By BRUCE DENNILL & NIGEL WILLIS
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
History’s People by Margaret MacMillan
The Magicians: Great Minds And The Central Miracle of Science by Marcus Chown
The Future Of Geography: How Power And Politics In Space Will Change Our World by Tim Marshall
This Is Your Brain On Depression: Creating Your Path To Getting Better by Faith G Harper
Neverwhere began life as a BBC television series in 1996 and this edition of Neil Gaiman’s novelisation of his co-written script, published 20 years later, has lost none of its power, delight and fizzing energy. It is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young businessman living in London and a man who tends to do what he thinks he should be doing rather than anything he truly believes in. The unexpected arrival of a bedraggled young woman in his life begins his unwitting – and unwilling, for much of the tale – involvement in another world below London’s streets, where fantastic characters play out epic narratives that could have effects far beyond their own hidden world. It’s a sweeping, rollicking tale in the tradition of everything from Peter Pan to Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, with clever references to well-known London landmarks tying this richly imagined fiction in reality. And like the above-mentioned classics, it’s the kind of book that that not only bears but demands re-reading and will likely become a favourite for entire families, from young adult readers upwards. A deeply satisfying and entertaining literary adventure. – BD
History is – and always should be – fascinating. Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan knows and embraces this in the excellent History’s People, which groups major figures – leaders and otherwise – under headings that highlight their personality types and process their actions and the impact they had on their nations or major events they were involved using those traits as a guide. This sees presidents and other household names grouped with obscure activists, all of whose actions changed the course of nations, and unveils some of the inane backroom machinations behind pivotal historical moments. There are also surprise in terms of who appears where, with Richard Nixon, almost universally reviled for his corruption and arrogance, appearing in the chapter titled “Daring” rather than the one titled “Hubris”. Crucially, the way MacMillan structures her narratives reflects excellent research and expert analysis. Her storytelling abilities make both reading the book and assimilating all the knowledge on offer make everything entertaining as well as educational, but there is never a sense – as there often is in similar popular analytical academic texts – that most of what is being offered is the pet perspective of the author. Learn, and have your horizons broadened. – BD
Marcus Chown has been an American radio broadcaster on scientific topics for many years. Currently a consultant to the New Scientist, he is also a prolific author of books that make science accessible to the ordinary reading public. In The Magicians he deals with the extraordinary fact that mathematics has made possible predictions in the realm of physics, that have later been demonstrated to be true. In an engaging style, Chown describes how the existence of the planet Neptune had been mathematically predicted. The same applies to electrons, neutrinos, black holes, the gravitational bending of light, gravitational waves and much else besides. It is a mystery why, to paraphrase the words of the Austrian physicist, Eugene Wigner, mathematics is so unreasonably effective in the natural sciences. Chown says: “Put simply, the universe has a mathematical twin that can be written on a piece of paper or scrawled across a whiteboard. But why it has such a twin is a huge mystery.” The accomplished physicist (who became a theologian) John Polkinghorne, has observed that mathematics has the quality of discovery rather than invention and, correspondingly, is one of ‘the signals of transcendence’ (in other words , one of the indicators that God exists). Others have described mathematics as ‘the language of God.’ Chown is careful to avoid any metaphysical or divine or spiritual explanations for the effectiveness of mathematics. Nevertheless, while reading the book, it is difficult for one not to make speculations about the existence of a ‘higher power’. Mathematics certainly appears to be the logic of a ‘higher power’. This book is, however, more than a mere scientific treatise. We catch glimpses of the personalities of famous scientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Frederick Hoyle, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck and Wolfgang Pauli. It is both sad and amusing to read that Pauli became so distraught that, at first, no one would believe his predictions about the existence of neutrinos, that he took to drink and became a chain-smoker. Today, we not only have scientific evidence of the existence of neutrinos but believe that they may be the basis of all matter in the universe. – NW
Tim Marshall has enjoyed an accomplished career as a journalist working, most notably, for the BBC and Sky News. He has been successful not only as a reporter for television but also as the writer of several written publications, including books. In 2015, he published Prisoners Of Geography. Written in a good journalistic style, its primary thesis is that geographic location affects a country’s strategic interests and, consequently, the thinking and actions of its politicians. This is hardly an original proposition. Perhaps the most obvious example is Russia. Vulnerable by reason of its geographic location, its history of invasions has affected its politics for centuries. Unquestionably, this history has influenced that country’s attack on Ukraine. Encouraged by the good reception that this title received, Marshall has now published a sequel, The Future of Geography. He contends that space will be the new theatre of conflict, the key players being the USA, China and Russia. There can be little doubt that the use of satellites, in particular, will create new tensions between states. Enormously useful, not only to governments from the perspective of intelligence and the transfer of communication by and between states and also among ordinary individuals, satellites have hugely changed the world within a few decades. Arguably, there are already too many satellites in space, with many of them already having become obsolete and now considered to be ‘space junk’. Fortunately, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Outer Space Treaty under Resolution XXII of 1966. This treaty provides that the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all humankind; that outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all states; that outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means; that states shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on ‘celestial bodies’ or station them in outer space in any other manner and that the moon and ‘other celestial bodies’ shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. Laudable though the provisions of this treaty undoubtedly are, the enforcement of United Nations resolutions has been notoriously challenging. Marshall rightly contends that the application of new technologies in and to outer space changes the old frontiers of geography. This, in turn, brings new ways of ‘seeing’ in the world. The latent potential of armed conflict will be utterly changed. Although no nation may ‘colonise’ or occupy the moon or any of the planets, inevitably the technical prowess of nations in matters relating to outer space will have political consequences. The author argues that Russia is fast falling behind and that the primary contest will be between the USA and China. One cannot disagree with him in this regard. Marshall asserts that human beings will be living on the moon and a planet like Mars within a few decades and that this will have profound political consequences. One must, of course, remember the mistakes of those who thought horse drawn carts would never be replaced by the newly invented motorised transport. Nevertheless, the author does not seem to rake account of the fact that it is physical impossible for human beings to be removed from the earth’s gravity for more than a few days without deleterious physical consequences. Bones in the human body begin to disintegrate, for example. The psychological consequences of the physical inhibitions that result from being away from of the earth’s normal force of gravity cannot be underestimated. Although this book makes some useful arguments, the author may have overstated his case. – NW
This slim, small (A6) volume has some value in addressing concerns around depression, particularly for younger readers who need the condition’s causes and symptoms, as well as strategies to manage it, described in an accessible way. There are also, though – beyond its brevity – shortfalls in the way the information is presented. One of these is that much of the content is discussed from a first-person perspective. It may be that Harper, who is a counsellor, has a profound knowledge of her subject matter, but written in this way, her observations sound informal rather than fully researched in a scientifically supported medical sense. Then, the language that she uses – liberal use of swearwords and possibly teen-friendly phrases (“When we are stressed, we crave sugar like whoa”) – again undermines the weight of what she is communicating and also, for readers whose age or use of language doesn’t gel with that approach, rather alienates people who might have seen this book as good entry-level insight into something they’re really struggling with. – BD