubbish' but who also covers the degradation of land and water resources, the collusion between government and business at the expense of everything from food security to clean air, and waste itself (especially hazardous waste). There is anger at the incompetence of policy-makers at every level - but largely at those at the top. One chapter is a genuine eye-opener, about the scale of the traffic of Western waste into the developed world. A picture emerges of a pre-credit crunch global economy that trafficked sex slaves and skivvies in one direction and the detritus of growth in the other. It is a shame that the baby of a theory of imperialist exploitation h...

The World of Sex (1940)  Henry Miller   Men's Adventure Magazines in Post-War America: The Rich Oberg Collection (2004) Taschen Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film (2005) Jimmy McDonough   Miscellany of Sex (2007) Francesca Twinn   Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, Soho's Billionaire King of Burlesque (2010) Paul Willetts     Henry Miller wrote the original draft of his long essay The World of Sex in 1940 when he was about to turn 50, somewhat of a turning point for any redblooded male, but the text was substantially revised for a secondary publication in 1957 when he was nearing 70. This is a relevant set of facts. This is not a male view of sex so much as that of a highly sexualised male past his powers and frustrated at a world that had always failed to accept him publicly for what he was. He would not have been alone in that frustration - America 're-moralised' itself in the wake of the G...

The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition in Hindu Religion (2005) Gavin Flood    The Tao Te Ching: 81 Verses by Lao Tzu With Introduction and Commentary (400BC original - this edition 2006) Ralph Allan Dale Gavin Flood's The Tantric Body is a fairly dense academic text and not cheap, even if you can get it second hand, as I did, at a store like Treadwells. I am also not entirely convinced by Gavin Flood's almost obsessive thesis of the 'entextualisation' of Tantra in the body although, if accepted in perhaps a less intense form, he offers some deep insights into how the Tantric tradition relates spirit to matter. However, this is a five star text if only because of its value as corrective to the soft core 'namaste' tantric culture that has developed in the West as a form of partner guidance counselling for anxious middle class liberals who clearly have great personal difficulty either in escaping Judaeo-Christian habits of mind or in understanding the r...

Billy Hill: Godfather of London (2008) Wensley Clarkson   Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins (2010) John George Pearson Peaky Blinders: The Aftermath - The Real Story Behind the Next Generation of Gangsters (2021) Carl Chinn   I have a reasonable library on crime, organised crime rather than the individual evil-doer though I have a few of those as well. These three books give us a general picture of the history of organised crime in Britain, largely but not exclusively in London. I will start in the middle of the story with the weakest book just to set the scene. Clarkson's Billy Hill is a pot boiler but anything that helps us understand the nature of the human condition has some value. This story of one of London's major gang lords does just this - despite itself. It is a weakly written book for the true crime market which seems to take villains' own tales at face value, over-relies on secondary evidence, fails to maintain continuity and gives little so...