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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need (2021) is well written. The book seems to aim for an audience that has had minimal engagement with climate change conversations. The first chapter sets the scene for the author’s positionality, followed by a few chapters on climate science 101. […]

Thought Provokers

Another Now

What would the world look like is the 2008 financial crisis inspired a radical transformation of society as we know it (rather than bailing out the banks to continue the status quo)? Yanis Varoufakis has ventured some answers in his Another Now (2020). The book is fictional, which the author uses to present a range […]

Thought Provokers

The Data Detective

Harford has written a pile of books on economics and ran a show decoding the world of statistics. I picked up The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (2021) to see if it might be useful for undergraduates in the social sciences. Harford is a good storyteller, hence the pile of […]

Thought Provokers

Epistemic Freedom in Africa

For students looking for an introduction to decolonization, or faculty looking to catch up on conversations they have been missing (or conversations they have avoided or actively sought not take part in), Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni has brought it together for you in Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (2018). As the title implies, this book […]

Thought Provokers

Native Colonialism

The people of Ethiopia defeated European attempts to colonize it. However, Dr Yirga argues that in embracing western education and erasing local history and tradition, the institutions and laws put in place colonizing processes, what he calls ‘native colonialism’. This is one of the most interesting books I have read of recent, highly recommended to anyone interested […]

Thought Provokers

Ethiopian Discourse

Teodros Kiros is a public philosopher, demonstrated by his commitment to making philosophy accessible and bringing philosophy into the public spaces. Ethiopian Discourse (2011) is a kind of companion book to Teodros Kiros’ Philosophical Essays (2011). Both are published by Red Sea and both are collections of articles written in the Ethiopian Reporter newspaper, amongst […]

Thought Provokers

Policy-Making in a Transformative State

Edited collections are challenging to write about and review, with the chapters covering diverse areas / topics and each offering unique data and perspectives. One unique edited collection on Qatar is Policy-Making in a Transformative State: The Case of Qatar, edited by M. E. Tok, L. R. M. Alkhater and L. Pal (2016). The book is over 400 […]

Thought Provokers

On the Genealogy of Morality

In looking for ideas about how to present the history and connectivity of ideas, I returned to Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, published in 1887. Sharing a few notes with that interest in reading (and only a periphery interest in the arguments of the book). In the Introduction of the version I read (by […]

Thought Provokers

Qatar: A Modern History

Other than a short publication from 1979, there are few academic books on the history of Qatar. After spending a year in Qatar, at Qatar University, Allen Fromherz wrote ‘Qatar: A Modern History’. The book was originally published in 2012, (Kamrava’s book is 2013) however, the updated version (published in 2017) provides updates throughout the […]

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Home and Exile (Achebe)

 Notes from Chinua Achebe, who needs no introduction, from Home and Exile (2000): “One morning all the animals were going to a meeting to which the town crier had summoned them the night before. Surprisingly the chicken was headed not to the public square like the rest, but away from it. When his neighbours and […]

Thought Provokers