Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh

Penguin Books Limited, $23. Reviewed by TERENCE WOOD

As anyone who’s ever completed a graduate degree can tell you, social science field research is often surprisingly tough. It’s hard not to feel like an intruder or, perhaps more accurately, like part of an extractive industry as you pepper people with questions. It’s easy to feel like a fraud too; the aspiring ‘expert’ who knows less about the topic than your research subjects. Then, depending on where you are, there’s the potential for culture shock, not mention loneliness. From mugging, to malaria, to the chance that your data won’t actually be of any use, the whole enterprise is filled with risks.

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Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War, various, edited by Mark Derby

Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 2009. Reviews by SCOTT HAMILTON and SIMON NATHAN

In Spain, the pamphlet-poem that raised hundreds of pounds for British supporters of the Republican government in 1937, WH Auden saluted the young men and women who made the journey to the ‘arid square’ of Iberia to defend the Republicans against Franco’s fascist insurrection:

They clung like birds to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

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Halliburton’s Army – How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War by Pratap Chatterjee

Nation Books, New York, 2009. Reviewed by JIM MILES

This is a book the Halliburton/KBR can live with. It airs out their dirty laundry: the bribes, kickbacks, the inefficient work, the near slave labour conditions of its subcontracted employees, the deaths from insurgent attacks and electrocution, massive overcharging on its invoices, poor record-keeping, and other serious allegations. Yet for all that, the huge corporate profits taken in by Halliburton/KBR seem to reduce this to the cost of doing business, a business that now extends well into the future with the widening of the war into destabilizing Pakistan and Iran. Read more »

The Making of FDR: A Story of Stephen T. Early, America’s First Modern Press Secretary, by Linda Lotridge Levin.

Amherst, New York: Prometheus Press. Reviewed by RICHARD SHAFER

THE MAKING OF FDR argues that the image of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a modern, charismatic, and politically astute leader was ‘made’ in a significant way by his talented but non-intellectual press secretary, Stephen Early. The author, journalist Linda Lotridge Levin, clearly makes the case that Early played a crucial role in the Roosevelt presidency that lasted from 1932 until his death in 1945.

Like President Barak Obama in 2009, Roosevelt assumed leadership during a severe economic crisis and used the media to encourage the American people to regain faith in their ability to rebuild the economy. Roosevelt began his inaugural address with the famous words, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’. As the book documents, he depended heavily on Early to get his message out in an effective way.
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Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from foreign lands by Christina Lamb

Harper Press Reviewed by SARAH CHANDLER

Written over a twenty year period, Small Wars Permitting is an assortment of around 40 newspaper articles by the British war correspondent Christina Lamb.

Now in her forties, Christina Lamb has been reporting from the world’s hot spots since she was just 21. Having survived many perilous situations, she says she believes her life must be charmed: “I have spent twenty years living on the edge … I’ve been pinned down by Russian tanks … kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence … survived car crashes and emergency landings in planes held together by tape, and come under sniper fire in Iraq”. She was also a passenger on the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s bus when it was bombed in Pakistan in 2007.

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By Jack Ross
For quite some time now I’ve been meditating an essay on the literary estate of J. R. R. Tolkien. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually get round to it, though, so I thought I might just put a few of the highlights into a blog post instead.

There’s a story (told by C. S. Lewis’s literary executor, the egregious Rev – now Fr. – Walter Hooper) that Tolkien once remarked scoffingly to him that his friend Lewis had published almost twice as many books since his death as he’d managed to put out before it! I’m afraid that story rings a little hollow now. The dozen or so books that appeared before Tolkien’s own death in 1973 have long since been dwarfed by the ones that have appeared (and continue to appear) ever since.

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Poem of the Week: The Poet’s Eyes are Lowered by Ted Jenner

From: Writers in Residence and other captive fauna Titus Books

The poet’s eyes are lowered.
There is a pencil on the table
but there is no rubber to erase
the next line which is quite distinct.

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All News is Local: The Failure of the Media to Reflect World Events in a Globalized Age, by Richard C. Stanton

Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland Reviewed by ED MASON

RICHARD C. STANTON’S new work is a reminder that brevity can be a virtue in academic writing. Stanton’s concise book contends that a centuries-old Western approach to news which plants all news in the local prevents the Western press from fully reporting world issues. He organises his discussion with supporting analysis from the news roles of world and regional institutions such as ASEAN and the UN as well as NGOs.

Stanton makes his case based on a thorough understanding of the role of the journalist in ‘making news’ for all forms of news media.

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The Al Jazeera Effect: How the new global media are reshaping world politics, by Philip Seib.

Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008. Reviewed by DR ALAN KNIGHT

This book puzzled me at first. Not that it’s badly written and organised. It’s clear, concise and informed. Nor is it laden with fantastic theories cooked up by desk bound academics claiming they understand the world which perhaps exists beyond their air-conditioning. According to Philip Seib:

The battle for hearts and minds in the Middle East is being fought not only on the streets of Baghdad but also on the newscasts and talk shows of al Jazeera. China’s future is being shaped not solely by Communist Party bureaucrats but also by bloggers working quietly in cyber cafes. (p ix)

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